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On Sunday, I had lunch with a close friend of mine and his 94-year-old grandfather (John). Aside from the portion of the meal when I had clams casino for the first time, the real treat was listening to John talk to us about his marriage to Marge which is going on 74 years.

Here are a few of the highlights:

John met Marge when he was 18 and they were married at age 20. He choked up several times when talking about her and I could see the tears in his eyes as he described how much he loves her to us – “more than anyone else in the entire world.”

Five years ago, Marge had a minor stroke and needed to be taken care of. For 4 straight years, John took care of his wife at their home without any outside care. Everyone told him he was crazy and wouldn’t be able to do it but he didn’t listen to them – “she’s my wife and I will be the one to take care of her.”

A year ago, his wife had a more serious stroke and had to be moved to a nursing home permanently. For the first thrum months that she was there, John slept in a bed next to her every single night.

For the past 9 months, he has visited nearly every day, starting at 11am and usually staying until 1 or 2am, sometimes sleeping over as well. Of this he said “when I’m there, I make it my goal to have no nurses helping my wife at all – I want to be the one taking care of her so I feed her, talk to her, sing to her, take her to the bathroom, bathe her and anything else that needs to be done.” Keep in mind, John is 94 years old and has been caring for his wife this way since he was 89.

One of the quotes that stuck out in my mind was this one: “If i could give my life to make her healthy again, I would do it in a second. She is such an amazing woman and absolutely deserves the best.”

Of caring for her daily, he said “I do gladly – it’s not a chore for two reasons: the first is because of all the things she’s done for me, our children and our family. And second, because I love her with my whole heart.”

John finds it hard to spend any time away from Marge – he admitted that it was hard for him to be at lunch with us that day instead of being with her in the nursing home and how his daughters wish he would get out more and do other things but all he wants to do is spend every second he can with his wife.

He sings to his wife every day in the nursing home, most frequently, the song ‘When Your Old Wedding Ring Was New’. My favorite verse of which is:

Even though silver crowns your hair
I can still see the gold ringlets there
Love’s old flame is the same as the day I changed your name
When your old wedding ring was new

When I asked him what makes a successful marriage, his response was: “Love and respect. If you love someone with your whole heart and respect them as a human being, you will always remember the wonderful and joyful reasons that you married that person and you will be able to overcome any obstacles in your path.”

My GPS was shot. So I called Garmin. And after being on hold for 40 minutes, I picked up the phone and said

“HELLOOOOOOOO” into it & was immediately transferred to a customer service rep. I don’t know if me yelling at the music had anything to do with that but whatever, it worked and I believe I’ve discovered a new way to get faster service since I yell at inanimate objects anyway.

So I talk to Tyler and he walks me through the trouble shooting process and he was one of the best customer service reps I’ve had in a while. I asked him for his email at Garmin so I could send him a note to forward onto his supervisor about my pleasant experience with him.

The email below took me all of 4 minutes to write. Had I taken another 2 minutes, I could’ve come up with a synonym for ‘impressive’ so I didn’t use it 24 times in 2 paragraphs of text but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Tyler did a great job and he should reap the reward of having his supervisor look over a positive customer experience with one of his service reps.

Do you know how much this email can mean to someone like Tyler? Customer service positions like that can be almost unbearable and if this email helps him in any way, either getting in good graces with his supervisor or possibly getting some sort of promotion/recognition within his department, it was worth four tiny minutes of my day.

No matter what position someone is in a company, there are always slackers and employees who don’t do their job with professionalism and enthusiasm (as you’ll read in the email below). So when you come across someone who rises above the fold and really kicks ass at what they do, filling out a survey on your experience with that employee or sending an email like this really rewards those who are committed to professionalism.

Next time you have an experience like I did today, whether it’s at a restaurant, on the telephone or another in-person scenario, find the manager or at least their email address and let them know about that ONE employee that made your experience with that company/store special. If we uplift the people who work hard and do their best, more will follow.

Hey Tyler,