SIG 4
Page 15

 emphasis.

M: You sort of are, though, because when we were on property, you were aware of
 what they wanted. You were aware, and I always have been, ever since a [I
 was a] very young person, that if I was walking on the property, and even though
 I didn't work for housekeeping, if I saw a need, even back then, if a guest needed
 something, I knew enough about the company that I might not be able to help
 them directly, but I would go get somebody that could. That kind of thing, you
 just knew. You just knew that ultimately, if the guests were happy, my
 employees were happy; they had jobs, and we had a credit union. It all kind of
 came together.

H: Do you think the attitude came from the closeness of the people working
 together? Maybe it's a Southern thing?

M: It could be that. It could be my personality [laughing]. I think all of my
 employees felt that way, too. Like I said, we would walk on property a lot and
 see a need. Many times, guests would be misdirected, and then I would stop
 what I was doing, if I was walking around the grounds, and take them to where
 they needed to go. I couldn't do things like go get them a bar of soap, but you
 could help them in some minor way. I never thought about that, either, but we
 do that, routinely.

H: When you were actually on the property there, did they instruct you [on proper
 guest etiquette]? You say you just took your own initiative to help the guests,
 but did they instruct you to maybe stay out of sight?

M: As far as celebrities, you knew not to bother them. Nobody ever came up to me
 and said, don't talk to that guest, or that type of thing, but you knew they were
 there. That's one of the wonderful things about the Cloister, was that they knew
 that if they came to the hotel that they wouldn't be bothered. They could exist,
 do their own thing. Nobody was going to run up to them and get an autograph.
 That was absolutely unheard of. You didn't do that. You let them do their own
 thing. That was one of the reasons they came.

[Tape stopped]

M: If you can't find it, call me back and I've got a copy at home [Who Moved my
 Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life I
 Spencer Johnson, 1998]. Gibson bought everybody in the credit union a copy
 of it. It's a great book because people are resistant to change. In my industry,
 if you don't get with the program, you are just behind times, because you have to
 change, almost daily. The changes over the past thirty years, like I was telling
 you, have been phenomenal. I remember reading Popular Mechanics. My