Pre-Meal for Aug 12, 2026Success Comes in "Cans"

Happy Wednesday!

When I was a kid, I made a grave mistake:

I told my dad, “I can’t.”

Who knows what I thought I couldn’t do? The details are lost to time—but readers of Unreasonable Hospitality will not be surprised to discover that Frank Guidara was not (and is not) a big fan of “I can’t.”

His response? To print up hundreds of fortune-cookie-sized slips of paper that read: “Failure comes in can’ts; success comes in cans,” and to put them everywhere: in my cereal box; behind my toothpaste; in my backpack; in my shoes. I was finding those tiny pieces of paper for years.

(If that sounds intense, it’s because it was—but I’m so grateful now for the intensity my dad brought to the role of being my parent; he’s the O.G. “creative and intentional.”)

After that, “I can’t” might as well have been a curse word in our house. And, in the way of such things, “I can’t” quickly became one of my own least favorite things to hear.

Earlier this month, I flew to Bolzano, Italy on a small regional European airline. I’d discovered on the way to my connection that I couldn’t check in for the Italian flight online. Neither, apparently, could anybody else, so there was a line at the service desk—which is where I overheard the woman next to me begin to ask the service agent handling her check-in: “Excuse me, but I was wondering if it would be possible to. . .”

She hadn’t even finished the sentence before the agent shook his head impatiently and said, “No, I can’t; I’m sorry.”

Whoa.

I watched him catch himself. No apology, but: “What were you going to say?” She’d been hoping for a window seat. As it turned out, she’d already been assigned one—a happy ending, no thanks to him.

I don’t have to know one single other thing about that airline: the speed of that agent’s “I can’t” tells me they have a significant culture problem. Pure and simple: If we’re not motivating the people on our front line to say, “Let me see what I can do,” in every customer-service interaction, we’re doing everything wrong.

People tend to come at me when I say this: “Hey! You’re creating a culture where people think they can ask for anything!”

To which I say: “You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

I know I’m not always going to be able to say “Sure! I can do that,” to every request. You won’t be able to, either; there are a finite number of window seats on a plane. But the world I want to create is one where people are empowered to try.

Because there’s always a “can”— something we can do to make the people we serve feel seen and heard. Have you created a culture where people are always trying to find it?

Have a good service,

Will

P.S. Of course I got my dad back, and it only took thirty years.

A couple of Christmases ago, as a joke, he got me a one-thousand-piece New England Patriots puzzle—a team I, uh, do not care for. Christina and I spent a hilarious afternoon hiding every single one of those thousand pieces around his house. He’s still finding them.