Customer Service

Americans are terrible at customer service. This shortcoming is a sad remnant of our slave holding heritage. No one that participated in the slave trade, owners or victims, would once again want to experience servitude. This attitude has filtered down to the present day. Americans mistake service for servitude.

In Britain service is a valued occupation. Here people just don't get it. This may be a fundamental misunderstanding of the golden rule. We do unto others before it gets done to us. I'd wager this nation has more assholes per square mile than any country in the world, save France.

Usually places with dense populations confined to restricted areas like an island, say Japan, have extremely well mannered populations. Here, Manhattan Island might be the rudest place on earth. All of our wide open spaces gives discourtesy a place to grow.

We tend to treat the help bad, can't handle complaints, making them or taking them without being surly and when we are forced into service the ring ofour insincerity sounds a clarion more unsettling than the incivility it masks. Our heroes are ball breakers and mean girls. Want to commit political suicide, admit to liberalism or acts of kindness. Charity is measured in dollar amounts. Even our churches are for profit institutions.

So if you are put on hold for 90 minutes, it's probably just deserts. When you hear the east Indian accent in the phone know that this job has left the country because ofour inability to listen, least wise empathize. If you can't get an answer, an apology or get anyone to admit a mistake you must be in America.

I meet and deal with kind and wonderful people everyday but this is not the image we project. The solution to unemployment is to have the business bigshots and smallshots hire an army Emily Post's to retrain America to be polite. Teachers and parents first.