An Excellent Volunteer at Obama HQ

I promise you that I am always looking for good news. I believe that when mistakes are made, there is still the possibility for a positive message to come from them. That's why I'm posting a quick entry about a call that I just had with a volunteer answering the main number at Obama HQ.

Last night I wrote about my dismay at the discovery that signs and banners weren't going to be permitted at the Washington Square Park rally today in NYC. I did some online research last night to try to find an explanation and came up empty-handed. Today I picked up the phone.

I still don't have an answer, but I had a great experience with an earnest and well-trained volunteer named Eric. He listened to me identify myself as a supporter, writer and blogger, and had no qualms. He focused on trying to get me an answer to my question.

When I said that my question generally pertained to a matter of policy about the rapid-entry tickets, he mentioned that there had been some other calls about them and checked the information at his disposal (presumably via an online call-response system). He offered me some details about what I could do if I hadn't received a pass, and said that they weren't required for entry in any case. This was much better than a scripted response -- this was an appropriate improvisation based on the training he'd received.

I thanked him for that information, but told him that my question was actually about the "No signs or banners permitted" in the fine print of the pass that I had received. He checked his system for information about that particular concern, but also conversationally said that he, too, found it surprising. There was no information at his disposal to answer the question, so he said that he would be very willing to pass my inquiry on to the correspondence department and he hoped that someone would respond to me in a timely way.

He was also willing to speculate, as a matter of personal opinion, that it might be related to city or park regulations, or even be a clerical error. In short, he admitted without hesitation that he didn't know the answer. More importantly, he was willing to acknowledge and even share -- speaking clearly as one individual supporter to another -- the spirit of my concern without saying anything that the organization might consider inappropriate.

Eric handled the call perfectly. He took my information, thanked me for my support and expressed his hope that someone would get back to me before the rally, acknowledging that the response might not be quite that quick. I couldn't and wouldn't ask for more.

I look forward to this candid style of communication being practiced throughout the organization. As always, a lot depends on the ability of a particular individual, but I strongly believe that organizations (including government bureaucracies) can create cultures that reward people for doing their work in the spirit of this volunteer -- which is to say, in the spirit of what Barack Obama is promising.