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When Customers and Employees Clash Online
by Dana Rousmaniere
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Recently, a pastor in St. Louis dined with a party of 10 at Applebee's. When her check came with an automatic 18% tip already added (standard for large parties), she crossed it out and wrote a note in its place that said: “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18%?” The waitress showed the receipt to a co-worker, who snapped a photo and posted it online. The rest, as they say, is history. The pastor was subjected to a vitriolic attack in the court of public opinion. The waitress was fired (at the pastor’s request).
The moral of the story? According to Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, “In America, where ‘the customer is always right,’ a confrontation between a customer and an employee, mediated by a manager, is almost never going to end in satisfaction for the employee, no matter how badly the customer behaved.” Still, he argues that “10,000 digital tongue-lashings and a note on their permanent record” imposes quite a sentence on entitled or belligerent customers. While he agrees that businesses should hold employees accountable for exposing customers to Internet ridicule, Friedersdorf hopes that the transparency that technology brings will make the customer of tomorrow think twice before behaving badly.
Read the entire HBR article
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