Store owners shoot congenial, hairy beer customer

Owners of the Marketplace Foods in Hayward, Wis., decided to call in the law when a 125-pound male entered the store and, without bothering anyone, walked to the beer cooler and sat down. The customer then waited patiently for an hour. To this reporter’s eyes it seems clear he was waiting for a staff member to locate his preferred brand, but the brains at the store didn’t feel that way. Acting on the gross and unfair prejudice that because said customer was a black bear and therefore must be a threat (Why must we fear what we don’t understand?) managers called  officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who tranquilized and removed the customer.

This kind of treatment should be reserved solely for executives from Bear-Stearns. (sorry. I had to do it.)

In case you think I am misreading this incident, remember that EYEWITNESSES “say the bear seemed content to sit in the cooler — and they note that he didn’t drink any of the beer.” (emphasis added)

Given the number of breweries which have used bears to sell their beer without recompense (gallery below), I hope they will hire a sympathetic law firm to come to the defense of this cruel victim of bad customer service.

As the astute songwriter Steven Fromholz noted in his song Bears (ably performed here by one Mr. Lyle Lovett):

Some folks say there ain’t no bears in Arkansas
Some folks never seen a bear at all
Some folks say that bears go around eating babies raw
Some folks got a bear across the hall

Some folks say that bears go around smelling bad
Others say that a bear is honey sweet
Some folks say this bear’s the best I ever had
Some folks got a bear beneath their feet

Some folks drive the bears out of the wilderness
Some to see a bear would pay a fee
Me I just bear up to my bewildered best
And some folks even see the bear in me

So meet a bear and take him out to lunch with you
And even though your friends may stop and stare
Just remember that’s a bear there in the bunch with you
And they just don’t come no better than a bear

 

   

 

 

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Hotel fires staff for providing too much customer service

A small hotel on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has fired all its male employees for repeatedly having affairs with foreign female guests.

The hotel now only has women staffers. I wonder if this will mean more traffic from Olivia and other “women-friendly” travel agencies.

Airline CEO crashes and burns his marketing as private email goes public

Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza “inadvertently sent an e-mail intended as an internal memo to a Spirit Airlines staff member to a couple who had e-mailed Baldanza a complaint about bad service on his airline.”

The customers had written what has been characterized as a “long but polite” letter asking for a $376.84 refund to cover a trip ruined by a three-hour delay to their Spirit Airlines flight. In an email meant instructing a staffer how to respond Baldanza wrote: “Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny. ”

He then hit “reply all.”

BTW, Aviation.com (from whence I got this story) said that the customers “were more angry over the rudeness and bad service they felt they had experienced at the hands of Spirit Airlines staff during the three-hour delay than at the fact of the delay itself.”

(I am late to the story, it broke a couple of weeks ago when one of the customers in question posted the story to another blog and then it went into WIDE circulation.)

Aviation.com also quotes the Orlando Sentinal who got the following amazing quotes from one Alison Russell, Spirit Airlines’ director of corporate communications in North America:

• “No, we really don’t believe we have anything to apologize for regarding Ben’s e-mail.”
• “I can tell you that Ben cares enormously about our customers and our customer service. Ben said what is exactly true: that we don’t owe the customer anything. People can and do post whatever they would like on the Internet. But it cannot alter your adherence to your company policy or your procedures.”
• “Truthfully, I’m genuinely not concerned,” she said. “People are going to have a blog for good things or bad things. We are very pleased with our customer service, we are very pleased with what we do.”

It’s always been my understanding that when it comes to customer service, it’s the customer who should determine whether or not a company is pleased with what it does.

Repeat after me, Mr. Baldanza & Ms. Russell, “I’m sorry. We screwed up. This is not how we want to operate. This kind of attitude starts with the top leadership and I clearly need to take full responsibility.” Then you list the concrete actions you are taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

There’s a simple lesson that spies and journalists learn early on: Don’t write anything down unless you’re comfortable with it appearing on the front page of the New York Times. Fortunately for spies and journalists, very few people learn that lesson.

Hmmm, seems to be airline theme week …