It was midday. The phone rang in my office. A man at the other end of the line was highly agitated and loud.

"Your delivery person just KNOCKED DOWN my STONE WALL! I just had the thing built! What are you going to do about it???"

I'll admit that - for a moment - I was disoriented by the call. We were delivering office supplies to businesses, not homes. Our trucks had no reason to go into residential neighborhoods. And yet it was my truck. At someone's house. Knocking down a stone wall?

"May I speak to my driver, please?"

The young man got on the line. He sounded embarrassed.

"Sorry, Alan. I got lost on my way to a delivery, and I tried to turn around in this man's driveway. I accidentally hit his wall."

"Is there a lot of damage?"

"Yes - you should come out here."

I drove out to a manicured suburban neighborhood, Big lawns. Pretty houses. And there was our office supply delivery truck parked in the driveway of the nicest house on the block. A white haired home owner standing next to my driver - visibly upset.

And 120 feet of new, beautifully built stone wall, curving along the edge of the street - lying flat on its face!! The entire 120 feet of wall looking as though it had keeled over!

I was astonished.

"How could you have knocked down the ENTIRE wall?" I said to the driver.

"When I backed in, my rear bumper hooked under the first stone at the beginning of the wall, and when I pulled forward, the whole thing went down like a set of dominoes!"

We took pride in our company. We held ourselves accountable for the things that went wrong. We didn't demean our employees or blame them for honest mistakes. We made good on that wall - we paid to have it rebuilt.

And we stood by that driver. After all, he did a good job and represented the company very well - when he wasn't destroying private property!

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