October 17: Help Your Customers Even If Your Manager Freaks

While working for the retail king of customer service Nordstrom, I had the chance to go the extra mile for a customer. I left my department in suits to use the little boys room and on the way back a lady asked me about a shirt on a mannequin. Long story short I spent about 45 minutes tracking down 3 of the shirts and gift wrapping them for the woman.

I let my coworker in suits know that I was helping a customer and would be back, but when my department manager found out she reprimanded me for being gone so long even though there was not one customer in our department the whole time. I'm still not sure why my manager didn't get it, but I did and so I did what I thought was right for the customer. Two months later the manager was gone and I was still there.

Is it better for your career to really help customers or to listen to managers that don't get it?