Here are the final moments from the two legs of my brief “presentation vacation” out west. I’ll let you write your own conclusion.
My last transaction in Las Vegas involved checking out of the Wynn at the conclusion of the Ragan/PRSA Social Media Conference. While I was at the closing keynote, my wife waited in line to square up the bill.
Apparently, the Wynn was prepared to bill us $582, representing the entire contents of the minibar (which we did not touch). She had to wait an additional 20 minutes for someone to go to the room and do an inventory of the minibar before it was removed from our credit card.
My last transaction in Springdale, Utah (just outside Zion National Park) was refueling the rental car before driving back to the airport in Las Vegas. Just after I started pumping the gas, a stranger walked up and started cleaning my windshield. I was bracing myself for the incoming request for monetary assistance.
It was the owner of the gas station. Cleaning my windshield on a Sunday morning. I told him it was the closest thing to full service I had seen since I was a child.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, but you can make your own opportunities to score a strong last impression.
I found Portland, Ore. to be one of the rudest cities I’ve ever been to. I even got kicked out of a wine store there just for mentioning that I did some product consulting for a friend back in Nashville, but the last transaction I had in Portland was gassing up the rental car (from Alberta of all places) at a Shell station near downtown at too early in the a.m. Not only did the attendants clean my windshield, they pumped my gas. No extra charge. The experiences in Portland were so diametrically opposed that I don’t have a good opinion of the city. However, the full-service treatment at the Shell station early in the a.m. didn’t offset the negative impression left on me about Portland when I departed. I’ll take Portland, Me. any day of the week instead