Ice Storm

As 2014 gets settled in, winter is slapping it in the face pretty good around here. First was the snow, lots of snow. Now it is the freezing rain on top of the snow. It should be a fun commute this morning. I have to admit, the backyard looks wonderfully eerie in the glow of the outside floodlights. It occurred to me, we have much to learn from ice storm. Of course, the lessons we learn often depends on where you are in life.

When we are young, the lesson is direct, “be careful as ice is slippery.” We learn that mostly by ignoring our mothers and playing on the ice. Hopefully, the only proof of such a lesson is a bruised knee or fanny. While the direct lesson is useful, a secondary lesson begins to take root, the advice of others has value.

When somewhat older, we no long see ice storm as forms of amusement. At some point, our parents stop warning us of the danger of slipping and limiting our exposure to it. Instead, they send us out to chip away the danger from sidewalks and driveways. Of course, while still warning us of the danger of slipping. This too has its lessons. We learn that we must deal with our problems with and, from time to time, not on our schedule. Chances are we relearn the original lesson that ice is slippery too during this process. While we learn to deal with problems, this time, the secondary lesson is we have responsibilities in life that go beyond ourselves. How we learn the latter will define our character.

Now, as a fully functional adult, I suit up in long johns, layers of shirts, insulated boots, two pair of gloves, earmuffs, hat and a coat worthy of Nanook of the North. I head out and chip ice without direction. I chip and shovel and sweep away the danger to sidewalk and drive. I no longer have lessons to learn from ice storms. I know them, I know that we live our lives and we learn. We learn from others, Mother Nature and ourselves. So, as I head out to do my chore, having learned all the lessons an ice storm can possibly teach, I step out onto the landing, slip, land on my ass and start the learning process all over again.

 

On why I pay attention to what so-called “nuts” have to say

Just because we believe something true, does not  make it so.  Even a deeply held belief can  be found to be false.  Copernicus, Keller and Galileo (among others) dared to question the truth of the earth being the center of the universe.  They did not change what was true, they simply uncovered it.   Keep this in mind when you so quickly dismiss questions from some nut about what you “know” to be true.

A New Year’s Manifesto

 I woke up this morning thinking I needed to make a resolution for the New Year.  The more I thought about it, I began to understand I needed much more than that.   No in years past, resolutions were made and resolutions were put aside, often before the end of the day’s football games.  It’s not that resolutions are necessarily hard to keep, more the opposite really.   The problem is they required nothing much off me, they were too small.  I need something requiring commitment and dedication.  I need a manifesto to challenge me to not take on the mundane conventions of life.  Accepting, as true, Emerson’s quote, “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.[i]”Now, I am not talking about writing something mind-numbing and rambling that Ted Kaczynski would be proud of, or something to give Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto a run for its money.  In the first, I am simply not that crazy; in the second, making some brash rhetorical political statement serves no one, especially me.  My manifesto needs to be a hard kick to my rear and knock some common sense back into my head.  It needs to be something I can read, over and over, to serve as a reminder to make life what I want it to be rather than what I assume is expected of me.

Our brains are often compared to computers.  While a simplistic comparison, I do see the point.  Still, we have a complexity of understanding computer scientists only dream of designing into their next Cray or IBM Big Blue offering. I think it is that ability to understand complex ideas and concepts that drove Emerson to his conclusions on self-reliance.  I mean, why leave to others to figure out what is best for us, as individuals, when we have a brain of our own?  We simply must use our brains and have confidence in our conclusions.

That is the tricky part though, making sure they are “our conclusions” and not some tailored and perverted idea pushed upon us by some media outlet.  An outlet, by the way, that has an agenda having nothing to do with the free exchange of ideas, quite the opposite.  Here is how I will make sure I am making up my own mind:

1. Question everything.  Especially things I accept as true.
2. Find out who “they” is.  Any idea worth accepting as true is worth knowing whose idea it is.  Anytime someone presents me with a statement whose source is “They said”, “Many believe” or “I heard” suspect it from the get-go. Know whose ideas I accept as true before I accept it as true.
3. Look for ideas that differ from my own.  Even if I know my ideas are sound, I will seek out the ideas of others.  Remember the axiom “no one of us is as smart as all of us.”   I just may find my ideas where not all that sound after all.  At the very least, any sound idea will stand the scrutiny of others.
4. Accept as true what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, or even today.  Life is dynamic; life’s answers are dynamic too.  I will not hold an old idea that worked as the best idea now by default.  Again, question everything, especially what I accept as true.
5. Nobody likes a know-it-all.  Just because I may be right on a point and someone else may be wrong does not obligate me to point it out.  I can, of course, but often there is no point as many people have minds of steel.  Hard and rigid.  I will judge what is gained against what is lost.
6. In all things I do I will have passion and compassion.  If I cannot muster up these two items, I will not do the thing in the first place.
7. Lastly, never be afraid to tell the emperor he has on no clothes.   Even emperors can be wrong from time to time.

