Tell Me It Isn’t

In yesterday’s post I told you about the upcoming Disney movie based on the “It’s A Small World” ride; a project which has the potential to be either the best or the very worst thing ever to come out of Hollywood depending on your tolerance for cutesy and your need to keep small children entertained without resorting to cable television. As potentially horrifying as this might be, there was a note contained within the same Los Angeles Times article cited below that contains something far more disturbing, at least in its potential. The Times author notes that Six Flags Magic Mountain is going to dismantle the Colossus rollercoaster – and that this one-time monument to adrenaline is no longer in the top ten rides in any major category…

For those unfamiliar with the installation, the amusement park originally called simply “Magic Mountain” is located just north of Los Angeles along Interstate 5. It’s on the other side of Los Angeles from the various parks in Anaheim and the surrounding areas, and is thus two or three hours closer by car to a large percentage of the city’s residents. The park began with only a few rollercoasters, and relatively modest ones at that, but gradually added various other rides and attractions. When Colossus was introduced in 1978 it was the tallest and fastest wooden rollercoaster in the world, and the first to have drops of 100 feet or more. The park was purchased by Six Flags in 1979, and has since been expanded to include newer rides incorporating increasingly exotic technological elements. Meanwhile, larger and faster rides of various types have appeared in various facilities around the world…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Six Flags has any ethical, moral or historical responsibility to keep Colossus operating. It occupies an enormous amount of highly valuable real estate – over ten acres – and if the company can find a more productive and/or lucrative use for that space, one could argue that they have a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders to do just that. What I find troubling about these events is the ongoing drive for faster, scarier and more extreme rides, and the corresponding increase in the number of adrenaline junkies demanding that manufacturers and park owners continue pushing the limits on ride performance. I have to ask, where does it end?

Once something becomes commonplace it loses whatever appeal it may have had by virtue of being unfamiliar, unexpected, or just extraordinary, and therefore is no longer a selling point. In management theory this phenomenon is the basis for the Resource-Based View of the firm (RBV), which states that in order to offer the company a competitive advantage a given asset must be valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and difficult to substitute for. In the case of the rollercoaster market, once there are higher, faster and/or scarier rides than Colossus, it is no longer a draw for the park and should probably be replaced with something that does give Magic Mountain an edge over the competition. But while this makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, I can’t help worrying about the human costs involved…

Once you’ve traveled down a 100-foot drop at 62 miles per hour it’s harder to get excited by a ride traveling half that distance at two-thirds of that speed. So the competition might respond with something that drops 120 feet at 70 miles per hour, forcing Magic Mountain to create something that drops 140 feet while traveling at 75 miles per hour while upside-down – and the cycle continues until we reach the state of the art in terms of what can be built or what the riders can survive. I have no scientific evidence to suggest that this process makes the people who ride such installations edgy, impatient, or hard to keep focused, but it seems possible that the decrease in attention spans that everyone keeps bemoaning might have something to do with a culture that places ever greater importance on high levels of excitement at all times. Speaking as an educator, this worries me…

I’m not saying there’s a direct causal relationship between these stimuli and a fall-off in attention spans, patience and good behavior among the members of the key demographic groups to whom rollercoasters are marketed. But I would very much like it if somebody could tell me there isn’t…

On Bad Customers

I don't usually comment on other blogs; I have always felt that if I'm going to start that kind of thing it will eventually reach the point where someone is blogging about the blog that someone wrote about somebody blogging about another blog - at which point things will finally have gotten out of hand. But I make the occasional exception, when I feel that someone needs a wider audience, or an author needs to take an idea even further. And in the case of Matt Walsh's recent post about bad customers, I think both apply...

If you didn't catch it - and there are around 100,000,000 blogs out there, so you might not have - Mr. Walsh suggested to a patron whom he witnessed having a meltdown in a fast-food joint that maybe the reason she "always" gets bad customer service is that she is a bad customer. That is, anybody who would spend that much time yelling, screaming and cursing in public over something as trivial as a condiment being left on a junk food sandwich costing a dollar or so is most likely a miserable human being who believes that it is perfectly acceptable to treat minimum-wage employees like crap just because there is nothing they can do about it. That being the case, there's effectively no chance that this person won't find something wrong in almost any customer service situation, because what they really want is the chance to exert dominance over someone...

Now, it is possible that this is just an overt symptom of the entitlement we've seen in almost every other aspect of modern life; as a college instructor I've certainly seen my share of students who believe they should receive credit for work they haven't done, or even that they should received top marks for assignments done incorrectly. But what concerns me the most is the cumulative effect all of this is having on business as a whole. Most people will never have a screaming tantrum in the middle of a junk food stand, because most of us have matured a bit since we were two, but every time you live through something like this it makes the more ordinary rudeness we all have to endure seem more acceptable - or, at least, less important. And believe me on this, the effect is even worse when you're the one on the receiving end of the meltdown...

