I definitely agree with the author that there are opportunities out there for businesses which provide good service. I'm at a point in my life where I don't actually care that much about price any more. I will pay a premium for a) good quality products and b) good service. I love going to my local butcher shop, even though it's often 25-50% more than the supermarket near me. Why? Because they have great service. If I need some soup bones cut in half to roast, they're happy to take them back and run them through the saw. If I ask for 3" thick steaks, they will say "no problem, come back in a day or two and we will cut some that size for you". They'll break down whole chickens for me if I ask, etc etc. That's well worth the premium in price, and they have a very loyal customer base because of it. Service really does matter.
This comment really hits the nail on the head. Never listen to Internet strangers (who will very likely fall into that 90% bucket) that "service really matters". Sure, but price matters more for normie consumers. Airlines are the ultimate expression of that. The only airlines left that offer amazing service are national airlines with strong state protections or support. In short, you are probably way overpaying for that service.
If I had one dollar for each time an Internet rando said "I will never buy from that store or use that service again because such and such thing happened to me", I would be rich.
"Thank you for flying Delta? I'd fly a kite if it was $11 cheaper"
I couldn't find the comedian, but the truth in it hits.
Side note: if I recall correctly Delta listened to their customers a decade+ back, gave more leg room, then nearly went bankrupt because no one wanted to pay more for the service.
When I go to a retail store, my primary emotion is empathy for the workers: I think, "sorry you have to stand here for 8 hours and listen to entitled upper middle class customers". Sometimes at the grocery store, if there's no bagger I'll start bagging my own groceries instead standing there waiting for the cashier to do it. Gets me out of there quicker, and they're often surprised in a grateful way.
I heard on npr, can't remember which radio show, that customers these days do a really poor job of punishing poor companies. They cited the statistic that the most pissed off customer is only 2% less likely to use a service/product than the most loyal customer.
Perhaps it would be better to look at this business dynamic from the point of view of the brilliant MBAs and executive suite McScrooges. It is all about maximizing shareholder value. The so called customer is a roadblock to directly lifting the money out of their wallet and into theirs.
This is why, were I to start a business, I would never under any circumstances take it public. Once you become a slave to the next quarter results, it inevitably kills your ability to provide a quality product. As a society we should incentivize businesses to be in it for the long haul, not just to focus on immediate "number go up".
It’s the financialization of our economy that has caused it to become poor at delivering value to consumers. Rentier capitalists profit by charging others for what they own rather than what they produce.
Enjoyable read, but kind of ironic that it interrupts your reading half way down to nag you to subscribe. Everything is an overcrowded airport lounge, indeed.
That’s because every business is “scaled” to the point that the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does.
My grandparents owned a grocery store. Their name was on the sign. If you brought home spoiled meat, that was their name and you as a member of their community that were put out.
When my mom brings home spoiled meat from Stop & Shop, she goes back there not just to exchange it, but to complain to someone about how it messed up her barbecue plans, etc. And I’m like seriously, why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering? Stop & Shop is owned by a Dutch multinational “food retail” company.
But that’s not the capitalism she grew up with. She actually thinks capitalism is great because it allowed her parents to come over on a boat as teenagers and make lives for themselves, and have extra to send back home. But she hates it when she calls her cable company and ends up chatting with a girl in Singapore. Go figure.
> the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does.
Bingo. I found the breakdown in terms of the owner/renter/maintainer classes [0] very useful.
When the owner/renter/maintainer of a business/service/etc are the same person/community, incentives are aligned and quality tends to ensue.
When those 3 roles are clearly delineated and separated, no one gives a shit and owners care about maximizing their profit, maintainers care about getting the job done asap regardless of whether the maintenance will hold in the long term or not, and renters are left out to dry.
[0]: I first encountered it here, not sure if he got it from somewhere else.
The worst hardware store in town is a little locally owned one where the owner is often not only in the store but working the checkout. They really push the locally owned angle, the place is neatly kept and folksey, but just try to return anything and they'll give you the third degree. And if you've lost the receipt absolutely forget it.
Who doesn't hassle customers about returning stuff? Lowes.
This is amusingly the main argument at the cornerstone of most leftist theory.
Capitalism works great as an improvement from feudalism and mercantilism however it starts to majorly break down as a system once the capital owning class cements itself as only needing to invest their capital and manage assets to maintain perpetual dominance. From there they slowly accrue capital and the rift between the working classes and the capital owning classes spreads further and further until the two are effectively completely divorced with the working classes providing 100% of the labor and the capital owning classes consuming 100% of the profits.
And the sign that this decay has reached the point of no return without major social upheaval is the death of the petit bourgeois/petite bourgeoisie, i.e. the end of the self employed shop owners and family businesses. This is one thing people famously get wrong about Marx. His view was that under capitalism the petite bourgeoisie will always eventually be cannibalised by the haute and grande bourgeoisie despite generally siding with them politically (ergo acting against their long term interests). This of course contrasts with the view popular with the state socialists (who misguidedly view the petite bourgeoisie as a threat to and toxic element of capitalism).
And so now we stand at the precipice with the widespread death of the canary in the coal mine that is the small business owner and the question that remains is where do we go from here?
I’m the farthest thing from a Marxist but the reason they see the petty bourgeoisie as a threat is that they and the comfortable middle class in general are the main bulk of the opposition to revolution and very threatened by it (understandably, and if we’re being honest, rightly so) and thus are natural anti-communists.
But this divide is farcical. People like Musk/Bezos/etc don't make their money from literal profits, but from the stock price going up, which is driven by speculation. In particular the total valuation of the stock market is worth more than literally all money in existence. And neither Amazon nor Tesla pay dividends, so you can't even go that route. And the owners rarely just sit around letting the money come in, but quite often are obsessive work-a-holics.
I'm very antagonistic towards people like the Waltons who, themselves, have mostly contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever to society and are just coasting off daddy's success - being born to tens of billions of dollars and then dying with your biggest accomplishment being born to tens of billions of dollars is just so many degrees of pathetic. They fit quite closely to what you're describing (and WalMart does pay dividends), but they're a vanishingly small percent of the ultra-wealthy.