 Ok, so there is my manifesto for the New Year.  Pretty simple stuff really, just need to be consistent in performing it.  See, consistency is the tricky part and consistency does not negate nonconformity.  Emerson never said consistency is a bad thing, he said foolish consistency is bad.  To quote again, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”[ii] 

I will keep an open mind.  I will not accept things at their face value. In a great sense, I have suffered from the little mind Emerson wrote.  My mind has been little for far too long.  Now, this year, this very day, that ends.

 

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[i] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays [1st and 2d Ser.], Self-Reliance. [Reading, Pa.]: Spencer, 1936.  Print.

[ii] Ibid.

Jack Kerouac is a Friend of Mine

I made reference the other day to Jack Kerouac being important to me,  it did not take long for curious readers to inquire as to why.  I’ve dusted off some old thoughts on it and post them in response.

Jack Kerouac was a friend of mine.  OK, OK so I never knew the guy, we are kindred spirits nonetheless.   Hell, we even share the same birthday.  I have been told I am the last of the true bohemians.  That may or may nor be true.  If I am a bohemian, it would be out of character for me to say, either way.

So many people think it romantic in some fashion to live a life of reckless abandon.  Other’s feel it is just plain stupid.  I don’t accept that I am doing that.  I live true to my own self and make no apologies for it.  I am a poet at heart; it defines the very core of me. I take life in, allow it to affect me, to change me, and then write about it.  Not all poets change the world, as Jack did, but we do start the quiver in the snow that leads to the avalanche of change.  That is enough for me.

Jack and I differ on one point, being self-destructive.  I am not sure he understood that his life was self-destructive.  Moreover, I am not sure he would have cared – it simply was who he was.  As for me, my only vice is coffee (flirting with women is not a vice).  I drink it by the gallon.  Black is best but I will take some cream if I have to drink the swill from Starbucks.  Unlike Jack, my influences from the world take time, his happened in a thunder-clap. Being self-destructive seemed to be part of that; it just goes against my nature.

Jack shook the world with mighty jolts, his time called for that.  His writings challenge us to look at things with a different prospective.  How boring would life be if we were all stuck in “Ward and June Cleaver” mode?  We have Jack, and all the bohemians of his day, to thank for it not being so.  They opened the door that would lead to free-spirited sixties.

As a poet, I seek the smaller patches of snow to turn loose, the ones that live high on the mountain, the ones that take time and great effort to reach.  You see, my mind is more singular in nature; my poetry is about the smaller things in life.   For me, it’s about seeing the world in a single flake of snow.  Jack saw a world full of complexities and railed against it.  We both see the need for change.

It is for certain the world needs change, to always change.  That is what bohemians understand.  I don’t want to change the entire world in a day; I just want change to start.  I am grateful to Jack for all he did. I’m not sure without him; I could live the life I do.  Even if you disagree with the choices he made, you have to admit he did change how we see the world – in this way; he will always be a kindred spirit and a mentor. This is I say Jack is a friend.

Thought for the day

So very often we go through our day and fail to realize our own words and actions determine its outcome.  Buddhism focuses on the realism of self and an individual’s power over destiny.  It is up to us to determine if that destiny will add or diminish grace.  It is up to us to determine if we give or take from the world.

Mr. Murphy and the Problem of Size

Even in life’s sad and most trying moments, humor finds its way in, not the Abbot and Costello “Who’s on First” humor, but the little things we did not see coming.  Maybe it is a way for humans to deal with heavy emotion; perhaps it is more luck.  Regardless, even years later, it is the lighthearted moments we often recall.  Soon after my father passed away, just such a moment occurred.

A few days before, I had to face the fact Daddy was dying.  He had cancer and that is not a pleasant way to go.  I can sure understand how people, who are touched by this evil, feel drug companies are more interested in prolonging treatment for profit than earnestly seeking a cure.  Still, this was the situation we were in and the family was gathering as families do at times like this.

