Little Things Add Up

Got to thinking the other day about all the "little things" the chamber office does to provide services for our members and community. Hard to put a value on some of the services, but for some folks it truly makes a difference.

On the average, we get nearly a dozen calls each week from folks wanting to know the phone number to a chamber of commerce office in another city. On top of that we get several dozen calls each week from folks asking us to look up a phone number for them. Usually the numbers are difficult to find in the book,(ever tried to find one of the three drivers license office numbers for our area?). Sometimes it's easier for the caller to ask us...directory assistance charges 99 cents. We get a like number of calls from folks looking for business services and we're always sharing contact information for our members.

The other day a gentleman stopped in to get Marshall information for his grandson who lived and went to school in another town. The first-grader was assigned to learn more about the City where his grandparents live. I sure hope we were able to give "Grandpa" enough info to keep him at the top of his grandson's list of favorites! It appeared that he left our office with a smile.

Phone books are another popular item. The phone companies provide us with a generous supply to hand out to new residents or others who come asking. The popular criticism is that all the regional communities are "clumped" together, and it's now difficult to easily differentiate the Jones family in Balatan vs. the Jones family in Clarksfield.

It always amazes me at the number of folks who stop in front of our offices to read the posters and fliers on our window. Every week a new "crop" of paperwork is rotated on the western window. We try not to cover all the windows.

One of the folks that works in our office has a theory about the full moon. Whenever the moon reaches that stage, the quantity and bizarreness's of the questions we get increases, or so she claims. Questions about canning tomatoes (we sent them to the U of M Extension Office which by the way is also a tough number to find in the phonebook); store hours for a local department store (that one was easy); do we know the exact date that Menard's will open because they were planning a Spring home remodeling project (nope, haven't heard a projected opening date); rumors about new businesses coming to town or existing ones that are rumored to be closing; calls from California wanting to know about a local leasing business and was that Marshall business for real (I'd say that a multi-billion dollar banking business is pretty darned legit); to my all time favorite (so far): someone calling to ask about the length of the Marshall airport runway (long enough to land a jumbo jet by the way).

One of the fun parts of working for a chamber is the variety day in and day out. It often amazes me what service's we're called upon to provide, and we're proud to say we try our darnest to provide the folks with an answer or find someone who can. There's an old saying in this business: "chambers of commerce do the things that most folks think seem to happen on their own."