Do you ever feel like other people see you as just not normal?  Ever since I started working at Apex, I’ve been getting this feeling that people think I’m weird or something.  I can’t figure out why, but it seems that more often than not, I’m doing something that shocks or surprises someone.

Here’s an example: The other day, I spent half an hour on a conference call with a client and her husband.  The two of them had some questions about a few of our products, and they were looking for answers.  I happily took the time to give them the information they needed.  Sounds pretty standard, right?  The oddity was that afterward they repeatedly said, “Wow, it was so wonderful” of me to take that time to answer their questions.  Yes, over and over again: “Really—thank you so very much… just… wow.  Thanks.”

Okay.  Now, I’m all for showing a little gratitude, but this seemed over the top.  I mean, is it just me, or isn’t that what people in business are supposed to do?  I truly can’t figure out why responding to an email in a timely manner earns excessive thanks from my clients.  Call me quirky, but I just don’t think that these things are deserving of such praise.  Um, hasn’t anyone heard about a little thing called “customer service”?

Perhaps my own concept of the whole “doing business thing” just differs from that of others, but all of that high praise for simply doing my job was starting to give me a complex… until one day when Darren told me that he’d been encountering the same response.  After a nice, long heart-to-heart, we discovered that we both hold “strange” beliefs about being friendly, efficient, and trying to make our customers happy; we share the same “abnormal” concept about appropriate business practices.

“People think it’s weird,” I said.  “Do you think we should lower our standards so we seem more normal?”

“Nope,” Darren told me, “folks are just gonna have to get used to it.”

So that’s what we’ve decided to do here at Apex.  It’s a bold step, but we think it just might work.

The Apex Trading Company.  So, we’re a little weird.  You’ll get used to it.