For me, I took a leave of absence from work and headed home.  One night, I was awoken by a phone call and by sunup, I had thrown a mixed bag of clothing together and was on the road.  I lived in North Carolina at the time and home, St Simons Island, was about a six-hour drive.  Perhaps it was my haste in packing, or maybe I just did not accept my father was dying and had my mind elsewhere, but for whatever reason – I did not pack a suit.  Basically, I had toiletries, jeans, and shirts, not much more.  Strangely, I did pack my dress shoes.  Since then, I’ve asked myself a thousand times how I could pack the shoes and not the suit to go with them.  I guess some questions in life never get an answer.

Coming home during a time like this is bittersweet.  The last thing my dad needed was a bunch of family members sitting around crying and feeling sorry about things.  It was enough to know we were there for a reason and enjoy the time left.  Besides, contrary to common thought, it is a very busy time; at least it was for me.  Every day some little project needed attention.  Being busy was a blessing of sorts as it kept my mind off the inevitable.

That is the way with things inevitable – they happen whether we want them to or not.  When dad passed away, all the emotion held inside found its way out and seemed to make up for lost time.  I have always handled stress, but this time, stress handled me.  Stress took me to a surreal world where seconds lasted hours and days seemed beyond measure.  Still, there was a lot to do so I marched on, it is what my father would have wanted, and the family needed everyone rowing in the same direction.

During this time, where my hour-long-seconds had control, a small seed took root.  It was more a feeling than something I knew but I was absolutely sure I had forgotten something.  As the time past, and my seedling grew into a mighty oak, the harder I tried to remember, the deeper in fog the issue slipped.  It slipped, that is, until late in the afternoon the day before my father’s funeral and the fog cleared and I understood what that oak tree had been trying to tell me all along – I had no suit to wear.

While it’s true the fashion police would certainly let me off with a warning, I was not about to show up to my own father’s funeral in a worn pair of jeans and a Crab Shack tee-shirt.  It’s not like the tee-shirt had holes in it or anything.  OK – the jeans might have had holes, but not the tee-shirt.  Still, having “Where the elite eat in their bare feet,” scrawled across my chest somehow just did not seem right.  So, off to town I went, surely I could find something “off the rack,” as it were.

Now, I’m as fair-minded as the next guy, but who gave this Murphy fellow permission to go around making laws to begin with?  Regardless of how I feel about Mr. Murphy, I discovered there is really no way around his law “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”  First store – closed.  Second store – everything required tailoring.  The drama went on and on, at each store, something stood between me and a proper suit of clothes.  All I purchased for my trouble was more stress on an already stressful day.

Finally, I went to Belks.  I figured I would throw myself on the mercy of the clerk and hope for the best.  There he was, the slim, well-dressed salesman with effeminate features and manners.  I have all the style sense God gave a bowling ball, so I was really happy to have someone other than a teenager with strange colored hair to help me.  Mr. Murphy must have been asleep on that point.

Within a few minutes, there were several jackets laid out.  We, well the salesman, decided I should go with a jacket and slacks rather than a suit as we could find pants that did not require hemming.  Still feeling stressed, I relied on his judgment completely.  Then it happened, we were selecting pants and he asked “what size?”  Guys tend to think of things like clothing size as if it were some sort of quantum physics, understanding it is just beyond most humans.  I would be happy if everything was small, medium, or large.

There I was, trying to figure out what size pants I wear.  Normally, I think it would have been an easy question to answer.  Certainly, I understood it.  Finally, after what seemed many more of my hour-long seconds, I knew I had to say something; I blurted out 32.  The salesman placed his hand on his hip, gave me that knowing kind of frown, and said, “Oh please, I’ll bring the 36s.”  I laughed and laughed.  I literally laughed until I cried.  I laughed so much the salesman started laughing with me.  There we stood, in Belk’s Department Store, laughing like two hyenas.

You see, as much as Murphy would like to control things, perhaps divine providence uses him to set our lives up where something small and silly, like the salesman’s comment, is just the cure for horribly stressful situations.  In my case, it returned my mind to a sense of normalcy and allowed me to face the following day’s events.  I took my jacket and proper fitting 36s and went home.

