A Good Deed has paid off...
Hi all,
A few days before Christmas I popped into....ahem **cough** Maplins as I needed a couple of connectors for my Christmas Eve gig. I was looking for them in the shop and noticed that they only had 1 left so I went to the Help section to check their system and catalogue to see if they had any in stock. Luckily they did.
Anyway, whilst I was looking for them, there were a couple of guys and a couple of shop assistants all looking confused and scratching their heads. On the floor was an opened box and in it was some kind of all in one mixing station for an I-Pod. I found out that it was a father and son who had purchased the machine for a young boy who wanted to do some DJing on Christmas Day when all the family were around.
I could hear "How do we get this to work?" and "There's no sound coming out of it" so I turned around and asked if they needed help. All 4 of them looked at me as if to say "Who are you?" and then the older guy said "If you know how to get this to work you'd be a life saver otherwise a little boy is going to be very upset on Christmas Day". I introduced myself and started to take a look at the thing. I hadn't seen anything like it before but it seemed easy enough and I was surprised (well not really) that the staff were unable to help or advise.
I ended up getting it to work. I asked the staff if they had any speakers in the store and they got out some general hi-fi speakers. I told them to hold on and went to the van and got one of my Mackies, Power lead and speaker lead and connected it all. The younger guy put his I-Pod in the docking station on the system and YES!!! It worked. They were mega happy.
So, I disconnected everything and went and put the stuff back in my van. I then went back into the shop and paid for my connectors and the guys were at the till paying for leads etc. They both thanked me and said that they were getting worried until I had come along. So, feeling like Mr Helpful I asked them if they were from the town and they said they were about 10 minutes away. I had some spare time so I asked them if they wanted me to show them how to set it up at home. They jumped at the chance so I followed them back to their house.
I showed them how to set it up through their home system and then had a cup of coffee and after some thank you's....I was gone.
I didn't think much of it but felt good because I'd helped someone out and they were really appreciative. I also left them a card and told them to give me a call if they got stuck.
So...today I get an email from the younger guy. He thanked me for helping them out and wants to book me for a surprise party for his Dad (he was the other guy). When I quoted him a price over the phone you could tell that he didn't expect it to be as much but he said "You helped me out big time so no problem, let's just book it". I also made a joke and said "Your son can have a go at DJing on a proper system with me" and the guy said "Oh, he'll love that!".
Strange how bookings come along isn't it but I thought I'd share that little story with you. It didn't mean much to me to help out and it was probably an hour out of my day at the most but it obviously meant a lot to them.
Ahhhhh.....aint that nice!
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Originally Posted by Excalibur