I'm not saying that everyone who has ever had a miserable excuse for a customer go off on them is going to end up doing the same thing; far from it. Most of us who have worked customer service jobs go out of our way to be nice to the people stilling doing that kind of work. I am saying that the customer service standard common when my generation were children is rare today, and when it occurs at all it is generally considered "old-fashioned" and most likely occupies a major part of the company's strategy. As time goes by, fewer companies are really trying to "take care of their customers" in the traditional sense, because they know that fewer and fewer of their customers value good customer service at all, or at most see it as a weakness and will try to exploit such service in order to get free products or services from the company...

Over time, as customer service is valued less its overall quality declines, which leads to even less value being placed on the customer service function - and the cycle repeats. At the same time, the increased use of automation and the rise of self-checkout and similar services is lowering the number of people actually serving in the customer service role in the first place. If this trend continues it bodes ill for the service sector; what most people may not realize is that it bodes ill for out entire civilization as well. Historically, any society in which civility becomes commonly regarded as a weakness (and rudeness is considered a strength) has not lasted long. I agree with every one of Mr. Walsh's points; I also believe that if he's right, what we are seeing isn't just the decline of American commerce, but the beginning of the end for our entire civilization...

I'm not sure we can fix this. But I believe we'd better start trying...

Adults Only?

I’ve mentioned the idea of age-limited business models in this space before; the idea that there are some customers who would be willing to pay extra for the privilege of not having to worry about fellow travelers – literally, in the case of airlines or trains – who are unwilling to exercise any modicum of parental supervision over their children. This has lead to such concepts as adults-only sections on airliners, movie theaters that either do not show anything rated over PG or don’t admit anyone under 17 to an R movie (accompanied by an adult or not), and even entire communities with a minimum age requirement in order to live there. There have also been specifically child-friendly businesses appearing, notably including restaurants with built-in play areas and movie theaters offering showings specifically for parents (and nannies) looking after small children…

Naturally, this is a polarizing issue, with people on the pro-child side insisting that anyone who does not want to listen to the sounds of a toddler screaming or deal with a pack of small children running around as if they were at a playground is simply a horrible old curmudgeon who hates children, families, freedom, liberty, justice and possibly the American Way. Meanwhile, people on the pro-manners side insist that anyone who can’t afford a babysitter should just stay home with the kids, and that anyone who insists on dragging small children to events or venues that are not age-appropriate is a selfish, narcissistic, inconsiderate, delusional idiot. I’m not going to comment on the social, legal or psychological implications of the debate; as usual I’m going to leave those subjects to people who are better qualified. The question that interests me is whether age-specific (or age-segregated) businesses can be viable in this era…

One large-scale experiment going on right now in Virginia is a restaurant called “The Sushi Place” which is operating in Alexandria. The owners announced that the place would be 18 years or older only during the run-up to their grand opening, and have apparently stuck with that decision during the first weeks of operations. So far it seems to be working; they claim to have been operating at capacity every night so far, and the reaction (both from their local community and the majority of the online comments) appears to be very supportive so far. You can watch the story from the local CBS affiliatestation here if you want to, but at least in the early going this appears to be working…

Now, I’m not familiar with that part of Alexandria or with the restaurant itself; it’s possible that The Sushi Place is succeeding because they’ve chosen a location where their customer base is mostly childless, or because their food, quality, prices and/or service are exceptional, or just because the number of small children who are willing to eat raw fish in the first place is somewhat limited. And it is possible that they are still riding on the buzz from their grand opening, and that business will drop off over time – or that local pro-child activists will start causing enough trouble for the owners that they are eventually forced to change policy. But personally I hope they make it – and I would like to see someone extend the concept to other types of business and locations outside of Virginia…

It’s not that I have any problems with families or children, you understand. It’s just that sometimes I’d like to be able to eat a meal, watch a movie, or reach my destination in relative peace…

Buying Tickets or Not?