Remembering Blanche’s Courtyard

Now that I am quickly, all too quickly, approaching fifty-years old, I guess it’s natural for me to look around for reminders of my youth.  Having been away from St. Simons for a number of years much has changed and there are certainly more people, but reminders are around; I only had to look.

There are the obvious reminders, Fort Frederica, the lighthouse, Christ Church, and all the wonderful old live oaks.  They remind me of summer days running barefoot with a freedom children just do not have today.  Of course, East Beach is there and each walk reminds me of my teenage days chasing the girls from Macon and Atlanta, down for the summer, and trying to talk them into going to the Saturday night dances at Sea Island.  Those reminders are nice.  Still, they only remind me of life in general, I had to look a little deeper for something that held a bit more meaning for me.

Our old house at Gould’s Inlet is gone, replaced by something large and modern that already looks in disrepair.  If you’ve lived here a good while, you will remember it as the “Pizza Hut” house.  It was pure joy waking up each morning to watch the sunrise.  While progress does make changes, I was sure sad to see my old home replaced with something that has less character.  Just being where the house once stood was enough to remind me where we grow up is like a member of the family, no matter how long you are apart, you’re still connected.  I know I will always be connected to that beach.

It was hard to find any comfort with a house that was so important to me being replaced, but at least I know that new families will build new memories of growing up on that special spot of beach.  Maybe that’s why visiting the old family business was so hard for me, it is  hard to see it, with the wonder it once held, in its current state.  The business, of course, was Blanche’s Courtyard.  Kirk Watson of Hodnett Cooper Real Estate was kind enough to let me look over her boarded-up remains, as the building has been dormant for some time now and only hints suggest her former glory.  Standing there, it was that former glory that came to mind.

I had the advantage of growing up in a family where the parents divorced before I really remember.  The result being four wonderful adults to guide me.  Blanche’s was a labor of love for my father and step-mother, Pat.  Of course, the most asked question regarding the restaurant was “Where is Blanche?”  To answer that requires going back to the beginning.  When Pat and Dad decided to open a restaurant, they knew better than to dive in to something without proper assistance, so they looked for a partner.  That partner was a man named Bill.  If you’ve lived on St. Simons for a very long time, you might remember him.  He owned Bill’s Pit Barbeque. This is back in the day when Brogan’s was Higdon’s Bait and Tackle Shop and Maxwell’s department store sold hot Spanish peanuts.  You could get a bag and a small Coke for about a quarter.

Anyway, back to Bill; his wife was Blanche. The original plan was for her to do the cooking.  Now, I was pretty young so I don’t really know the details but Bill and Blanche decided to end the partnership leaving the restaurant without a cook for its grand opening.  Having survived the opening, Pat was in New Orleans and found that wonderful picture that lived behind the bar, the lady’s name happened to be Blanche.  Be it luck or fate, she became the Blanche of Blanche’s Courtyard.  It became a running joke when “guests with reservations” we seemed to have lost, swore they made them with Blanche or they are good friends with her and not sure she would put up with that sort of thing.

There I was, standing on the basket weave brick floor where the Good Ol’ Boys Band played every Friday and Saturday night.  The bar now sits where the bandstand was but the old Victorian porch we used for it is now the bar’s ceiling.  Looking out one of the few places not covered with plywood, the courtyard bricks reminded me of a time when my brother Stephen and I spent days and days placing our share of the 250,000 bricks it took to complete.

Gone are the wonderful smells of dinners being prepared and the ever-present din of kitchen activity.  Now, the air is moist, dank and moldy from neglect and silence fills the air.  I should not expect a bank to really care about the history of the place; they simply want to sell it for whatever end someone wants.  Given the damage, there might be little hope the building will survive at all.  Still, for me it was sad to see the old girl rundown so.  Yet, the glimpses are there, the etched-glass window saying “Blanches,” old doors from an island hotel, and the decorative brick on the wall where the bathtub full of goldfish use to be.

When I think of all the work and effort to convert that old auto garage with a dirt floor into a restaurant, it really was nothing more than a barn when we started, it’s more a wonder it ever had success and not met this end years before.  Blanches was a success through the efforts of Pat, my dad, Jack Pommerening, Mr. Goodman, Cepheus Walker, Sue Anderson and countless staff over the years.  While the physical walls might be worse for ware, the memories of the life these people breathed into Blanches will never diminish.

