Capitalism for Customers

My most entertaining experience in Prague (1993) was a meal at a restaurant in which one of my friends had a fly in her soup. The waiter was not rude but utterly stone-faced as he removed the offending soup. Meanwhile, the doorknob to the room kept falling off, and the stream of befuddled patrons trying to replace it after it came off in their hands added to the Fawlty Towers atmosphere. Finally, a German tourist from another table ran over to ours with a slab of steak in his head. Delightedly crying, "Look what happens when I cut the meat," he proceeded to saw ineffectually at the impenetrable slab with a knife, laughed hysterically, and ran back to the table.

Good times. I also miss the cheap pilsners.

I haven't noticed a decline in customer service in the US, but NYC always had a pretty low bar.

This probably sounds like fuddy-duddy talk, but some people raise their kids with manners, and some don't.

My in-laws put us up for a week at the Basin Harbor Club, in Vermont, quite a few years ago, and I have never met a more polite, attentive bunch of teenagers and young adults as they had on the staff. As an example, we were a little early arriving, our cottage wasn't ready, but rather than let us and the children cool our heels, a young man took us on a quick golf cart ride around the facilities and explained when things opened, etc. It was a much better intro to the place, and it reminded me of what I heard about Nordstrom's empowering their employees to satisfy the customer. I suspect that any young person working there that couldn't show interest in the customer would not remain long.

Off topic, it was about the most Republican place I've ever been. After aerobics, my wife asked another guest where she worked, and the woman replied, "Work?" There was even a fellow guest that looked a lot like Newt Gingrich. I played doubles with him, and he was a nice guy, but we all called him little Newt.

A lot of service jobs could have benefits, but then the employees are scheduled to work a number of hours to keep them from attaining insurance.  

Just another thing wrong with having an entire health insurance system based around employer-provided insurance.

Service creeps me out to the extent it flows to people who are stereotyped or perceived to have money or means.  It's craven and rude when that happens.

It's that lower-paying, more demanding, less likely to carry benefits aspect that gnaws away at the pillars of customer service.

I work as a janitor at a bowling alley on a military base ... B.S. in Business Admin and half way thru a Masters and both manager and his assistant have none - go figure. A few months back, the head cook was frustrated and was venting her anger. Seems she keeps a tight control over the money in the cash register and knew her section was  drawing tons of cash into the facility. Her anger was with all that influx of cash, pay raises were few and far between. She couldn't understand why she and her workers weren't getting salary increases based on the income they generated for the facility.

I had to sit down and carefully explain to her that her position was minimum wage. That meant each pay raise she received was based on the amount of time she spent working at a specific pay band. And those pay bands were based on a 40 hour work week so part-time employment meant it takes longer to move up.

Not convinced, she argued that there should be some incentive program to reward workers that exceed expectations and generate a cash flow greater than what management anticipated. I replied that while that was a possibility, it was the manager and those above him who would decide if such a program was necessary. In other words, if the top tier management level was only interested in increasing their profits while keeping production costs at minimum levels fat chance workers would be rewarded for their efforts no matter how much profit they generated.

Unfortunate for her,  military installations has a ready supply of spouses and dependents willing to work part-time to earn a few extra dollar to satisfy their spending habits ... they're not interested in careers. That gives management an inexpensive workforce that frequently turns over in less than a year, but saves them tons of money in not having to service medical, retirement, paid sick leave or vacation time.

You might note that this is a bit like talking 2011 India only based on curry houses and Bhagwan ashrams, and forgetting computing in Bangalore and Mumbai and elsewhere. Much of the Czech economy is providing outsourcing for booming Germany and other economies - including automotive sector, chemicals, manufacturing and IT - DHL has one of its 3 world IT centers in Prague, while SAP has its major SW development & support house.

It's also based on how Czechs treat foreigners rather than how they treat other Czechs, which are very different parts of the economy. In a communist economy, tourism was a big deal due to foreign hard currency. In a modern economy, it's more about production, and how many factories have been converted to profitable enterprises, and how many modern techniques for production, development and management have been successfully adopted. You won't get these walking around a conference or the tourist sections of town.

In fact in summer, you might find that most Czechs are off vacationing in the Mediterranean climes.