Every so often the question come up about whether parents bringing infants into a place of public accommodation should be required to purchase an additional seat for the child, or whether they should be allowed to just keep the child on their laps. Airlines usually allow lap children, despite the risk of injury to the infants in the event of an accident (or even a rough landing) because they weren’t in car seats because the added expense would keep a lot of families from flying at all (you generally can’t leave the kid with a sitter for your entire vacation). Movie theaters and some concert venues allow this because it’s too much trouble to try to prevent it; sporting venues allow this because who really cares if a baby is crying when the entire building too noisy to hear him or her. But the real question isn’t so much how this practice affects the customers, or even how being held in someone’s lap for the whole event affects the baby; it’s whether or not this practice is fair to the other customers – a point brought home this year when the organizers for the Summer Olympics in London posted a policy of requiring all children attending to have their own tickets…

There was a short article about this on MSNBC.com, but the really interesting part of it was reading the (often spirited) debate in the comments section at the bottom of the page. You would probably expect people who have small children to be outraged by this policy, and complain bitterly about this discrimination against children and families; you might also expect people who don’t have small children to counter by pointing out that such activities are bad for the child, unpleasant for everyone else in the grandstand, and potentially disruptive to the events themselves (in situations where the athletes need to concentrate, for example). What was surprising was the number of parents with small children who shot back saying they would never be so rude as to inflict their infants on an unsuspecting public, or so careless as to expose their baby to a stadium-full of germs and pollutants – and the number of people who claim not to have small children who insist that it is wrong to limit someone’s freedom by telling them where they can or can’t take their infants…

I find myself focusing on the fact that no one in London or on the Olympic Committee is saying you can’t bring a child to these events – they’re saying that if you do, you have to buy the child a ticket, just like anyone else. This might be seen as a way of selling more tickets (several of the on-line commentators made that point), but it would certainly be more comfortable for all parties involved, avoid trouble with fire regulations and venue capacity, and eliminate arguments about why somebody under the age of 2 is there in the first place – if the parents bought an extra ticket they clearly aren’t bringing the kids along just because they’re too cheap to hire a sitter. At the same time, however, it won’t settle the arguments about whether the crying and other behaviors are fair to the other customers, or the claims that parents should be allowed to take their children anywhere they want, so long as the children don’t require any additional space…

In general, these questions should have common-sense solutions, based on the actual conditions. If you have a child who will just sleep through a sporting event in a sling you wear, I can’t see the harm in bringing him or her to the stadium. On the other hand, bringing any child to an age-inappropriate event (a PG rated movie, for example) is potentially harmful to the child, and extremely rude to anyone who wants to watch event in peace (toddlers in Lord of the Rings movies? Really?). The problem is, most people have no common sense, and all too many people believe that they should be allowed to do anything they want, regardless of how it affects anyone else. All of which leads me to conclude that while an “everyone buys a ticket” rules may be unpleasant, they’re probably a better idea than the alternative…

Got Manners?

I was reading another one of those “Reasons I don’t go to the movies anymore” articles online this weekend, and agreeing with all of the points the author was making, until we got to the end and they mentioned that once upon a time theaters hired people with flashlights – called “ushers” – to keep order and tell people to stop doing disruptive things. It sounds great, doesn’t it? Until you start thinking about all of the ways that can go wrong – and all of the push-back you’d get from those being policed. As nice as it might be to impose restrictions on bad behavior – to legislate manners on a private scale, in effect – I’m not sure it would be possible in the 21^st Century…

Let’s start with an obvious pet peeve: people who bring children to age-inappropriate features. There’s no law that says you can’t bring children of whatever age to movies rated R or lower; the Restricted rating just says you can’t see the film unless you have someone over the age of 17 with you (there’s no requirement to investigate whether or not the older person is actually your parent). The people who do this will invariably tell you that their kids are advanced for their age, able to handle whatever happens on the screen, experienced in dozens of similar features, and/or they can’t find or afford a babysitter (and frequently all of the above). And in some cases this is undoubtedly true, but all too often I find myself dealing with people who have brought toddlers (or occasionally infants) to action movies, where the kids spend the entire time screaming, crying, babbling, or running around. The real question is what can you do about it?

You can’t just refuse service to anyone with small children, as that would violate several Federal laws, and alienate the aforementioned couples whose children do just fine at the movies. You can have employees (with or without flashlights and uniforms) ask people whose children are being disruptive to leave, but this will disturb even more people, especially if the problem parents refuse to leave the theater. You can’t very well ask hourly employees to risk serious injury by trying to physically remove someone who is disrupting a performance, and you probably can’t afford the liability insurance you would need to cover either the customer lawsuits or the worker’s compensation claims that would result. And calling the police to eject someone probably won’t work after the first couple of call outs…

Similar problems exist with people who talk during the presentation, people who insist on chewing gum (or eating actual foods) with their mouth open, or people who can’t make it through a 90-minute movie without four restroom breaks, six trips to the concession stand, and a smoke break. It’s easier to get rid of people who won’t put away their cell phones – they could very easily be taking pictures or video of the movie, and that is illegal – but you still have the issue of enforcement…