As for Pat and Dad, Daddy passed away several years ago but Pat is still going strong.  She still operates the place they restored in Blue Mountain Lake, NY.  In the off-season, she volunteers as a paramedic making 911 calls.  The Energizer bunny has nothing on her.  For me, I’m happy to be back on the island and look forward to my next walk down the beach I love.

The Prejudice of Theory

In life, we all must battle personal prejudice.  While obvious targets of prejudice, such as race and gender, dominate the debate, other more subtle ones influence everyone daily.  Moreover, as they affect deeply held beliefs, accepted as unquestionably true, most do not recognize them as prejudice at all.

Debates on subjects like evolution vs. intelligent design (or creationism) highlight the problems with subtle prejudices.  The belief closes the mind to ideas, facts, and theories that contradict the belief’s conclusion. People on the evolutionary side see the fossil record as definitive proof supporting Darwin’s conclusions in Origins of Species[i].  Others on the creationism side dismiss every bit of science that does not support their preconceived notion.  Produce a discovery that challenges Darwin and a supporter will automatically bombard you with numerous other discoveries to support him.  Dare to lay out the case for natural selection and a creationist will declare, “You might have evolved from monkeys, but I did not!”

While one side enjoys the support of a majority of scientists, the other side has the evangelical tradition firmly behind it.  This is a very public debate and passions are high among people from both camps.  What both sides fail to realize is they are prejudice against information and discoveries that go against their theory’s conclusions.  In other words, they only accept, as true, new information that supports their particular belief.

Galileo’s observations that Earth is not the center of the universe illustrates the danger of only accepting supporting information and excluding contradicting information.  Building on the works of Copernicus and Kepler, Galileo’s telescopic observations caused the Catholic Church to try him for heresy[ii].  The Church closed its mind to any information that contradicted its long-held belief that Earth was the center of the universe.

Even within the scientific community, prejudice exists.  A popular theory among archeologists in North America is the “Clovis First” theory.  The predominant hypothesis states that the people associated with the Clovis culture[iii] (around 11,000 B.C.E.) were the first inhabitants of the Americas.  The discovery of sites that predate the Clovis period were dismissed outright or thought to be misdated.  Sites that predate the Clovis period include Topper in South Carolina, the Paisley Caves complex in Oregon, the Monte Verde site in Chile, South America, and Channel Islands of California.  A discussion among archaeologists could soon come to blows over the topic.

Now, it seems one of the most popular theories of the 20^th Century stands challenged, the Big Bang Theory. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, professor of physics and astronomy at the Catholic University of Louvain, first put the theory forward.  As observations supporting the theory have multiplied, the scientific community has generally accepted it.  Still, problems with the theory do exist.  Recently, an associate professor at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, Wun-Yi Shu put forward a new model that has no bang at all[iv].  Time will surely tell if Professor Shu is right but at the very least, his work does deserve to be explored without the prejudice received by the scientists that disputed Clovis.

Regardless of its source, an irrational belief that suppresses observations, discoveries, or rational thinking is dangerous to the progress of humanity.  It is arrogant to place limits on subjects not understood.  We do it anyway.  In religion, we place restrictions on God based on our feeble ability to understand God.  In science, we restrict possibilities to well-defined parameters and dismiss data that does not fall within.  It is only when a genius, like Galileo, dares to contradict, our preconceived notions change.  Even then, that change can take years, even centuries.

It is best to accept that the knowledge we have not discovered is infinite and our understanding is limited to the small bits we think we know.  We are better off understanding that new information does not diminish the truth; it only changes our perception of it.  It is not an insult to God to place our planet within a solar system and not at the center of the universe, nor is it an insult to understand the method by which our existence took place.  In the end, everything we know, understand, or believe is simply a theory based on the best information available.  Always keep an open-mind and put aside prejudice in all forms.  This way you will improve your personal theories.

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[i] Darwin, Charles, and Gillian Beer. On the Origin of Species. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

[ii] “Galileo Affair.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 30 July 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair&gt;.

[iii] Hirst, K. Kris. “Clovis – The History of Clovis.” About Archaeology – The Study of Human History. Web. 30 July 2010. <http://archaeology.about.com/od/clovispreclovis/qt/clovis_people.htm&gt;.

[iv] Shu, Wun-Yi. “Cosmological Models with No Big Bang.” National Tsing Hua University. Web. 30 July 2010. .

Where is the Service in Customer Service?