Here's a steelman for some brand of leftism (I don't ascribe to any label, though I'm an alleged market socialist)
You can buy votes, even if it's banned, by buying up and controlling the media.
Therefore money and political power can be exchanged.
The existence of billionaires - People who have as much money (and therefore, as much political power) as ten hundred millionaires - Therefore represents a dangerous accumulation of power.
When we look at the market and capitalism, we aren't seeing a fun little game where some speedrunner gets a high score and there are no consequences. We are seeing an incentive landscape trying to reform the aristocracy. We are seeing kings arise from first principles.
This should be stopped.
One nonviolent way to stop this is to fund just massive welfare programs, close all tax loopholes, all offshore tax havens, and give poor people money, which is the most American franchisement you can have.
Implementation is left as a simple exercise for the reader
This is true is all systems. People will never be equal in society, because the things that need to be done vary radically in difficulty and the number of people realistically capable of doing them - and those close to the top will always be 'more equal' than those who are doing basic labor. I'm also sidestepping the issue that's probably inescapable in practice - hierarchy. And historically social economic systems have created systems where it's even more difficult to transition between top and bottom, than it is in capitalist systems.
I do not think your solutions are viable. Giving people money is going to simply drive mass inflation, because you end up massively increasing the amount of money in circulation, but keep the same amount of products. Okay, so then the typical response is well then we just add price controls. And now you end up in a scenario where you have empty shelves because supply no longer meets demand, but also you likely have declining production because the things producers are producing become worth less in real terms, often to the point of them being unable to continue profitably producing them.
I offered some solutions that I think are more viable here. [1]
> This is true is all systems. People will never be equal in society, because the things that need to be done vary radically in difficulty and the number of people realistically capable of doing them - and those close to the top will always be 'more equal' than those who are doing basic labor. I'm also sidestepping the issue that's probably inescapable in practice - hierarchy. And historically social economic systems have created systems where it's even more difficult to transition between top and bottom, than it is in capitalist systems.
This is called "capitalist realism".
The problem of capitalism isn't that "some people are better at doing things". The problem of capitalism is that anything that exists or can be imagined can be designated as private property and any claim to this property is enforced with the full monopoly of violence of the state.
The problem of modern capitalism is that we've expanded the concept of private property to the point where the vast majority of profits generated are not tied to actual sales of products any more but come from the finance industry - essentially a system of speculative gambling multiple layers of abstraction removed from even the notion of actually "running a business".
And it's not just the "evil bankers" or investors. Even retirement is nowadays based on the finance market. We gradually replaced relying on the community to take care of its elders with relying on your own family to take care of you as an elder to having the government set some of your wages aside to pay for taking care of you as elder to having your company set some of your wages aside to having you invest money in the finance market.
And with everyone having to participate in the finance market despite only receiving a minute fraction of its profits, the interests of the finance industry also shape the nature of the real industry of service and production, driving up deregulation, encouraging short-term growth over long-term sustainability, pump and dump schemes, lobbying against labor protections, etc.
And as any of the Georgists here on HN will tell you: of course this also means that sales (i.e. transfer of property) have been displaced by rent-seeking because rent-seeking is more scalable.
None of this had to necessarily follow from "some people are better at doing some things than others". Of course a lot of this logically follows from the existence of a class of people who hold power over others continuously wanting to maintain and extend that power out of a persistent fear of losing it and ending up on the other side of the equation. But in order for this to work we had to have a culture that would enable this. And the myth of those at the top having gotten there (implying they all started wherever you did as a recipient of this myth) simply by being better at doing something rather than by having literally an entire society provide them a stepladder and handing them the reins, this myth has been reinforcing this culture of enablement for tens of centuries.
I mostly agree, but I'd argue that this is largely because of funny money. Check out this great site. [1] The event it's alluding to is the end of Bretton Woods, which is the point that the government completely unrestricted in their ability to 'print money'. In an economy it may or may not be true that money trickles down, but it's indisputable that it gushes upward. And so each time the government dumps trillions of dollars into the economy, that money makes its way straight to the top in very rapid fashion.
Next thing you know you have people and companies that literally have more money than they know what to do with. And then government and industry become increasingly incestuous as politicians filter money to various companies while in office, and then those companies not only stuff their election coffers full of money, but then have cushy 7+ figure 'advisory' roles for these politicians, or their inner circle, once they leave office - sometimes not even waiting for that. And then the government ends up printing endless amounts of money to keep this businesses afloat after they come crashing down to their own incompetence, completely wrecking the natural process of progression over time. All the while the stock market continues to reach record highs even in the midst of an economy destroying epidemic simply because it's all fake and driven on endless speculation, backed by endless injections of funny money.
And then on top of all of this you have various meta-effects. For instance when you live in an economy without much inflation or deflation, it's practically impossible to lower wages simply because people won't accept that. But in an inflationary economy? Somebody might even be happy about earning 25% more than they were in 2020, when in reality that means they've actually taken a pay cut thanks to inflation. And inflation is driven by the excesses of funny money.
And an inflationary society also strongly incentivizes the hoarding of things which, in turn, drives rent seeking behavior. Your things become worth more over time, but money becomes worth less over time. So you want to accumulate as many things as you can and rent access to them. Whereas in a stable or deflationary economy, things remain a comparable cost or even become worth less over time - so there's less motivation to hoard things and more motivation to hoard money.
> But she hates it when she calls her cable company and ends up chatting with a girl in Singapore.
Singapore? What cable company? I am curious. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world. I cannot believe they have a foreign call center in Singapore, except for wealth management. Did you mean the Philippines?
Costco and Chick-fil-A are scaled but they pay and train their employees to give good service and the scale also provides lower prices. We don't need to retvrn to 1950s local small business.
Most developing countries are capitalistic and still have a system where when you go into a shop and talk to somebody, it's often the person who owns that shop. It's part of the many reasons I'm a huge fan of decentralization in basically everything. It's absolutely wonderful.
I don't think capitalism inherently trends towards corporatism. Very few companies can grow massively on their own merit. It's often a mixture of anti-competitive behavior and mergers/acquisitions. So one obvious thing is to actually prevent mergers/acquisitions unless there is a provable and immediate benefit to customers, and split up companies if that benefit can be shown, to a civil law standard, to have not played out at any point over the next let's say 20 years. And obviously crack down hard on anti-competitive behavior with criminal consequences for executives and board members.
Boom, corporatism solved. But you need to solve it before it happens because otherwise you end up in a scenario where corporations will eventually also come to own politicians.
This also varies significantly, but I think supports the idea that the farther you are from ownership, the more service is equated to demeaning one's self for a salary that remains unchanged if you help someone or not.
If the shop isn't ran and staffed by the owner and family, it quickly devolves to the point that it's a challenge to throw money at anyone, because the money doesn't go to the person you're talking to. Any store with more than 5 employees is a jobs program for friends and family and you're inconveniencing someone's chit-chat or doomscrolling to bother them to ask a question.
> why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering?
That's pretty much the split between the generations. Boomers want the appearance of giving a rat’s ass, but Millennials and younger have been the apathetic employee and don't expect otherwise.
Well, millenials and younger saw their parents kill themselves at the job when giving a rat's ass, and still saw them get laid off/their bodies destroyed by the toll of a lifetime of manual work/a whole life of hustle leading to a meager retirement, and they realized none of it was worth it.
Genuinely this. Every time an older employee gives me a "And thank you for shopping at <business>" I just feel sad for
them. The company neither pays them enough nor gives even a single fuck to warrant that kind of behavior.
I approach customer service as the total opposite from the OP. I treat anyone I interact with like they're doing me a favor by providing me service—and honestly, they are. I mean they're working this absolutely thankless job that I think I would choose the mines before considering, and they owe their employer nothing other than the bare fucking minimum. We're all just trying to get by and they're in the trenches.
> Every industry is an overcrowded airport lounge now
… in some countries.
I’ve recently moved to a small European country and can speak to a person for everything and they are helpful! From electricity to cellular provider to government departments to stores to doctors to making a reservation, I can’t believe the quality of life this brings.
Some places simply have intangibles that make for a higher quality of life.
What country is this, if you don't mind me asking? It's similar in Japan where I can easily get ahold of a human, though it's not always the case that they're helpful.
Everyone wants to feel VIP, and there's lots of money to be made in making people think they're going to get the VIP experience, so we get a flood of shitty VIP experiences like airport lounges.
If you don't like this state of affairs, you basically have two choices:
1) hustle and try to make enough money so that you're an actual VIP with access to actual VIP experiences
(OP in the article says "Charge me a premium, I don’t care.". Buddy, if you could afford the premium, you wouldn't be writing this article)
2) drop out, and don't patronize those experiences in the first place. Question why you are in a fake VIP airport lounge waiting to head to your fake VIP Disney/Vegas/Venice/whatever vacation in the first place.
> Buddy, if you could afford the premium, you wouldn't be writing this article
I agree. I think if we are so curious about airport lounges we should ask: Why are there so many of them now? More than twenty years ago, you were really a player if you frequented airport lounges. None of this miles upgrade nonsense. You were a regular business class flyer. Airlines really wanted to improve your experience to keep you spending. The number of business class (and above) seats has not meaningfully changed since then, yet there are far more people using airport lounges. I am willing to bet that the author is a member of the premium mediocre American class that is not a regular flyer in business class, nor was a regular user of airport lounges twenty-plus years ago.
Note that the author does not ask for universal manners and courtesy, the foundation of a pleasant society. Instead he demands “customer service” in which dignity and respect flow in only one direction.
Does the author really want new shoes, or does he mostly want to feel like a very special boy in the shoe store? It is the latter. I suspect he would choose to burn down the world rather than live in a world in which his superior social position as a Customer is unrecognized. Soon the bond markets will neutralize the status conferred by this man’s credit card and we will see which he, and the millions like him, choose.
I think the author needs to shop at "richer" places for the treatment they want. Service is rich-people shit, and they're evidently not spending rich-people money. Inflation may recently have fucked up their expectations. It's been rough, I get it, I feel like I've dropped a "class" or so, too, just as I was clawing my way into upper-middle.
$300 full-retail for two pairs of sneakers in the downtown of a major city is not rich people money anymore, the goddamn trash-tier sneakers for my kids at Kohls often cost like $50+ a pair—on clearance. That's dead-center middle-class spending now, and the middle class has had shit service a long time.
I get it. $100 sneakers should be premium. $150? Pft! If you're somewhere that stocks those, it's gotta be nice, right? I mean damn. But not so much any more.
I suspect there's something similar going on with the rest of what they're seeing. Though yes, I agree that the middle class once again receiving any amount of actual service instead of constant attempts to fuck them over and nickel-and-dime them would be rad.
> I think the author needs to shop at "richer" places for the treatment they want.
I think this is the mentality that’s killing the service industry. When I order a $5 coffee that’s basically just a person pouring some coffee in a cup, they expect 30% tip for the service. The swinging the obnoxious iPad with the ridiculous tip amounts for basically doing your job is what is wrong with everything right now. It may not be the worker’s fault but it is what is wrong from a customer experience. Like you could order a cheeseburger and it’s missing the fries that come with it, and you’d be the asshole to point out that they’re missing in your to go bag after paying $30 for it.
I will not tip for just facilitating a transaction. There has to be some actual service for me to tip. No offense to the employees at Crumbl Cookies, but putting the cookies I asked for into a box is not tip-worthy.
Yep. There's a clothing store here in town that has top-notch service. Salespeople who can measure you, find the right size or arrange alterations, know everything they sell. But the cheapest shirt they sell is probably close to $200.
> First, I can’t make it two blocks to the store without being ambushed by clipboard warriors trying to rope me into saving the whales, curing baldness, or whatever today’s cause-of-the-day is.
I recently travelled through both Chicago and Denver airports and was amazed to see lines of people queued up to enter the clubs. It seems like such a synthetic economy, like a theme park.
This exact notion is why I named my business "Native I.T." back in 2015 when I became disillusioned with the state of I.T. subcontracting and the emerging "gig economy". I've always been better at service than sales, so here's hoping I can leverage my strength with this particular niche. I can certainly say that I share the sentiments, and find most everyone I know does as well.
