Vision? Nary!

Flemming:

Of course the customer doesn’t come first. The customer gets exactly as little as the company can possibly get away with while still snagging the customer’s money. And sometimes the company can get more money from the customer by making his life hell – for example, by having a “customer retention” policy that makes it all but impossible to cancel an ongoing service. Yes, you can cancel, but only after waiting an hour on hold and then enduring endless sales pitches from a rep who is not allowed to push the “cancel” button until you’ve been read every page in the notebook. After all, you are on the way out, so what bottom-line harm could there be in pissing you off this way? Maybe you’ll become so pissed off that you’ll hang up and remain a customer.

If the customer came first, the return envelopes for your bills wouldn’t have advertisements attached to them – do these companies expect us to believe that they surveyed their customers and discovered that, yes, their customers want to be annoyed by these things once a month?

–
Yes, credit card bills always come with many colorful slips of paper with “great offers” on them.
“We understand you’re a person who likes to buy things.”
“Take this, it’s free! You pay next month.”
“Free sample! just $9.99 shipping and handling!”
Everyone likes free things.

Being an employee of a company isn’t that peachy either.
Do they make you come to morning pep rallies at the fried chicken deli?
The kind where people stand around and chant “I am exited to be here! I love coming to work!”
They do if it’s at WalMart.