We’ve all heard Marshall Field’s saying, “The customer is always right.”  While it makes for a nice catch phrase, businesses rarely practiced it.  Worldwide markets tend to devalue the importance of the individual customer resulting in a William Vanderbilt attitude of “the public be damned.”

Many industries meet the general needs of consumers.  Take the automakers for instance, they provide a rich selection of feature on their various makes and models.  Still, they provide the features thought to appeal to the mass market rather than the desires of individual customers.  It makes sense; Ford Motor Company should not be expected to provide a flushing toilet in a car just because one person asks for it.  On the other hand, time proved Henry Ford wrong with his famous quote: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black[i].”  The company soon realized it had to meet the basic wants as well as the basic needs of people to sell its products.

While we understand the limits in production, that in no way limits good customer service.  I remember my dad always wanted to own a Jaguar XKE.  For him, it was the ultimate sports car.  Not until I was an adult he have the financial means to buy his dream car, but by then, of course, the XKE was more a collector’s item than a car for daily driving.  He settled for one of current production models.

At the time, my dad drove a Ford F-150 Lariat with just about every extra possible.  It was a very nice truck.  He drove to the Jaguar dealership in Savannah and talked with the salesman for over an hour deciding on one from the lot.  It was a done deal really; my dad was going to pay for it outright.  All he wanted to know was how much the dealer would give for his truck in trade.  “Oh, we don’t take trucks here,” was the curt reply.  “You can go down to the corner, there is a used car guy there that will take it,” he further said as if shocked at the suggestion and that added insult to injury in my father’s eye.  The man was serious; they would not take the truck in trade.

After explaining that if he drove his truck off the lot, he would not be back, the dealer did not budge.  My dad drove his Ford F-150 Lariat with just about every extra possible off and headed to the Jaguar dealer in Atlanta, four hours away.  He asked the salesman one question, “Will you take my truck in trade.”  The salesman replied, “Of course we will.” To which my father told him “Son, you just sold a Jag.”

Ultimately, that car proved to be nothing but trouble for my father but he never forgot the salesman that “treated me with respect,” as he put it.  To the day my father passed away, he told the story of the salesman in Savannah that would not take his truck.  Moreover, he sang the praises of the dealership in Atlanta that did.  He would take his Jag to them; they would work on it, give him a loner car, take him to lunch, and generally make him feel he was important to them.  Even with a car that was problematic, their customer service kept my father coming back.

That is the lesson for people when they do business with any company, select one that treats you, as you want to be treated and avoid the ones that do not.  Your vote is with your dollar.  Had that dealer in Savannah simply done a little legwork, such as call the guy down the road and make the deal, he would have had a loyal customer for life.  As it is, that dealership closed long ago while the one in Atlanta goes on.  Could the arrogant attitude of the sales staff have something to do with it closing?  You bet!

If you allow yourself to be treated like one of a million cattle heading off to slaughter, that is exactly what you will be.  You will be used, processed and forgotten.  There is rudeness in the nation’s retail business because we, the customers, allow it. If a sales person, checkout clerk, store manager, or any other employee is rude to you, simply walk out.  Leave your buggy of groceries right there at the checkout stand and go.  Make a loud statement that you will not pay to be treated that way so everyone can hear.

It does not matter what a store thinks; if they want your money, it’s your rules.  You do not need to buy a Jaguar to have the respect of a sales staff.  As my dad’s case demonstrates, buying one in itself, does not guarantee that respect. I think my father would have gone down the road and sold his truck if only the salesman did not act insulted at the suggestion of taking it in trade.

Today, we deal with huge companies with automated customer service phone systems designed to frustrate the customer into simply dealing with their particular problem rather than deal with the hassle of receiving the support they pay for.  Cellular phone and cable/satellite companies come to mind.  They have a national strategy dealing with support that has little accountability to individual customer.  If your cable is not working and you talk with a service center across the country, just how vested are they in solving your problem?  While choices are limited regarding cell phones and TV connection, the one that provide service at a local level with provide better support.  Their livelihood depends on it.

In the end, the customer may not always be right but the customer has the money companies want, which makes them right by default.  Make companies earn your money, demand service, and hold them accountable when it’s not provided.  Sooner or later, if enough customers vote with their dollars, they will get the hint.  Either that or they will join the trash heap of companies that rode poor customer service into oblivion.