This person feels entitled to quality customer service. Maybe 30 years ago that was an expectation. Nowadays, if you want good customer service, you need to pick business that deliberately prioritize it, which often means paying more.
Consumer Cellular is a great example of a company that prioritizes customer service and costs a bit more. Compare their cellular service to a company like Mint, which gives you basically the exact same product, but for half the price due to having literally zero customer service.
For running shoes to use one of their examples, REI is a great store to get a human to show you where things are and to give their opinion on what the right shoe for you would be. If you go into a Macy's or a WalMart you'll pay a lot less, but you won't have anyone there to help you.
Every self checkout I've been at has always had an employee willing to help, in fact more often than not the person manning the self checkouts at Costco just ends up gunning all my items when they see I have an infant strapped to me, and I typically don't have to lift a finger. Of course, you can't get into Costco without purchasing an annual membership and you can't get out of Costco without spending at least $100.
You can get cheap stuff, and you can get less cheap stuff with good customer service. Peoples' time and energy is not free, and you should be willing to pay for it if you expect it. Feeling entitled to good customer service when you purchase bargain-barrel products lacks a certain awareness of how much an employee deserves to be paid.
It also depends on the industry whether they have the margins to give better service with lowered profits or if they'd have to raise prices to avoid losing money.
This article reads like a chapter from the Boomer Bible. Not getting a free bag for your purchase? That is mostly controlled by local city rules about reducing plastic. Mostly highly developed places now try to reduce the amount of "free bags" given when shopping. This includes many high-end department stores and grocery stores.
I don't think the author realises how much it would cost to have a native-level English speaker available at a call center. Wages are probably 20 USD per hour (unless you use Philippines or India, but I am sure the author would object).
I will say this - I've been an Apple fan for a long time, through some really dark times. And I have my issues with who Apple has become.
One of the nice things about the Apple Store though was not just realizing that no one else was going to sell their differently designed products better than they were and the need for well-organized, spacious, inviting stores that were a fun attraction on a visit to the mall -- they really improved their customer service process. It's nice to be able to schedule an appointment and talk to someone who walks you through options. I'm sure there is no 100% satisfaction, but I took my iPhone 13 Pro Max in for a battery replacement... and ultimately, they ended up giving me a new iPhone 13 Pro Max because the camera sensor didn't work after battery replacement. They were nice, apologetic, and communicated well throughout the whole process. I even ran into the customer service rep at a local pub and nearly bought him a beer because he was so helpful.
But with that said, I agree with this post - sometimes, there is simply satisfaction in doing things well, treating people with dignity and respect, even if it doesn't pad your bottom line. How do we get there? No idea. Perhaps by having these kinds of conversations?
I'm the CEO of a small company. Our team is super customer service oriented, and I support and reward that, even though it costs us extra. I agree with the article.
Provide great service and a product that works, and people will love you.
> Lounges used to feel special, a perk reserved for business travelers. Now they’re overcrowded, uninspired, yet somehow more coveted than ever—thanks to social media flexes and pricey credit card perks.
I think one of the author's main issues is that they want to feel special, and that feeling can only come through external validation like the exclusion of others.
Also, they seem to take the easy and lazy way out by seething instead of acting.
Also, they lie a lot. Nobody has hassled people with clipboards to save the whales for 26 years.
> The only thing still alive is the endless, humiliating upsell and self-service. The drugstore, the bank, the dentist
Yeah.
Lazy way out.
When I had a bad experience at a chain pharmacy 10-ish years ago I spent less than an hour, googled "independent pharmacies" and found the National Community Pharmacists Association. They have a locator for locally-owned independent pharmacies and I switched to one of those. Now I know my pharmacist's name (not the tech, the actual pharmacist, though I know the techs too) and I don't even have any pressing or complicated medical issues. The only thing they've ever tried to upsell me is a self-published book on local lore and history written by a woman who lives in my neighborhood that was in a stack next to the register.
Yes I bought it. I'm a hoe for that shit.
Same with shoes. My feet are large and weird and shoe buying sucked, not to mention the clueless staff. Often a store would have one pair in my size so I would have to take what I could get. So I took a little time, did some research, and found that specialty running shoe stores exist, staffed by experts, locally owned and operated.
You can do this with many things. Banks (though I prefer credit unions, mine is so small that nearly every member can fit in a large ballroom for our annual meeting and we have an App and digital wallet and everything), doctors, dentists, clothing retailers, anything.
But instead of acting, the author chooses to seethe.
And before you say "there's no other option" you're wrong, unless you live in a deep rural area where the nearest store is 20 minutes away and is a Dollar General, you are wrong.
You just don't care enough to do anything about it, which is a goal with most businesses: plotting the pain/rejection envelope and operating as close to it as possible, to appease the shareholders. You may have to travel a little farther or spend a little more but like I said: pain/rejection envelope-- "how shitty can we be because we're in the main shopping center and the independent guy is on the edge of town?"
An easy way to avoid the race to the bottom is to exit the race.
I’ve heard the “you can order the odd colour online” so many times I’ve started telling the sales people “if we all did that then you wouldn’t have a job.”
I think most brands have adjusted to “showrooming,” where customers check out the fit and finish and then order online anyway, specifically for shoes. Some stores place the order for you.
The extra charge for bags is mandated by many local governments (to “reduce waste”), businesses just tack on another few pennies of profit.
> Because here’s the ugly truth: service is dead. The only thing still alive is the endless, humiliating upsell and self-service.
As I shouted "hear, hear" the author's substack blocked me from further reading with a giant Subscribe Now pop-up.
The author is making a point with that live example :)
I definitely agree with the author that there are opportunities out there for businesses which provide good service. I'm at a point in my life where I don't actually care that much about price any more. I will pay a premium for a) good quality products and b) good service. I love going to my local butcher shop, even though it's often 25-50% more than the supermarket near me. Why? Because they have great service. If I need some soup bones cut in half to roast, they're happy to take them back and run them through the saw. If I ask for 3" thick steaks, they will say "no problem, come back in a day or two and we will cut some that size for you". They'll break down whole chickens for me if I ask, etc etc. That's well worth the premium in price, and they have a very loyal customer base because of it. Service really does matter.
