It takes very little to make things nice
Image by dungthuyvunguyen from Pixabay
Last Thursday I had one of the best cups of tea ever and on Friday I visited the nicest public toilet in a gas station ever. And it was all because of unforeseen events that messed up my original plans. It was a great reminder about how important it is to always snap back into normal mode as quickly as humanly possible and not be upset. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you will certainly miss a lot of opportunities. Good planning and preparation is my personal savior in this regard.
I had a commission in Östersund to measure sound insulation between dwellings and noise from installations in a newly erected multi-story building on Frösö. I have learned the hard way that it almost always pays off to arrange an evening measurement when I can work alone without background noise. With regards to installation noise, I consider it a no-brainer. My plan was simple, go to Frösö on Thursday and measure as much as you can before midnight. Then Friday could be a spare day to wrap things up in case something goes sideways. A fellow acoustician had measured the neighboring, nominally identical house some months before with very good results, so I felt confident that this would be a walk in the park. Of course, it wasn’t.
It started on the way to the site. The normal road had been closed because of tunnel renovations, which sent me on a massive detour on gravel roads. I was a bit disappointed by the guys who had put up the umleitung arrows/signs. They will not get a gold star from me, because I missed them on two occasions (!). Usually, it is no problem at all. Anyway, it was probably my own fault for not paying enough attention. Fortunately, I had some extra margin in my schedule for events like this. When I snapped back, I realized that the detour was fantastic. The mountainous nature in this part of Sweden is truly beautiful, and I had a front row seat.
When I arrived on site a bit later than expected, I started measuring and as expected, the workflow was silky smooth without background noise. But unfortunately there were some problems with the ventilation measurements which added several extra hours on my time plan. At first I was convinced that I would be able to finish my whole project before midnight, take a long sleep the next day and enjoy breakfast before driving home. Nope. I had to go back ASAP on Friday to wrap things up. I gave up around midnight. When you start making stupid mistakes, that is the best sign to call it quits. You have then passed the point of diminishing returns. When I arrived at my hotel on Frösö, I was greeted by the nicest receptionist I have met in years. Turns out we shared a lot of common interests in nature and outdoors. The night shift is perhaps not the most social of jobs and I was also a bit starved of social interaction from driving in a car for like seven hours to an empty construction site and work for another 8-9 hours. She made a cup of tea for me, and we had a very enjoyable conversation. What a fantastic good night, and isn’t it amazing how little it takes to make someone´s day?
The next day, my main focus was to get back home in time for bedtime reading. I had calculated that I had to leave around 13:00 at the latest to manage. My wrap measurements were ready just in time. But then I remembered that the main road was closed and I was facing another long detour on gravel. I got another idea and enter the “Inlandsvägen” on my GPS instead. There are two main roads connecting the north and south of Sweden. The E4 is the biggest one, close to the coast and the E45 (inlandsvägen) is about in the middle of the country. For me, E45 is clearly the scenic route, because I know the E4 inside and out by now. Considering the detour, I realized that there was no time penalty at all for me from choosing the smaller road back home. If you have the time anyway, why not try something else?
After a while, I stopped for lunch at a local gas station in Hammerdal. It was an OKQ8 station, which is a ctrl-C ctrl-V version of several other similar gas stations. They look exactly the same. I was so surprised when I entered the restroom. Someone very smart had given some love to that room and installed some cozy lights, a nice chair, some decorations and more dimmed lights. It felt like a proper café environment, and it was without a doubt the nicest toilet I have ever seen in a public place like this. Extremely unexpected! I told the cashier how happy I was by their effort to make things nice, and he appreciated my compliment and responded that “It takes so little, why not make it a little nice while we´re at it?”.
So true. It takes very little to make someone´s day. Just remember to schedule a little extra time here and there, to let someone else make yours.