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[i] Ford, Henry, and Samuel Crowther.  “Chapter IV.” My Life and Work,.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Pages 71 & 82, 1922.  Print.

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We’ve all heard Marshall Field’s saying, “The customer is always right.”  While it makes for a nice catch phrase, businesses rarely practiced it.  Worldwide markets tend to devalue the importance of the individual customer resulting in a William Vanderbilt attitude of “the public be damned.”

Many industries meet the general needs of consumers.  Take the automakers for instance, they provide a rich selection of feature on their various makes and models.  Still, they provide the features thought to appeal to the mass market rather than the desires of individual customers.  It makes sense; Ford Motor Company should not be expected to provide a flushing toilet in a car just because one person asks for it.  On the other hand, time proved Henry Ford wrong with his famous quote: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black[i].”  The company soon realized it had to meet the basic wants as well as the basic needs of people to sell its products.

While we understand the limits in production, that in no way limits good customer service.  I remember my dad always wanted to own a Jaguar XKE.  For him, it was the ultimate sports car.  Not until I was an adult he have the financial means to buy his dream car, but by then, of course, the XKE was more a collector’s item than a car for daily driving.  He settled for one of current production models.

At the time, my dad drove a Ford F-150 Lariat with just about every extra possible.  It was a very nice truck.  He drove to the Jaguar dealership in Savannah and talked with the salesman for over an hour deciding on one from the lot.  It was a done deal really; my dad was going to pay for it outright.  All he wanted to know was how much the dealer would give for his truck in trade.  “Oh, we don’t take trucks here,” was the curt reply.  “You can go down to the corner, there is a used car guy there that will take it,” he further said as if shocked at the suggestion and that added insult to injury in my father’s eye.  The man was serious; they would not take the truck in trade.

After explaining that if he drove his truck off the lot, he would not be back, the dealer did not budge.  My dad drove his Ford F-150 Lariat with just about every extra possible off and headed to the Jaguar dealer in Atlanta, four hours away.  He asked the salesman one question, “Will you take my truck in trade.”  The salesman replied, “Of course we will.” To which my father told him “Son, you just sold a Jag.”

Ultimately, that car proved to be nothing but trouble for my father but he never forgot the salesman that “treated me with respect,” as he put it.  To the day my father passed away, he told the story of the salesman in Savannah that would not take his truck.  Moreover, he sang the praises of the dealership in Atlanta that did.  He would take his Jag to them; they would work on it, give him a loner car, take him to lunch, and generally make him feel he was important to them.  Even with a car that was problematic, their customer service kept my father coming back.

That is the lesson for people when they do business with any company, select one that treats you, as you want to be treated and avoid the ones that do not.  Your vote is with your dollar.  Had that dealer in Savannah simply done a little legwork, such as call the guy down the road and make the deal, he would have had a loyal customer for life.  As it is, that dealership closed long ago while the one in Atlanta goes on.  Could the arrogant attitude of the sales staff have something to do with it closing?  You bet!

If you allow yourself to be treated like one of a million cattle heading off to slaughter, that is exactly what you will be.  You will be used, processed and forgotten.  There is rudeness in the nation’s retail business because we, the customers, allow it. If a sales person, checkout clerk, store manager, or any other employee is rude to you, simply walk out.  Leave your buggy of groceries right there at the checkout stand and go.  Make a loud statement that you will not pay to be treated that way so everyone can hear.

It does not matter what a store thinks; if they want your money, it’s your rules.  You do not need to buy a Jaguar to have the respect of a sales staff.  As my dad’s case demonstrates, buying one in itself, does not guarantee that respect. I think my father would have gone down the road and sold his truck if only the salesman did not act insulted at the suggestion of taking it in trade.

Today, we deal with huge companies with automated customer service phone systems designed to frustrate the customer into simply dealing with their particular problem rather than deal with the hassle of receiving the support they pay for.  Cellular phone and cable/satellite companies come to mind.  They have a national strategy dealing with support that has little accountability to individual customer.  If your cable is not working and you talk with a service center across the country, just how vested are they in solving your problem?  While choices are limited regarding cell phones and TV connection, the one that provide service at a local level with provide better support.  Their livelihood depends on it.

In the end, the customer may not always be right but the customer has the money companies want, which makes them right by default.  Make companies earn your money, demand service, and hold them accountable when it’s not provided.  Sooner or later, if enough customers vote with their dollars, they will get the hint.  Either that or they will join the trash heap of companies that rode poor customer service into oblivion.

