I had a crackhead-esque craving for an Orange Julius the other day. Like, gotta have it, spare no expense, must get that damn treat kind of craving usually reserved for Star Trek paraphernalia.
So I headed to the obligatory mall (there are no stand-alone Orange Juliuses in Fort Collins). I walked through the rows of closed shops and aged interiors of a previous age of consumerism.
Orange Julius is a tribute to a past age. Don’t get me wrong – malls can be, and in some places, still are, relevant. But big picture – most malls get it wrong. And Orange Julius is inextricably linked to the aging image of the American shopping mall.
This isn’t the big problem. The big problem facing Orange Julius is complacency. And that complacency allowed them to fuck with a fat kid’s food – and that’s a big problem. (I’m the fat kid, in case you were wondering).
I was “greeted” by a generic teen mall employee who took my order, my cash, and then pulled a strawberry Orange Julius blender container from an ice chest. Instead of making one fresh, on the spot, to-order, she poured the half-melted pre-made Orange Julius and served it up.
I stuck around a bit to see if this happened to any other customers (what few there were) – and discovered it was pretty much the same story across the board until a flavor ran out. Once every six or seven customers, someone would get a 100% fresh Orange Julius. Any other time, the new was blended with the old or only the old was used.
Yuck.
Your only job is this. You exist only to delight your customers. Thats. Fucking. It. How on earth do you delight your customers when you can’t be bothered to do the work? If only one out of six of your customers is delighted, you’re doing something wrong.
Don’t argue the cost savings issue – surely it wastes more money to waste left-over old Orange Julius at the end of the night. And don’t give me the “disconnected low-cost teenage employee” issue either – if the Porn Industry is any indication, the “barely legal” crowd is doing just fine “delighting” customers world-wide.
Let’s parallel this story with two others: Dairy Queen and Berry Blendz.
Dairy Queen also made some headway through the malls back in the day, but they also built an outstanding external presence which serves them well to this day. They don’t make everything fresh (though, can you imagine how amazing that would be? I’d wait 3 hours for that Blizzard) – but they do make everything to-order. There’s no pre-made Blizzards under teenage guard anywhere, ever. I can’t speak for every DQ out there, but they’ve usually always done a great job greeting me and making small talk while they whip up whatever belt-notch-adding-treat I’ve paid for.
Berry Blendz is like the local coffee shop of smoothie stores. It’s like they’re fruit baristas. Everything is made to order and as fresh as possible. There’s no ice chest with pre-blended smoothies. Would that make it faster? Probably. Would it be worth the shorter wait? Have you ever tasted a smoothie past its prime?
This story is not unique to any one industry and it almost always starts with complacency.
What are some businesses you wish would freshen up?
(Header photo: Mallwalking Photo Shoot Rejects by Chip Harlan)
Which, in my world, is usually followed up by something utterly inexplicable, such as this book found in the Children’s section of the Kindle book store:
Dickish Behavior is Addicting
Under the right circumstances, it’s pretty easy to forget the first social lesson we ever learned: The Golden Rule.
A more adult version of the rule: Just because you have a(n) _____ doesn’t mean you can be a dick.
Fill in the blank with your own noun of choice:
Being a dick an addiction – it’s just as damaging to be addicted to drugs; it hurts just as many people and may eventually get you killed (or shot). Being a dick is powerful; you’re leveraging your “superiority” over someone else and letting them know it. It’s like flashing around your 4.0 GPA or guitar skills; it feels good – and when someone recognizes that by asking you to help them, it’s easy to perceive it as a challenge to your achievement.
I have this issue, and I’m guessing you do too sometimes.
If I’m in a creative mindset, and somebody asks me a technical question, my blood pressure spikes. It’s not something I do on purpose, it’s just so easy to forget that not everybody knows computers like I do. We all have expertise in something that goes way beyond surface-level knowledge.
That thing you do better than anybody else? Not everybody knows how to do that thing. Not only that, but there’s probably somebody out there who knows it better than you. Don’t forget it, or else you risk becoming a dick.
It only takes a split-second glance in the mirror to realize how we’re behaving. Most of us correct ourselves; sociopaths don’t (and can’t).
I’ve worked really hard to train myself to take a breath before I answer any questions and to put myself in that other person’s shoes, because if I don’t, I might snap off an answer. I always pay attention to my tone while I’m teaching somebody something because if I don’t, I sound condescending. I try never to take the mouse and do it for them, because if I do, they won’t learn what they were asking me for.
Call me the Geek Superhero or a good teacher all you want, but training myself to do those things is really fucking hard. I don’t always get it right.
I don’t tell you this to discourage you from asking me technical questions, I really do love teaching people how to use technology. I just want to put it out there because maybe you struggle with the same issues and I don’t want to bullshit you into thinking it’s something easy to fix. It is an addiction and it takes work to compensate for it – and the bad news: there’s no Dicks Anonymous.
Remember D.A.R.E.? How they talked about enablers and gateway drugs and all that? In terms of dickish behavior, the Internet is the biggest dick enabler of them all. It’s really, really easy for us to be dicks to customers, friends, and even complete strangers when the Internet is involved. There’s no filters except for what we impose on ourselves, and it’s time we each own up.
The knowledge that being a dick is an addiction is pretty freeing. It’s easy to fall off the wagon and be a jerk. It’s also easy to lose empathy for jerks, to write ‘em off, to write ‘em out of our lives. But – unless you’re dealing with a sociopath – empathy gives you an avenue and a reason to save important relationships. Isn’t that the better option?
Empathy is the nicotine patch for dickish behavior. Knowing that, who are you going to help?
[Blog Carnivalers - here's that code you're looking for: EMPATHY. Oh - and if you're wondering what the heck the code is for, click here to join the Blog Carnival party.]
UPDATE:
My friend Michael Hudson shared this video for you all to enjoy.
(Header photo: Rude Banana by The Kozy Shack)