My first real experience in customer service was during one of the first Farm Progress Shows I attended.

In those days, Farm Progress editors worked a variety of jobs unrelated to their daily tasks of interviewing, writing and photographing for their respective magazines. Some parked cars. Others supervised tent activities. One even requested to inspect portable toilets. (As my co-worker Tom Bechman often says, “That’s a true story!”)

Me?

My job was to supervise the loading and unloading of showgoers from show grounds to the field demos. Most of the time, it was a fun duty, chatting up farmers for a quarter-mile trip and seeing everyone safely loaded and unloaded on the shuttle.

Occasionally, though, I would have to “encourage” show attendees that the shuttle wasn’t available for them to ride a good part of the day. One farmer became particularly upset with me, blistering my ear as I made him and his elderly father exit the shuttle.

“Who’s the #%&! in charge here?” he bellowed.

I looked around. I looked some more. Finally, after several more seconds that seemed an eternity, I saw Jim Lilly, who edited our sister publication in Illinois, Prairie Farmer.

“He is!” I said.

Jim looked as befuddled as I did. Given the silver-haired wisdom of a seasoned editor in his 60s, Jim performed admirably in defusing the situation. And I learned how to handle a potentially volatile situation.

FFA learning experience

I was reminded of that learning experience when I chatted with Jim Fitzgerald, who advises the Boone FFA chapter and is an agricultural science teacher at Boone High School. He told me that about 30 to 40 FFA members attend the show each time it’s held at Boone.

“It’s worked nicely,” Fitzgerald says. “The money we make from working the show gives us funds to help pay membership dues for students in our FFA chapter.”

Each Iowa show, between 30 and 40 Boone FFA members ride a school bus to the show grounds and initially explore the show.

“We have quite a few urban students who aren’t familiar with or have not seen a lot of the machinery and other technologies in agriculture,” he says. “This gives them a chance to see it in action.”

Afternoon hours are spent with tasks such as counting admission tickets. In some years, they’ve helped with other tasks that have needed to be done at the show.

“It’s a great opportunity for members to gain people skills and interact with thousands of [Farm Progress Show] attendees,” Fitzgerald says. “A lot of them have never done a job where customer service is involved. Occasionally, you might have a customer who’s not happy, so they get to know how to handle those situations.”

Knowing the wisdom of such FFA members, I’m betting they don’t even need a Jim Lilly to bail them out, either.