Still being relative newcomers to Topeka, we’re consistently on the hunt for professionals who can do the needed work on our home.
There’s at least one Facebook page dedicated to honest opinions regarding Topeka. Folks will post questions asking for recommendations on plumbers, electricians, day care, physicians – a whole gamut of professionals.
It’s been interesting to watch the give-and-take in these conversations. One person’s highest recommendations will be balanced by another’s condemnation of the same person for the same work. Others will chime in and echo the endorsement – or the criticism.
The same endorsements can be true for us as people. How many times have you heard someone bragging on an individual that another person has criticized? How often do you realize that the truth might be somewhere in the middle? How often do you think that maybe the first person caught that individual on a good day/hour/minute, and the other one caught him at a bad moment?
Businesses that last for decades and even centuries are usually there because they have a good reputation. But you don’t have to be long-lasting to have a good reputation and earn respect. A co-worker recommended an auto mechanic to us that we have used at least a dozen times in three years. He’s retired from vehicle work in the state of Kansas and wanted something to do in retirement, so turned an old gas station in central Topeka into an auto shop. I trust him with my family’s vehicles – even though the brakes on my daughter’s Toyota Corolla stumped him, causing it to stay a month in his shop. But he was honest with me, and in the end refused any money for work that he didn’t do.
That’s a good reputation, and I respect him for that.
Prayer for Reflection
Dear Lord, let us remember that the reputations we have are ones that we work for, and that’s what earns the respect of others. Amen.
.png?width=320)
