Opportunities often come in unpleasant disguises that must be removed with effort and ingenuity.
It had been a long, hard day for the workers at the Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was the peak of the season and the rich and famous were out in abundance.
For them the evening was an unrestricted time for relaxation and pleasure. For the hotel workers it meant long, hard hours of work trying to please their guests.
George Crum was the chef of the elegant dining room. He was required to treat every customer with dignity and present them with fine food. The demands on him were plentiful as he persisted in maintaining the high standards required by the patrons.
One evening a particularly fussy patron had come to dine. The usual, thick-cut french fries did not please him. He rejected the order. So Chef Crum cut a thinner batch, fried them, and sent them out. These too were rejected by the patron with the same complaint—the french fries were too thick. At this point, George decided to teach the patron a lesson. He sliced a potato as thin as he could, fried the pieces in lard and sent these thin—so thin they could never be pierced with a fork—french fries to the bothersome patron. But George’s plan backfired. The patron wasn’t upset, he was delighted! And other patrons soon wanted their own orders of these thin, fried potatoes.
From the fat comes the thin—it is the Saratoga Chip as it was first called. To us it is the well-known potato chip. It would become the most popular snack food in America. And don’t forget all of the copycat and off-shoot products that are flooding the chip and snack food market today—resulting in tens of billions in annual sales.
That demanding and ornery customer didn’t look like an opportunity on that long and tiring night. That’s the trouble with opportunities, they often come in disguises, such as disappointments, challenges, demands, failures, and frustrations. When we look long enough, dig deep enough, and work hard enough, the opportunity—and success—emerges from disguise.
View major challenges or setbacks as opportunities for innovation and creativity.