Pennies do not come from heaven.
They have to be earned here on earth
Margaret Thatcher


The success of any business depends on good, courteous customer service. A business whose main concern is to keep its customers happy, is a business which will succeed. One can accurately say that business establishments are a dime a dozen. Can one say the same for the customers? Ask business owners who've had to close their doors for lack of customers. Business owners who do not train or monitor their employees behavior with the customer, will eventually lose the business.

Employees who study customer behavior, who focus on the importance of being helpful and concise in a courteous manner, who understands the customers demands, who meet and exceed customer demand, whose priority is customer satisfaction and who are knowledgeable of the impact to profitability by behaving in a professional manner, eventually go UP the corporate ladder. The one who feels he's doing the customer a favor, or tries to make the customer feel dumb, will NEVER go up the ladder. This egocentric, SMART employee often travels that long line to the unemployment agency, while the the customer he thought so DUMB, travels up the long check-out stand of another store.

I will give you a few examples of my NASTY encounters and will add more, should I have more bad experiences:

I called a major telephone company for service. I was kept on hold forever and finally the phone disconnected. I called back and calmly told the lady that I'd been left on hold and then disconnected. She started yelling things I could not understand, because she was yelling like a deranged manic. I asked for her name and she hung up on me. I called another telephone company and ordered my service from them.

I decided to buy a computer and went to a major computer establishment. I was totally ignorant THEN about computers, I STILL am! I asking the employee some questions and immediately started feeling uncomfortable because his manner was made me feel so stupid because the truth was, I was stupid. I got out of there as fast as I could and went elsewhere. There, the employee took his time in explaining things and let me know that "first timers in the computer world" didn't know much, but would eventually learn some stuff. I bought my computer there. I go often to this store and have bought many things such as my digital camera, printer, scanner, oodles of software, mouse pads and all of my business supplies. I've recommended this store to all of my friends and family. They're customers there, also. Oh, and by the way, the OTHER computer store, which was a MAJOR computer store, where I'd received such poor service, has gone out of business.

I went to a grocery store which sells bulk merchandise. One of the items was a block of cheese. When I went checker-out stand, I noticed that the block of cheese had a huge bite at one corner. It was apparent that it had been bitten off a long time before because the teeth imprints were already dry. I brought this to the cashier's attention and she asked me out loud, "Did YOU bite it"? I turned red with embarrassment because there were some customers in line behind me and they had heard. I replied in outrage, "NO! I didn't! Why do you ask me such a question"? Her sarcastic reply was, "Well, one never knows". This store doesn't exist anymore. I'm sure this store will go under very soon. It hardly has any customers.

I went to a grocery store with a coupon for a (buy one dozen medium eggs and get the other free). There were NO medium eggs to be seen. I asked one of the employee's for medium eggs and she told me in a flippant manner, "we don't have any" and walked away. I don't go to that grocery store anymore. I now go to another one that I'm very satisfied with. This store is constantly full of customers.

I went to a place that specializes in hair dyes, shampoos, etc. I needed some information on a particular brand of dye. I couldn't find anyone to help me. I could hear talking and laughter coming from the back room so I entered and asked the two girls my question. They looked up at me with an expression on their faces of "How dare you interrupt us." One of the girls finally got up and went to show me which dye would be best for me, and left. I looked and looked, but couldn't find the color I wanted. I just left, didn't want to bother them anymore. As I was leaving, I noticed that there were some people waiting to pay for the articles they wanted to buy. Problem was, there was NOBODY there. I didn't stick around to find out if the girls in the backroom who were having such fun, ever attended them. Hmmm...wonder what the owner would have said.

There have been times where I want to purchase something and the employee at the counter is on the phone. The conversation is personal and not business. The employee continues chit chatting and the hell with me.

Government and City Employees. I won't even begin to go over the COUNTLESS horrors I've been through with a FEW of their employees!

I found a website, full of employee's comments about how they use revenge in order to get even with customers they feel are idiots or whom they don't like. My blood is still boiling over some of the filth I read.

The best way to appreciate your job
is to imagine yourself without one.
- Oscar Wilde

SOME employees are rude and act as though they owned the store. I wonder if they would behave in this pompous disrespectful manner, if the BOSS were standing right next to them. The competition in the business world is huge, especially now with the Free Trade. Business owners must keep tabs on their employees.

EMPLOYEE'S PAY HEED TO THESE QUOTES!

"You foolish man, you don't even
know your own foolish business."
- Earl of Chesterfield

Business today consists in persuading crowds.
- Gerald Stanley Lee

"I attend to the business of other
people, having lost my own."
- Horace

We demand that big business give people
a square deal; in return we must insist
that when any one engaged in big business
honestly endeavors to do right, he shall
himself be given a square deal.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you.
- Sir William Turner

It is high time that the ideal of success
should be replaced by the ideal of service.
- Albert Einstein

First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
- Mahatma Gandhi

---

Remember and don't forget for a second, businesses are a dime a dozen, customers are NOT. Without the customer, the owner of the establishment loses all he has invested and the employee is unemployed - again. Employees under the erroneous concept that they can't be replaced are DEAD wrong. Kings, presidents and dectators have been replaced and the world has still gone on without them.

Employees with bad attitudes who behave rude and try to make the customer feel stupid, and who do not have embedded in their brains that the customer is ALWAYS right, will eventually be unemployed. Also, the poor business owner will ask himself, "huh! what happened??" when he's gone bankrupt. The STUPID customer doesn't need a crystal ball to see that someday this particular business establishment will soon go under. Thank goodness the DUMB customer has an array of other business to go and leave their MONEY! Educated successful business management, who fully realize the POWER of the customer and who's motto is "The Customer Is ALWAYS Right", contstantly hear, with joy, the cash register going $$ clang clang!

What the rude employee must realize is that even he is a customer at one time or another, and I'm sure he demands good service. If an employee finds he can't restrain his temper or is annoyed when a customer approaches because he must stop what he's doing, then it's time for him to quit. I'm sure there are thousands of job seekers who would be most happy to take on his job. There's always a rotton apple in every barrel, but in the business world, rotton apples are a NO NO because then the rest of the good healthy apples won't make it to market!

---

Make a customer, not a sale.
Katherine Barchetti

Every company's greatest assets are its customers,
because without customers there is no company.
Michael LeBoeuf

"Consumers are statistics.
Customers are people."
Stanley Marcus

"Capital can do nothing without brains to direct it."
J. Ogden Armour

"The great menace to the life of an
industry is industrial self-complacency."
David Sarnoff

"Like vinegar to the teeth,
and smoke to the eyes,
so are the lazy to their employers."
Proverbs 10:26

"The person who knows HOW will always have a job.
The person who knows WHY will always be his boss."
- Diane Ravitch

"All fingers are not alike, if you cut bigger ones
to make all equal it is communism, if you stretch
smaller ones to make all equal it is socialism, if
you do nothing to make all equal it is capitalism."
- B.J. Gupta

"Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give
you a man who will make history. Give me a man
with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk."
-J.C. Penney

Be nice to people on your way up
because you meet them on your way down.
- Jimmy Durante