“Hey, Keith, it’s Joe!” I have 11 different Joe’s saved currently to my contact list, but I knew exactly which one was calling me. This particular Joe’s name is Joe Hardy, and he is the 87-year-old founder of 84 Lumber Co. He wasn’t calling to talk about inventory or sales or anything that even remotely resembled business. He was calling to wish a Happy Anniversary to Tiffany and me.

To fully understand this call, you should know that Joe Hardy probably couldn’t pick me out of a lineup, and he doesn’t have my name saved as one of his contacts; we are definitely not close friends (although some might say that everybody is Joe’s friend). He is a semi-retired millionaire who really does care about his employees and their families.

My wife, two daughters and I were traveling on a Friday on American Airlines recently from Houston to Kansas City with a connection in Dallas. We arrived at the Houston airport to find that our flight was delayed due to weather in Dallas. We ended up getting to Dallas finally and then we were held over until the next day because we had missed our connection, and the other three flights to Kansas City were completely full. We had to spend the night on our own dime, and we couldn’t get our checked luggage which meant we had to buy clothes from the hotel gift shop to wear home the next day (which took about two hours due to the gender of my traveling companions).

I understand that the weather caused our delay (although it apparently didn’t delay any of the flights from Dallas to Kansas City; maybe it was a storm that only affected flights to Houston on American). I got the opportunity to speak to three different ticket agents in two cities during this process and all three of them smiled at me and then lied to me. They were absolutely committed to saying whatever they could to get me to walk away from the counter.

When I got back, I wrote them a letter that read, in part:

“I am not upset that our flights were delayed. I am disappointed that your employees simply did not care about my situation and did nothing to make the pain of travel delays easier. I don’t remember the names of the people, and they won’t remember mine because I never raised my voice and they succeeded in getting me to leave the counter.”

Two days later I got a response that read, in part:

“Bad weather is not something we can overcome and the direct impact on our flight schedules is unavoidable. Accordingly, it is not our policy to reimburse our customers’ out-of-pocket expenses, make up for lost time, or offer compensation when we don’t operate our flights as planned. I am sorry. Nevertheless, you have my assurance that we will continue to focus on the on time departure of our flights and our customer service standards.

Mr. Castleman, we are eager for another chance to serve you — we will do our very best to get you to your destination as scheduled and provide you with the kind of service you deserve.”

I laughed out loud when I read this. I sent a letter to basically complain about the lack of the human element in their employees’ attitudes and I got a letter that did exactly the same thing. I didn’t want or ask for a refund or reimbursement of any kind.

Mark Mollico is a senior level employee who also works for Joe Hardy. Mark and I are not close friends, I’ve never met his wife or his kids and we basically only have a solid working relationship even though he is several rungs higher than me on the corporate ladder.

Below is an excerpt from a letter he sent to my mother who has recently been diagnosed with cancer:

“The first thing I would like to say is you will get through this! I will be thinking about you everyday. If there is anything I can do or if you have any questions please email or call me. My work number is xxx-xxx-xxxx or my cell is xxx-xxx-xxxx.”

Mark has never met my mother, has no idea what she looks like and didn’t even know her first name until a week ago. Obviously, he cares-much like the founder of the company. I personally know of dozens of examples of the current chief executive officer (CEO), Maggie Hardy Magerko, going way above and beyond at great personal expense to help employees of her company during personal hard times. I suppose it could be an amazing coincidence that both the CEO and her employees actually genuinely care about her employees’ personal lives, but I don’t think so. The CEO of American Airlines is Gerard Arpey. I don’t know anything about Mr. Arpey. I’ve never met him and probably never will, but somehow I have a pretty good idea what kind of person he must be.

The influence that managers have on their people reaches beyond the income statements. Regardless of how many people work for you or with you or around you, the attitude that you exemplify will be contagious. Whether you are the boss of two or 200,000, the message here is very simple: you don’t have to be friends with your people to care about them. When your employees lie to your customers and recite company policy when a customer complains, it casts a very dark shadow on you as a leader. To get the people you work with to care about your customers, you might try leading by example. Their mother will be genuinely grateful.