So stop the presses: I had a good airline meal...

No. Really. I had a great meal on an airline the other day…

Did you ever have a genuine “stop the presses” experience? Something that happens and you just want to grab people by the lapels and tell them about it? It’s rare, but it does happen. Indeed, it happened to me last Thursday. I had a good airline meal. I know, I know. I’ll repeat that: I had a good airline meal. In fact to be more precise and more shocking, I had a good meal and it was on board an airplane.

Here’s the backdrop: I was flying to San Francisco to give a speech to retailers. I needed to go and come back quickly, flying out in the morning and back and same night. I opted for the direct flight from Newark on Continental – and yes, I chose to upgrade to first class. But still.

I got on the flight and, as I usually do, fell promptly to sleep. I came to about an hour into the flight and the attendant came over to see if I wanted lunch. She explained they were out of the chicken and pasta entrées and offered up the dreaded steak instead. You know the groan that roils through your psyche at such a moment: That ‘why me?’ whimper.

Now then, the shrimp, crabmeat appetizer arrived and life begins to look up. Then: that steak. No kidding. It was excellent: Tender, medium rare and quite delicious. I was dumbfounded. All the more so as I began to hear the low bass snore of the seat-occupant in the row behind me. That noise is one of the things that can make a six-hour flight seem like 16 hours. But, I was able to – well, if not ignore it, then at least – disregard it. Amazing.

It started me thinking about the processional effects of being well-cared for in many contexts: How it creates a GuardAll Shield that inures us to the otherwise infuriating behaviors of “the others.” In this case, one great meal not only kept me from pushing my seat back and nudging the irritant awake or ringing my call button and asking the attendant to “do something!” It enabled me to work on my speech with focus. It created a spirit of shrugging communion among me and my fellow (awake) passengers. It fostered a genuine patience that meant when the time came to deplane, I was able to stand calmly as others stalled my exit by being so dead to all human principle as to have stowed their baggage in the storage space above my head. In other words, it made it a human experience rather than a horrific chore.

Since my speech was at Nordstrom’s and I had some time to kill, I started to shop a bit for my daughter, Mattie. I was struck at how unable I was to just focus on that task at hand. In the midst of considering, would she like this tee-shirt? What about that skirt? I was also checking my watch, estimating again if I started speaking at 6:45 and was done by 8 p.m. would I be okay to get back to the airport in time to bare my toes to the security people and make a 10 p.m. red-eye home?

I was flummoxed by my schedule, the choices and the twin desires to a) touch and consider everything or b) flee, perhaps going back to the presentation room and checking the audio one more time. Instead, I went in search of an in-store restaurant and found a bastion of sanity one floor away. There I relaxed over a marvelous Caesar salad and iced coffee, followed by a relaxed hot brewed cuppa and a view of San Francisco almost perfectly designed to get me settled into which coast I was really on. From that perch, I was able to consider the various wardrobe choices I’d seen in the children’s section – and from there, it was a smooth transition back into shopping and buying mode and then onward to the speech.

All of which brings me to my point: In the profound desire to get the customer to come into our stores and buy something (or onto our planes and go somewhere) to create (often deeply discounted) sales for us, are we forgetting the nurture needed just to get through the anxiety of the customer’s day? It doesn’t have to be four-star cuisine or even involve a microwave. A coffee bar will do, if the respite is graciously, hospitably presented.

Hypothesis: Build a brief oasis where they can make the transition from hassled and frazzled to relaxed and receptive and they will come. An army of consumers may well travel (to you) on its stomach.