I Just Work Here

            To whom it may concern, this is corporate America and corporate is not concerned. If you have never heard the phrase: “I am going to stop coming here,” then I am legitimately shocked. People love to throw this threat around. I once received it from an out of town customer who was never coming back again anyway. They are frustrated by what they perceive as bad service, I get that. Whether justified or not is a different story, but I’ll let you in on a little secret that applies either way. No one cares. Small businesses are few and far between. Name every coffee shop, grocery store, bank, or pharmacy you know that has less than ten locations and see how many you can come up with. The country is run by corporate giants and an individual customer is not even a blip on their radar.

            From an employee perspective, short of a significant loss in business resulting in reduced hours, pay, or a full out location closedown, the pay is the same whether the store gets this one individual’s business or not. From a corporate perspective, five billion dollars is not that different from five billion one hundred dollars. Now people might think certain places care about their customers because they give them free stuff in light of their complaints, but really that is just the epitome of their apathy. Rather than even bothering to devote a minute of their time to the actual nature of your complaint, they just throw you a gift card and hope you’ll shut up.

            There is such a disconnect between customers and businesses anymore, that your comments really are meaningless most of the time. Those who can actually enact change are beyond reach and those who you can actually speak to, they just work there and can’t do anything about it. They wouldn’t even be able to put you in touch with someone who could do something about it. Most corporations have created a chain of command so expansive, the person in charge of the company probably doesn’t even know what the stores sell. The CEO is too preoccupied with meetings and investors to address your concern about the lack of a designated crosswalk in the parking lot of store number 6305. But what is the store manager going to do, go out and paint one himself? Well who is in charge of parking lot maintenance? I don’t know, someone at corporate. Here is the company contact number, why don’t you give them a call, get transferred fourteen times, and spend an hour on hold before being transferred back to the lady you talked to fifteen minutes ago, maybe that’ll work.

            -AMS