They Blew the Leaves in My Yard!!

   My neighbor called about 10 minutes after the lawn crew was here to clean up the yard.  He said, “They Blew the Leaves in My Yard!”  Well, I went outside and sure enough, that indeed happened!  Now, we have great neighbor relations, so I was frustrated about that.  After all, I have used this same lawn service for 8 years, they do a great job and are very conscientious. 
    Now what?  We have never had bad neighbor relations before.
    Well, I did go over and look at the neighbor’s lawn.  Yes, there was about 1/2 bag of leaves that was blown on his lawn.  He keeps an immaculate lawn, so I understood his frustration.
    I told him that I would call the lawn service and share what happened.  Well, the lawn service left a trailer here and when they came back to retrieve the trailer, I had a chat with the truck driver.  It turns out that he is the son of the owner of the service.  I told him what happened.  He told me, “I’ll tell my mom and see what she wants to do.  There really were not that many leaves.”  Well, I told him that I did go look and I did see what the neighbor was unhappy about.  I suggested that he go and visit with the neighbor.  He reluctantly agreed that he would do so.
    The neighbor called me and told me that the owner’s son came and discussed the issue with him.  I think that they mutually agreed that the matter should not happen in the future.  All is well back in the neighborhood.
    Now, how could this happen?  Who was watching the employees while they were working?  Who would allow this to happen?  I am sure that the owner of the lawn service will be very unhappy and will take corrective action with her team.  She is not one to put up with any unprofessional conduct on behalf of her employees.  She is not mean, however, she does expect and normally is given professional conduct by her staff.
    There are a plethora of reasons why this happened.  Were the employees new this year?  Were they not told how to clean up a yard and not allow debris to go into an adjoining yard?  Did they understand the pride of their work and the ramifications when their work reflects negatively on themselves and their company?  Of course, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions.  However, these are probably all items that need discussion during the initial training period.  OK, you say, these are just lawn maintenance employees.  Yes, true, however, pride and professionalism is an ingrained habit in any employee.  In this particular case, I suspect that we will not have any additional occurrences of this nature.
    Think about your employees.  What would have happened if these were your employees?  How would you have handled the matter?  Send us your response in the blog comment section of this post.  We’ll post them!