It matters for the top 10% of customers (measuring ability and willingness to spend).
For the other 90%, there is very little margin in the extra amount they are willing to pay for a material difference in service.
This comment really hits the nail on the head. Never listen to Internet strangers (who will very likely fall into that 90% bucket) that "service really matters". Sure, but price matters more for normie consumers. Airlines are the ultimate expression of that. The only airlines left that offer amazing service are national airlines with strong state protections or support. In short, you are probably way overpaying for that service.
If I had one dollar for each time an Internet rando said "I will never buy from that store or use that service again because such and such thing happened to me", I would be rich.
There was a great comedic bit on this:
"Thank you for flying Delta? I'd fly a kite if it was $11 cheaper"
I couldn't find the comedian, but the truth in it hits.
Side note: if I recall correctly Delta listened to their customers a decade+ back, gave more leg room, then nearly went bankrupt because no one wanted to pay more for the service.
The Man Who Knew Too Little!
When I go to a retail store, my primary emotion is empathy for the workers: I think, "sorry you have to stand here for 8 hours and listen to entitled upper middle class customers". Sometimes at the grocery store, if there's no bagger I'll start bagging my own groceries instead standing there waiting for the cashier to do it. Gets me out of there quicker, and they're often surprised in a grateful way.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
I heard on npr, can't remember which radio show, that customers these days do a really poor job of punishing poor companies. They cited the statistic that the most pissed off customer is only 2% less likely to use a service/product than the most loyal customer.
Often the competition isn't there, probably because we snoozed on antitrust for decades
Or they all do the same thing. "Let me vote with my wallet against the bullshit of forced arbitration!" Looks around...
Perhaps it would be better to look at this business dynamic from the point of view of the brilliant MBAs and executive suite McScrooges. It is all about maximizing shareholder value. The so called customer is a roadblock to directly lifting the money out of their wallet and into theirs.
This is why, were I to start a business, I would never under any circumstances take it public. Once you become a slave to the next quarter results, it inevitably kills your ability to provide a quality product. As a society we should incentivize businesses to be in it for the long haul, not just to focus on immediate "number go up".
It’s the financialization of our economy that has caused it to become poor at delivering value to consumers. Rentier capitalists profit by charging others for what they own rather than what they produce.
Enjoyable read, but kind of ironic that it interrupts your reading half way down to nag you to subscribe. Everything is an overcrowded airport lounge, indeed.
That’s because every business is “scaled” to the point that the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does.
My grandparents owned a grocery store. Their name was on the sign. If you brought home spoiled meat, that was their name and you as a member of their community that were put out.
When my mom brings home spoiled meat from Stop & Shop, she goes back there not just to exchange it, but to complain to someone about how it messed up her barbecue plans, etc. And I’m like seriously, why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering? Stop & Shop is owned by a Dutch multinational “food retail” company.
But that’s not the capitalism she grew up with. She actually thinks capitalism is great because it allowed her parents to come over on a boat as teenagers and make lives for themselves, and have extra to send back home. But she hates it when she calls her cable company and ends up chatting with a girl in Singapore. Go figure.
> the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does.
Bingo. I found the breakdown in terms of the owner/renter/maintainer classes [0] very useful.
When the owner/renter/maintainer of a business/service/etc are the same person/community, incentives are aligned and quality tends to ensue.
When those 3 roles are clearly delineated and separated, no one gives a shit and owners care about maximizing their profit, maintainers care about getting the job done asap regardless of whether the maintenance will hold in the long term or not, and renters are left out to dry.
[0]: I first encountered it here, not sure if he got it from somewhere else.
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mod...
That varies widely.
The worst hardware store in town is a little locally owned one where the owner is often not only in the store but working the checkout. They really push the locally owned angle, the place is neatly kept and folksey, but just try to return anything and they'll give you the third degree. And if you've lost the receipt absolutely forget it.
Who doesn't hassle customers about returning stuff? Lowes.
Distributism is not a bad idea
This is amusingly the main argument at the cornerstone of most leftist theory.
Capitalism works great as an improvement from feudalism and mercantilism however it starts to majorly break down as a system once the capital owning class cements itself as only needing to invest their capital and manage assets to maintain perpetual dominance. From there they slowly accrue capital and the rift between the working classes and the capital owning classes spreads further and further until the two are effectively completely divorced with the working classes providing 100% of the labor and the capital owning classes consuming 100% of the profits.
And the sign that this decay has reached the point of no return without major social upheaval is the death of the petit bourgeois/petite bourgeoisie, i.e. the end of the self employed shop owners and family businesses. This is one thing people famously get wrong about Marx. His view was that under capitalism the petite bourgeoisie will always eventually be cannibalised by the haute and grande bourgeoisie despite generally siding with them politically (ergo acting against their long term interests). This of course contrasts with the view popular with the state socialists (who misguidedly view the petite bourgeoisie as a threat to and toxic element of capitalism).
And so now we stand at the precipice with the widespread death of the canary in the coal mine that is the small business owner and the question that remains is where do we go from here?
I’m the farthest thing from a Marxist but the reason they see the petty bourgeoisie as a threat is that they and the comfortable middle class in general are the main bulk of the opposition to revolution and very threatened by it (understandably, and if we’re being honest, rightly so) and thus are natural anti-communists.
But this divide is farcical. People like Musk/Bezos/etc don't make their money from literal profits, but from the stock price going up, which is driven by speculation. In particular the total valuation of the stock market is worth more than literally all money in existence. And neither Amazon nor Tesla pay dividends, so you can't even go that route. And the owners rarely just sit around letting the money come in, but quite often are obsessive work-a-holics.
I'm very antagonistic towards people like the Waltons who, themselves, have mostly contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever to society and are just coasting off daddy's success - being born to tens of billions of dollars and then dying with your biggest accomplishment being born to tens of billions of dollars is just so many degrees of pathetic. They fit quite closely to what you're describing (and WalMart does pay dividends), but they're a vanishingly small percent of the ultra-wealthy.
