This seems like a basic, after school or in school symposium speech, thing, but it doesn't seem like people give a shit.
This post, of course, arose from an incident. I love going to see movies, and I see about 30 every year in theaters. Unfortunately due to work, financial setbacks, and other factors I haven't been able to see any movies this month which, also unfortunately-for me at least, has led me to miss on some good movies like "Pina" and "Into the Abyss." Finally, after a long week, and an especially long day with unruly kids I received a nice paycheck and decided to see 'The Hunger Games' at the local cinema. This theater has always had issues with customers, going back to their inception. It seems to be run by wannabe turn-key operators, and consequently they've displayed a lack of concern. During the past few movies I've seen there, I have dealt with quality issues in particular with feedback. I dealt with it during 'Crazy Stupid Love.' I dealt with it during 'War Horse.' The picture quality is a bit low, but I can live with it. I, however, feel that if you pay money for something you should receive good quality, regardless. During 'Hunger Games,' I didn't get that quality. I figured by a year they would've fixed the issue, but they didn't. I went to go get money back then. The manager, very reluctantly, gave me my money back and added "Well I guess you can pay $18 and see it in Gainesville."
Well, I will. Or I will pay $1.50 to Redbox or $8/month for netflix, or I will pay $5 for HD on Vudu.
Given the variety of options that come with seeing movies-rentals, instant queue, video on demand, you'd think that a movie theater would be appreciative of patronage, that the movie theater would care about the customers enough to ensure quality viewing to properly compete with the home viewing experience. If this were the case, the manager wouldn't have been snarky. He would have said, "Sir, I apologize for the quality and we'll work hard so your next viewing experience will be exceptional." If this were the case, there would not be a feedback problem, or it would've been fixed or the theater would wisely invest money in high quality instruments and equipment. If this were the case, they would say "even if we have to raise the price, it will be less expensive than driving to Gainesville, and people deserve quality." That's just it, though. Their mentality isn't that. Their mentality is "either give us money or pay more to drive to Gainesville." They know that people can't afford on a regular basis to go to Gainesville. They know that their quality might be substandard, that they might be able to cut corners, they might be able to charge a lot for concessions, that they can pick movies that they want rather than what an audience wants. "Don't like it, pay for the gas money to go to Gainesville." To hell with that, and to hell with this "don't like it, leave" mentality.
What happened to giving a shit about people? I'm not one to talk about how good things use to be, because I think that's primarily a load of shit. When you look at some things, you do see various circumstances that seem better. Like profit sharing; when a workplace made a profit, the profits were shared to all employees. The modern day equivalent of that is 401Ks, which do not provide exceptionally liquid assets (unless your 59 and a half), and can be a form of entrapment. Another example: Rich's. Rich's used to be a substantial retail store in the Southeast before being absorbed into Macy's. Rich's had this policy of allowing returns for a substantial time. They didn't care about losing money; they thought long term, and knew long term that keeping a customer was more vital for their business than a short term profit stemming from a purchase (I may need to blog about short term thinking versus long term thinking).
No less, in the case of the rant-and this is a rant out of frustration-I feel that the sense of entitlement that permeates in workplaces and businesses needs to cease. There's a great scene in the season 2 finale of Mad Men called "Meditations in an Emergency" where during the merger of Putnam, Powell, and Lowe meeting Duck Philips outlines his plan for Sterling Cooper, in bringing it to "financial maturity" by buying ad spaces, "the cheaper we can get it." Bert Cooper (the Objectivist of the group) is the one who says "I didn't hear the word 'client' once." This, of course, leads to Don Draper choosing to opt out of this vision because of his concern for clients and his job's duties in favor of the clients.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5N3OQklFEU
It seems as though the world has been taken over by the Duck Philips's of the world. People who don't give a shit about people, who are willing to do things half-assed so long as there are short-term profit gains and not take into consideration of long term.
Joe DiMaggio has a quote that I think is suitable for the topic of "giving a shit." When asked why he plays so hard, he said "There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. I owe him my best." I think it is within our self-interests to always owe people our best and to give a shit.
I will see 'Hunger Games' in Gainesville, by the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment