SNEAK PEEKS: What would you do if your employee called one of your clients for a date?
Client information has always been a sensitive matter. By the nature of our business, we are privy to home addresses, home phone numbers, cell phone numbers of the stars, gate codes, and even credit card information.
While we all take safeguards to protect this information, it becomes necessary to give the chauffeur much of this information just to perform his job. There is no way around this.
So what would you do if your chauffeur used this same information to pursue his personal interest? More specifically, he decided that he would keep a female passenger's home phone number and call her later to ask her out on a date.
Well, that went over like a fart in church and she called the operator to report the chauffeur.
The chauffeur felt that she has “expressed an interest in him” while he was driving her so he thought he should pursue the matter. Except that he misread her “cues” and she was simply being nice and polite to him, and had no interest in him. So, the client will probably start using a new limo service just to make sure and avoid an awkward moment of the same chauffeur showing up on her next ride.
Then again, many people in the world meet their spouses or significant others on the job. I married an employee, but that’s another story. I know of at least three of my former chauffeurs who married passengers. I know of two chauffeurs who were both married to other people when they came to work for me but are now married to each other. So, often people do meet on the job. But is there a way to control it? Is there a need to control things like this?
Obviously, a chauffeur calling a client is probably not cool. However, what if she really did like him and he would have missed an opportunity by not calling? I don’t really think that this scenario is OK. In reality, she could have asked, “Is my phone number on your paperwork?” And he could have said, “Yes, would you like me to call you?”
But even that would cross the line. So, if the stars were all lined up right for these two people, she would have been forthright and asked him to take her number and call. If he was smart, he would have someone from the office call her to ask if service was satisfactory and if she was happy with the chauffeur. This would have given her the opportunity to ask a third party if he was single and pass on her number. I have seen that happen a time or two in my 20 years in business. Who doesn’t love a chauffeur?
— Jim Luff, LCT contributing editor
Print | posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 12:30 PM