Here's a steelman for some brand of leftism (I don't ascribe to any label, though I'm an alleged market socialist)
You can buy votes, even if it's banned, by buying up and controlling the media.
Therefore money and political power can be exchanged.
The existence of billionaires - People who have as much money (and therefore, as much political power) as ten hundred millionaires - Therefore represents a dangerous accumulation of power.
When we look at the market and capitalism, we aren't seeing a fun little game where some speedrunner gets a high score and there are no consequences. We are seeing an incentive landscape trying to reform the aristocracy. We are seeing kings arise from first principles.
This should be stopped.
One nonviolent way to stop this is to fund just massive welfare programs, close all tax loopholes, all offshore tax havens, and give poor people money, which is the most American franchisement you can have.
Implementation is left as a simple exercise for the reader
This is true is all systems. People will never be equal in society, because the things that need to be done vary radically in difficulty and the number of people realistically capable of doing them - and those close to the top will always be 'more equal' than those who are doing basic labor. I'm also sidestepping the issue that's probably inescapable in practice - hierarchy. And historically social economic systems have created systems where it's even more difficult to transition between top and bottom, than it is in capitalist systems.
I do not think your solutions are viable. Giving people money is going to simply drive mass inflation, because you end up massively increasing the amount of money in circulation, but keep the same amount of products. Okay, so then the typical response is well then we just add price controls. And now you end up in a scenario where you have empty shelves because supply no longer meets demand, but also you likely have declining production because the things producers are producing become worth less in real terms, often to the point of them being unable to continue profitably producing them.
I offered some solutions that I think are more viable here. [1]
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45059980
> This is true is all systems. People will never be equal in society, because the things that need to be done vary radically in difficulty and the number of people realistically capable of doing them - and those close to the top will always be 'more equal' than those who are doing basic labor. I'm also sidestepping the issue that's probably inescapable in practice - hierarchy. And historically social economic systems have created systems where it's even more difficult to transition between top and bottom, than it is in capitalist systems.
This is called "capitalist realism".
The problem of capitalism isn't that "some people are better at doing things". The problem of capitalism is that anything that exists or can be imagined can be designated as private property and any claim to this property is enforced with the full monopoly of violence of the state.
The problem of modern capitalism is that we've expanded the concept of private property to the point where the vast majority of profits generated are not tied to actual sales of products any more but come from the finance industry - essentially a system of speculative gambling multiple layers of abstraction removed from even the notion of actually "running a business".
And it's not just the "evil bankers" or investors. Even retirement is nowadays based on the finance market. We gradually replaced relying on the community to take care of its elders with relying on your own family to take care of you as an elder to having the government set some of your wages aside to pay for taking care of you as elder to having your company set some of your wages aside to having you invest money in the finance market.
And with everyone having to participate in the finance market despite only receiving a minute fraction of its profits, the interests of the finance industry also shape the nature of the real industry of service and production, driving up deregulation, encouraging short-term growth over long-term sustainability, pump and dump schemes, lobbying against labor protections, etc.
And as any of the Georgists here on HN will tell you: of course this also means that sales (i.e. transfer of property) have been displaced by rent-seeking because rent-seeking is more scalable.
None of this had to necessarily follow from "some people are better at doing some things than others". Of course a lot of this logically follows from the existence of a class of people who hold power over others continuously wanting to maintain and extend that power out of a persistent fear of losing it and ending up on the other side of the equation. But in order for this to work we had to have a culture that would enable this. And the myth of those at the top having gotten there (implying they all started wherever you did as a recipient of this myth) simply by being better at doing something rather than by having literally an entire society provide them a stepladder and handing them the reins, this myth has been reinforcing this culture of enablement for tens of centuries.
I mostly agree, but I'd argue that this is largely because of funny money. Check out this great site. [1] The event it's alluding to is the end of Bretton Woods, which is the point that the government completely unrestricted in their ability to 'print money'. In an economy it may or may not be true that money trickles down, but it's indisputable that it gushes upward. And so each time the government dumps trillions of dollars into the economy, that money makes its way straight to the top in very rapid fashion.
Next thing you know you have people and companies that literally have more money than they know what to do with. And then government and industry become increasingly incestuous as politicians filter money to various companies while in office, and then those companies not only stuff their election coffers full of money, but then have cushy 7+ figure 'advisory' roles for these politicians, or their inner circle, once they leave office - sometimes not even waiting for that. And then the government ends up printing endless amounts of money to keep this businesses afloat after they come crashing down to their own incompetence, completely wrecking the natural process of progression over time. All the while the stock market continues to reach record highs even in the midst of an economy destroying epidemic simply because it's all fake and driven on endless speculation, backed by endless injections of funny money.
And then on top of all of this you have various meta-effects. For instance when you live in an economy without much inflation or deflation, it's practically impossible to lower wages simply because people won't accept that. But in an inflationary economy? Somebody might even be happy about earning 25% more than they were in 2020, when in reality that means they've actually taken a pay cut thanks to inflation. And inflation is driven by the excesses of funny money.
And an inflationary society also strongly incentivizes the hoarding of things which, in turn, drives rent seeking behavior. Your things become worth more over time, but money becomes worth less over time. So you want to accumulate as many things as you can and rent access to them. Whereas in a stable or deflationary economy, things remain a comparable cost or even become worth less over time - so there's less motivation to hoard things and more motivation to hoard money.
[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Costco and Chick-fil-A are scaled but they pay and train their employees to give good service and the scale also provides lower prices. We don't need to retvrn to 1950s local small business.
Most developing countries are capitalistic and still have a system where when you go into a shop and talk to somebody, it's often the person who owns that shop. It's part of the many reasons I'm a huge fan of decentralization in basically everything. It's absolutely wonderful.
I don't think capitalism inherently trends towards corporatism. Very few companies can grow massively on their own merit. It's often a mixture of anti-competitive behavior and mergers/acquisitions. So one obvious thing is to actually prevent mergers/acquisitions unless there is a provable and immediate benefit to customers, and split up companies if that benefit can be shown, to a civil law standard, to have not played out at any point over the next let's say 20 years. And obviously crack down hard on anti-competitive behavior with criminal consequences for executives and board members.