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[i] Ford, Henry, and Samuel Crowther.  “Chapter IV.” My Life and Work,.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Pages 71 & 82, 1922.  Print.

When A Windmill is Really an Oilrig

Don Quixote(1)

I look back at the bravado of my youth with some surprise.  It’s not that I have forgotten it so much as being able to see it as a whole is somewhat bewildering.  Of course, as with most bravado, it did not come from my being right as much as believing others were wrong.  The true wonder of this time is how anyone, at all, could have put up with me.

Lessons learned with age do temper such boldness.  The imprudence of charging into a thing before knowing all the facts does work to that effect.  When your first course of action is belligerence, it is easy for others to involve you in a matter armed with only half a story that ends with embarrassment.  I remember, more than once, having someone who worked for me tell me of an abuse at the hands of a supervisor and charging off like Don Quixote after a windmill.  Of course upon meekly leaving the said dragon’s office, now knowing the whole of the story, I wondered how I could be so gullible.  Lesson learned.

Life is like that.  It is easy to think you are right when all you have is evidence that supports your being right.  With age you learn to seek evidence that suggests you are wrong before you commit to action, at least you should.  Then after consideration of both, the truth is easier to see.  Looking over the past few years, it seems it is a lesson we, as a nation, have failed to learn.  Just ask yourself how things might be different today had we fully understood Iraq and the downside to our involvement there.

If that was not bad enough, our current economic situation gives another great example.  Had legislators and regulators performed their fiduciary duties rather than accept the opinions of the institutions they regulate, the dangerous course the economy took might have been corrected long before we were stuck in the mud and left with a huge tow-truck bill to get back on solid ground.

Now it seems the same sort of bravado exists within the Department of the Interiors’ Minerals Management Service (MMS).  Rather than questioning one of the industries they regulate, the petroleum industry, they simply accepted the “self-regulation” model giants like British Petroleum (BP) put forward.  The end result is lives lost and an oil spill of immense proportions.  Somewhere along the line, our government changed its focus from stewardship of our nation to ensuring businesses played well with each other.

The problem is systemic within the government.  Regardless of agency, the officials that represent the interests of the people are too close to the industries they regulate.  Instead of asking for proof, they ask for assurance.  Rather than looking at the worst-case scenario, they accept “trust us, we can handle anything.”

My dad once told me, “Son, if you ever need a lawyer, get the meanest butt-reaming son-of-a-bitch you can find.”  What he meant was to get one with a passion for protecting your interests over the interests of others.  While we do not need a bunch of lawyers running the various government departments, we do need managers with no less commitment than the lawyers my father had in mind.  We need people that will tear into an issue, question everything, and assume something other than the best result is possible.

Returning to events of recent years, if only we had asked more questions, what would we have learned?  Would we be better off today for it?  We accepted the half-truths put before us on faith and charged off with the same bravado I remember from younger days to tilt at windmills while the real dragons did us harm.  We need to quit taking things on faith and demand proof and challenge that proof.

The ideas we desperately want to believe in are the ones we must question the most.

We want to believe our government represents us, the people.

–   They have proven otherwise.

We want to believe industry has a social conscience.

–    Instead, they have shareholders and profits to think of.

We want to trust that regulators understand what they are doing.

–   Instead they rubber-stamp proposals from the regulated without        question.

In the end, we really have only ourselves to blame.  We accept rhetoric as fact and entrench ourselves in various ideologies that only serve the ones that take advantage of us.  If we have the temerity to question the rhetoric, our patriotism is questioned or we have the label of “Real American” removed from our name.  How dare we question anything that one of the “chosen few” puts forward?

We have forgotten a few simple facts.  First, the government works for us, not the other way around.  Second, business has one motive – profit and that is as it should be, but it does mean they need unbiased regulation.  Third, we have a responsibility to question everything our government does, or in some cases, does not do.  Moreover, we need to stop marginalizing the people that do question.  Otherwise, we are left with only the sound of voices that agree with our own preconceived notions.  That is until and oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico blows up and we are shocked to learn an industry only gave us half a story as we marched off with bravado.  It seems we have not learned the lesson, maybe we never will.

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(1) Daumier, Honoré. Don Quixote And Sancho Pansa. 1868. Oil of Canvas. Neue Pinakothek Museum, Munich, ‎Germany.