Maybe good customer service needs a recession

I think it was Ray Kroc, the founder of one of America’s greatest institutions, McDonalds once stated, “If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” Has America’s love of money forced us to forget why we need money in the first place? Do we need a recession so people can realize the importance of doing what you love and in turn forget about all of those items that we needlessly have gone into debt to acquire? I believe that we need a recession as Americans, so that we can correct our misgivings and learn about what is truly important to us, and only then will our customer service take a turn for the best, instead of a turn for the worse.

On a recent trip to a major metropolitan city, my wife and I decided, hey what the heck, we have a lull in the action, let’s take the kids out for a movie… First off, let me give you a bit of a back story, we have two small children, try a two year old and a four year old; now taking a 2 and a 4 year old anywhere is an ordeal into itself, but time to time we make it happen, and for us to get to a movie right at the beginning or even exactly on time is often a result of several acts of GOD!!! But at any rate, we go to see a newly released Dr. Seuss movie, and we arrive about 10 minutes after the movie start time, and after looking around for someone to buy a ticket from for another 5 minutes, I tell my wife to go ahead and go inside the movie. After I finally locate somebody to sell me a ticket, I am given a pleasant bit of information, “Our policy dictates that 15 minutes after the start time of a movie, I can’t sell you a ticket…” After a bit of surprise, I went to go give my wife this bit of bad news. When I finally make my way back into the theatre, I notice that outside of my wife and two children, there are exactly two people in the movie theatre!!!!

I then walked back outside the movie theatre and asked to speak with the manager, and I was subsequently told, “Sorry, but I can’t take your money. Our policy states… blah, blah, blah…” Now maybe I live in another world, but it seems to me that if our economy is that bad, why turn down paying customers?? Is it possible that in order to get good customer service, America needs a recession? Are there so many opportunities out there for people to earn income, that corporation throw good sense out the window in light of policy? Has our quest to pay for more “things” placed our eyes on the dollar so much that we have thrown good common sense out of the window? I believe that as the normal cycle of evolution calls for natural selection, that our economy needs natural selection, through the process of recession, which will enable our customer service experience to thrive, and maybe even let me and my wife buy a ticket to a movie, even if we are 15 minutes late. (smile)