Boom, corporatism solved. But you need to solve it before it happens because otherwise you end up in a scenario where corporations will eventually also come to own politicians.
This also varies significantly, but I think supports the idea that the farther you are from ownership, the more service is equated to demeaning one's self for a salary that remains unchanged if you help someone or not.
If the shop isn't ran and staffed by the owner and family, it quickly devolves to the point that it's a challenge to throw money at anyone, because the money doesn't go to the person you're talking to. Any store with more than 5 employees is a jobs program for friends and family and you're inconveniencing someone's chit-chat or doomscrolling to bother them to ask a question.
> why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering?
That's pretty much the split between the generations. Boomers want the appearance of giving a rat’s ass, but Millennials and younger have been the apathetic employee and don't expect otherwise.
Well, millenials and younger saw their parents kill themselves at the job when giving a rat's ass, and still saw them get laid off/their bodies destroyed by the toll of a lifetime of manual work/a whole life of hustle leading to a meager retirement, and they realized none of it was worth it.
Genuinely this. Every time an older employee gives me a "And thank you for shopping at <business>" I just feel sad for them. The company neither pays them enough nor gives even a single fuck to warrant that kind of behavior.
I approach customer service as the total opposite from the OP. I treat anyone I interact with like they're doing me a favor by providing me service—and honestly, they are. I mean they're working this absolutely thankless job that I think I would choose the mines before considering, and they owe their employer nothing other than the bare fucking minimum. We're all just trying to get by and they're in the trenches.
> Every industry is an overcrowded airport lounge now
… in some countries.
I’ve recently moved to a small European country and can speak to a person for everything and they are helpful! From electricity to cellular provider to government departments to stores to doctors to making a reservation, I can’t believe the quality of life this brings.
Some places simply have intangibles that make for a higher quality of life.
What country is this, if you don't mind me asking? It's similar in Japan where I can easily get ahold of a human, though it's not always the case that they're helpful.
The rise of premium mediocre[0].
Everyone wants to feel VIP, and there's lots of money to be made in making people think they're going to get the VIP experience, so we get a flood of shitty VIP experiences like airport lounges.
If you don't like this state of affairs, you basically have two choices:
1) hustle and try to make enough money so that you're an actual VIP with access to actual VIP experiences
(OP in the article says "Charge me a premium, I don’t care.". Buddy, if you could afford the premium, you wouldn't be writing this article)
2) drop out, and don't patronize those experiences in the first place. Question why you are in a fake VIP airport lounge waiting to head to your fake VIP Disney/Vegas/Venice/whatever vacation in the first place.
[0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l...
Hat tip for that blog post! I read it many years ago and laughed very hard reading it.
Here is the HN discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15199709
I agree. I think if we are so curious about airport lounges we should ask: Why are there so many of them now? More than twenty years ago, you were really a player if you frequented airport lounges. None of this miles upgrade nonsense. You were a regular business class flyer. Airlines really wanted to improve your experience to keep you spending. The number of business class (and above) seats has not meaningfully changed since then, yet there are far more people using airport lounges. I am willing to bet that the author is a member of the premium mediocre American class that is not a regular flyer in business class, nor was a regular user of airport lounges twenty-plus years ago.This essay is a treatler manifesto, full of treatler clichés like “customer service simply no longer exists.”
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/treatler-treatlerite
Note that the author does not ask for universal manners and courtesy, the foundation of a pleasant society. Instead he demands “customer service” in which dignity and respect flow in only one direction.
Does the author really want new shoes, or does he mostly want to feel like a very special boy in the shoe store? It is the latter. I suspect he would choose to burn down the world rather than live in a world in which his superior social position as a Customer is unrecognized. Soon the bond markets will neutralize the status conferred by this man’s credit card and we will see which he, and the millions like him, choose.
I think the author needs to shop at "richer" places for the treatment they want. Service is rich-people shit, and they're evidently not spending rich-people money. Inflation may recently have fucked up their expectations. It's been rough, I get it, I feel like I've dropped a "class" or so, too, just as I was clawing my way into upper-middle.
$300 full-retail for two pairs of sneakers in the downtown of a major city is not rich people money anymore, the goddamn trash-tier sneakers for my kids at Kohls often cost like $50+ a pair—on clearance. That's dead-center middle-class spending now, and the middle class has had shit service a long time.
I get it. $100 sneakers should be premium. $150? Pft! If you're somewhere that stocks those, it's gotta be nice, right? I mean damn. But not so much any more.
I suspect there's something similar going on with the rest of what they're seeing. Though yes, I agree that the middle class once again receiving any amount of actual service instead of constant attempts to fuck them over and nickel-and-dime them would be rad.
> I think the author needs to shop at "richer" places for the treatment they want.
I think this is the mentality that’s killing the service industry. When I order a $5 coffee that’s basically just a person pouring some coffee in a cup, they expect 30% tip for the service. The swinging the obnoxious iPad with the ridiculous tip amounts for basically doing your job is what is wrong with everything right now. It may not be the worker’s fault but it is what is wrong from a customer experience. Like you could order a cheeseburger and it’s missing the fries that come with it, and you’d be the asshole to point out that they’re missing in your to go bag after paying $30 for it.
I will not tip for just facilitating a transaction. There has to be some actual service for me to tip. No offense to the employees at Crumbl Cookies, but putting the cookies I asked for into a box is not tip-worthy.
Yep. There's a clothing store here in town that has top-notch service. Salespeople who can measure you, find the right size or arrange alterations, know everything they sell. But the cheapest shirt they sell is probably close to $200.
> First, I can’t make it two blocks to the store without being ambushed by clipboard warriors trying to rope me into saving the whales, curing baldness, or whatever today’s cause-of-the-day is.
Preach it! Get the hell out of my way.
The scene in Airplane with the Hari Krishna was an absolutely incredible hit with audiences.
> Why can’t stores just build the damn bag into the price
In the EU, they're legally required to charge you for it to incentivize lowering plastic waste.