Now, I’m sure most people would agree that a big part of the decline of the movie theater industry can be traced to high prices and low quality. There are only so many people who will go to see Adam Sandler in drag (as his primary character’s twin sister) as a remarkably ugly woman, or Eddie Murphy having sex with himself (playing both roles) as a singularly ugly woman and an almost equally unappealing man – and even fewer who will pay $10 to $12 in order to do so. But by the same token, it’s hard to deny that part of what makes the movie-going experience so much less enjoyable (and therefore so much less valuable) than it was decades ago is the annoying behavior of your fellow customers…

From time to time we all see editorials about how the decline in civility is destroying our civilization, ruining our idyllic way of life, turning us all into bad people, and so on. I’m going to leave all of those discussions to those better equipped (and educated) about such things, but this much I can tell you for a certainty: some of those behaviors that make your teeth grind are, in fact, destroying whole sectors of our economy. I’ll try to call more of them to your attention as we go along, but for now let’s all just keep in mind that bad manners don’t just make our day less pleasant…

Where’s the Line?

Since we’re picking on air travel and measuring slippery slopes lately, let’s consider an issue that comes up any time you fly anywhere: just how awful does someone have to be before the airline is justified in throwing them off the airplane? I’m not talking here about someone claiming to have a bomb, assaulting a Flight Attendant, or trying to rush the cockpit and break down the door; those things are all Federal crimes, and the means for dealing with them already exists – assuming that the individual’s fellow passengers don’t assume that he or she is a terrorist, decide that a possible chance of being killed stopping the offender is better than certain death in another 9/11 suicide scenario, and beat the unfortunate annoyance to death in the aisle. What about cases where things aren’t so clear?

There were two events in June that illustrate the point rather well. In the first, a woman on a flight from New York to San Francisco decided to light up a cigarette on a no-smoking airplane, and when prevented from doing so, became combative and belligerent, screamed racial epithets at the flight crew, and eventually punched a flight attendant in the face. Efforts to restrain the woman were ineffective, and the pilot elected to land in Denver and have law enforcement remove her from the airplane. It’s doubtful that anyone on board was actually endangered by this episode, and once the offender had been tethered to her seat, her continued screaming, stomping and kicking the bulkhead was probably not interfering with the safe operation of the aircraft. Still, I don’t suppose anyone on board would have objected to the unscheduled landing, except for the fact that it made the flight more than 3 hours late…

Then a few weeks later, a woman was on a short-haul flight to New Jersey with her autistic son when the toddler lost it completely and had a “total meltdown” on the aircraft. Airline personnel attempted to treat this like any other misbehaving child, but their training did not cover handling severe autistic episodes, and efforts to get the boy to stay in his seat, stop thrashing madly about, and stop screaming just made things worse. When the child’s mother was unable to stop the meltdown, or even keep her son from “rolling around on the floor” of the aircraft during the roll out and taxi, the pilot aborted the takeoff, returned to the gate, and had law enforcement escort mother and child off his plane. All parties involved acknowledged that the cheers of the remaining passengers when the police arrived, while understandable, did not help the situation…

So where do we draw the line in these situations? An agency offering public accommodation (like an airline) can not simply ask people with disabilities (like autism) not to come aboard; the law requires them to make “reasonable accommodation” for those people. But if an individual’s condition is so severe that they can’t maintain control during a short airplane ride, at least to the extent of not endangering other passengers during the takeoff, then they really should not be on an airplane. If they use the Americans With Disabilities Act to force the airline’s hand, then they are, at best, taking unfair advantage of a law meant to prevent actual discrimination of the disabled. And if a child without any disabilities is behaving like this, I’d have to say that his or her parents probably should be arrested for something, if only being a useless excuse for parents…

In the case of the out-of-control smoker, we actually have another slippery slope to consider. On being interviewed in the Denver jail, the offender in this case claimed not to remember anything about the episode because of the three vodka drinks she had obtained during the flight, and promptly blamed the airline for not cutting her off. She later admitted to having a few beers (4 or 5) on the ground before the flight, as well. Depending on the exact size and content of the drinks, that would mean a BAC of between .15 and .30, which would qualify as public intoxication almost anywhere in the U.S. But the problem is, there’s no FEDERAL law against public intoxication, and airlines are not equipped to detect/prevent this behavior anyway. I don’t think requiring the flight attendants to give people a breath test before selling them a drink is a good idea, but neither do I think prohibition in the air is a good idea. So when should airline personnel cut someone off, and who gets to decide?

I could go on, but you get the idea. Clearly, when a passenger’s conduct endangers the health and/or safety of his/her fellow passengers, the airline needs to pitch that individual off of their aircraft as quickly as possible. As always, the problem is finding that line, and choosing the person to decide when a customer has crossed it…