Sunday, April 3, 2011

Maureen Locus

“Life is short. Work Happy.” Norman Brinker, founder of Brinker International, coined this motto to motivate his “BrinkerHeads” to work hard and play hard.

 Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to “work happy” when you’re dealing with disgruntled customers on a daily basis.  With 226 international Chili’s locations, there is enormous potential for many things to go wrong, which is why it amazes me that only four people run the communications team at Brinker International. Luckily, this small yet hardworking team is lead by Maureen Locus, who not only monitors the organization’s media hotline, but helps respond to crisis’ by securing media placements and implementing social media.

Locus has dealt with everything from uptight and unhappy customers displeased with their dining experiences to the more extreme case of a New Mexico woman finding a needle in her mashed potatoes. With a strong commitment to delivering hospitality to every guest, Locus handles each crisis situation in a calm, cool and collected manner. Locus explained to the class that she must “become numb to the situation” in order to efficiently comfort people and solve issues. Throughout her presentation, it was obvious that her patience, work ethic, caring nature, and extreme passion were major contributors to her success in the PR world. Her admirable qualities made me realize and focus on some of the areas I need to practice and perfect before I enter my own personal career.

Along with all of the valuable insight Locus shared with the class, she also generously gave each of us a gift certificate to Chili’s. Immediately after class ended, Laura, Madison and I raced to Chili’s and redeemed our gift certificates…nothing like (free) molten lava cake to end the day. Thanks Maureen! 

1 comment:

  1. She definatley left us all wanting Chili's- that is for sure!

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