Yes he has a point, we are unpaid employees these days. And this is spilling over to Gov. services too,
I recently travelled through both Chicago and Denver airports and was amazed to see lines of people queued up to enter the clubs. It seems like such a synthetic economy, like a theme park.
This exact notion is why I named my business "Native I.T." back in 2015 when I became disillusioned with the state of I.T. subcontracting and the emerging "gig economy". I've always been better at service than sales, so here's hoping I can leverage my strength with this particular niche. I can certainly say that I share the sentiments, and find most everyone I know does as well.
My friend, have I got a video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0J0s10G0jk
This person feels entitled to quality customer service. Maybe 30 years ago that was an expectation. Nowadays, if you want good customer service, you need to pick business that deliberately prioritize it, which often means paying more.
Consumer Cellular is a great example of a company that prioritizes customer service and costs a bit more. Compare their cellular service to a company like Mint, which gives you basically the exact same product, but for half the price due to having literally zero customer service.
For running shoes to use one of their examples, REI is a great store to get a human to show you where things are and to give their opinion on what the right shoe for you would be. If you go into a Macy's or a WalMart you'll pay a lot less, but you won't have anyone there to help you.
Every self checkout I've been at has always had an employee willing to help, in fact more often than not the person manning the self checkouts at Costco just ends up gunning all my items when they see I have an infant strapped to me, and I typically don't have to lift a finger. Of course, you can't get into Costco without purchasing an annual membership and you can't get out of Costco without spending at least $100.
You can get cheap stuff, and you can get less cheap stuff with good customer service. Peoples' time and energy is not free, and you should be willing to pay for it if you expect it. Feeling entitled to good customer service when you purchase bargain-barrel products lacks a certain awareness of how much an employee deserves to be paid.
It also depends on the industry whether they have the margins to give better service with lowered profits or if they'd have to raise prices to avoid losing money.
The essay the author begins with also appeared on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44780015
This article reads like a chapter from the Boomer Bible. Not getting a free bag for your purchase? That is mostly controlled by local city rules about reducing plastic. Mostly highly developed places now try to reduce the amount of "free bags" given when shopping. This includes many high-end department stores and grocery stores.
I don't think the author realises how much it would cost to have a native-level English speaker available at a call center. Wages are probably 20 USD per hour (unless you use Philippines or India, but I am sure the author would object).
I will say this - I've been an Apple fan for a long time, through some really dark times. And I have my issues with who Apple has become.
One of the nice things about the Apple Store though was not just realizing that no one else was going to sell their differently designed products better than they were and the need for well-organized, spacious, inviting stores that were a fun attraction on a visit to the mall -- they really improved their customer service process. It's nice to be able to schedule an appointment and talk to someone who walks you through options. I'm sure there is no 100% satisfaction, but I took my iPhone 13 Pro Max in for a battery replacement... and ultimately, they ended up giving me a new iPhone 13 Pro Max because the camera sensor didn't work after battery replacement. They were nice, apologetic, and communicated well throughout the whole process. I even ran into the customer service rep at a local pub and nearly bought him a beer because he was so helpful.
But with that said, I agree with this post - sometimes, there is simply satisfaction in doing things well, treating people with dignity and respect, even if it doesn't pad your bottom line. How do we get there? No idea. Perhaps by having these kinds of conversations?
I'm the CEO of a small company. Our team is super customer service oriented, and I support and reward that, even though it costs us extra. I agree with the article.
Provide great service and a product that works, and people will love you.
> Lounges used to feel special, a perk reserved for business travelers. Now they’re overcrowded, uninspired, yet somehow more coveted than ever—thanks to social media flexes and pricey credit card perks.
I think one of the author's main issues is that they want to feel special, and that feeling can only come through external validation like the exclusion of others.
Also, they seem to take the easy and lazy way out by seething instead of acting.
Also, they lie a lot. Nobody has hassled people with clipboards to save the whales for 26 years.
> The only thing still alive is the endless, humiliating upsell and self-service. The drugstore, the bank, the dentist
Yeah.
Lazy way out.
When I had a bad experience at a chain pharmacy 10-ish years ago I spent less than an hour, googled "independent pharmacies" and found the National Community Pharmacists Association. They have a locator for locally-owned independent pharmacies and I switched to one of those. Now I know my pharmacist's name (not the tech, the actual pharmacist, though I know the techs too) and I don't even have any pressing or complicated medical issues. The only thing they've ever tried to upsell me is a self-published book on local lore and history written by a woman who lives in my neighborhood that was in a stack next to the register.
Yes I bought it. I'm a hoe for that shit.
Same with shoes. My feet are large and weird and shoe buying sucked, not to mention the clueless staff. Often a store would have one pair in my size so I would have to take what I could get. So I took a little time, did some research, and found that specialty running shoe stores exist, staffed by experts, locally owned and operated.
You can do this with many things. Banks (though I prefer credit unions, mine is so small that nearly every member can fit in a large ballroom for our annual meeting and we have an App and digital wallet and everything), doctors, dentists, clothing retailers, anything.
But instead of acting, the author chooses to seethe.
And before you say "there's no other option" you're wrong, unless you live in a deep rural area where the nearest store is 20 minutes away and is a Dollar General, you are wrong.
You just don't care enough to do anything about it, which is a goal with most businesses: plotting the pain/rejection envelope and operating as close to it as possible, to appease the shareholders. You may have to travel a little farther or spend a little more but like I said: pain/rejection envelope-- "how shitty can we be because we're in the main shopping center and the independent guy is on the edge of town?"
An easy way to avoid the race to the bottom is to exit the race.
Don't seethe.
Act.
It isn't hard.
I’ve heard the “you can order the odd colour online” so many times I’ve started telling the sales people “if we all did that then you wouldn’t have a job.”
I think most brands have adjusted to “showrooming,” where customers check out the fit and finish and then order online anyway, specifically for shoes. Some stores place the order for you.
The extra charge for bags is mandated by many local governments (to “reduce waste”), businesses just tack on another few pennies of profit.
My niche is more like an indian bus stop after three years of google deciding that's what Korean news needed. Consider yourself lucky.
[flagged]
Hilarious and insufferable at the same time. Enjoyed it!