The visitor was in for a long ride.
After hitting the “down” arrow, he assumed he was taking the elevator down a mere floor to the hospital’s ground level. Instead, it climbed to the roof, and there was no stopping it. Most of the passengers ignored the visitor’s complaints, but by the time the car reached the top of the building, it was clear someone had been listening.
“Where are you trying to go?” the listener asked.
“The main level,” the visitor replied.
Then, as the other passengers waited to get off, the listener apologized for the direction the elevator took, gave the visitor directions to his destination, pushed the “G” button, and then pushed the “close” button.
The visitor stood dumbfounded as the doors met, in disbelief at the attention he had just received. He would have been even more shocked to know that man who had listened was Albert Gilbert, CEO of the hospital.
That was just the beginning of my trip to Summa last month. I was accompanying our staff photographer on this month’s cover shoot of Gilbert. I cleared about an hour out of my schedule to make the 10-minute drive to Summa, meet Gilbert, and watch another harried CEO tell us to take some quick shots of him at his desk.
Or worse, we’d get there and he wouldn’t even agree to be in the photo.
“Take it of my employees, or the building,” is not uncommon. (It’s inconsequential to them that their employees aren’t even part of the story. And they don’t listen when we tell them that the piece is not about their building.)
I got to Gilbert’s office just in time to hear our photographer ask the CEO to make the trip to Summa’s rooftop. As windy as the day was and as unsafe as that roof appeared, Gilbert was more than agreeable.
After posing patiently through three rolls of film, happily smoothing his hair or fixing his jacket after every unexpected gust of wind, Gilbert waited for the photographer to pack up and then guided us back down to his office.
“I can’t thank you enough for your patience today,” the photographer told Gilbert.
“You have a job to do,” Gilbert replied. “And everyone’s job is important.”
As the photographer waited for his lights to cool , I stood nervously in Gilbert’s office, uncomfortable that we had taken up so much of the busy CEO’s time.
“Sit down,” he said to me. “Tell me about your job.”
So I sat down in the CEO’s office, and the listener continued to listen.
Connie Swenson ([email protected]) is editor of SBN.