Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Constants and variables 10
Sometimes I feel completely retarded. Here's a rule of life that's perfectly obvious. I didn't figure it out until two years ago:
If you want to be treated well by a business, be the customer. Don't be the product.
I suppose my stupidity is somewhat forgivable; you don't learn this rule in school and it's never stated by media or politicians. Also, in the old world of profit-seeking business, you were almost always the customer. In the modern era of share-value-seeking business, you're almost always a tiny piece of the product. For share-based companies, the customer is an equity raider. Either the company is trying to be purchased by JPMorgan, or the company has already been purchased by JPMorgan and is now being "creatively destroyed" to enrich JPMorgan.
The landscape has changed without changing the description.
Media have a special interest in retaining confusion about this rule because they're the prime offenders. As a paying reader you think you're the customer, but you're not. You're the product, or more precisely the raw material for the product. Thus you shouldn't be surprised when newspapers treat you like a lump of coal or a chunk of wood.
Here's the little incident that finally caused me to figure it out: When I paid a tree-cutting crew, they treated me very respectfully and carefully. Several months later, I saw the same crew treating a neighbor rudely and cavalierly. Puzzling. The neighbor hadn't done anything to deserve rudeness. What's the difference? Aha! The neighbor wasn't paying them. They were contracted by the city to trim street trees.
Labels: Constants and Variables
¶ 3:57 PM
