There was a story on the radio last week about a gas station in Osoyoos, BC, that accidentally sold a gasoline and diesel mixture to customers for a period of about four hours. It had been a mistake by the delivery driver, adding gasoline to the diesel tank, and diesel to the gasoline tank. So a bunch of customers were affected, like their cars stopped running properly and so forth, and it was a pretty nasty situation, if you consider the clean-up and repairs involved. But the thing was that as soon as the gas station owner heard about the problem, he put the word out that it was human error and that he would take responsibility. He would pay for customer repairs out of pocket.
I wonder if you’ve noticed this phenomenon… If someone makes a mistake and tries to hide it, that ticks people off. But if they come clean about it, and make amends as best they can, then it’s easy to forgive them. Moreover, I’ve found that most people *want* to know if they’ve made a mistake, and they *want* the opportunity to make amends, or else… you know, you’re just left feeling shitty. It’s this concept of doing the right thing. If I’m in a restaurant (in the Beforetimes, obviously), if there’s a problem with my food, then I let the server know, and for the most part, they will solve the problem. Or if there’s a problem with the service, I’ll speak to management and let them know the issues. I will always give a restaurant, or whatever kind of company, a second chance IF they did the right thing and solved the problem. The only time I will say, “Never again,” is if they don’t apologize, don’t take steps to resolve the issue.
And hey, THAT reminds me of a thing I read that pointed out… Why is it that a big restaurant chain can screw up a hundred times over and people will continue to go back? McDonald’s can put cheese on your burger when you asked them not to, or Milestones can bring you the wrong soup and you’ll keep going back. But if your small, local, family owned place makes a mistake, doesn’t bring your salad, that’s IT, That’s it I’m never coming back, that place was crap!
Support your local small businesses!
If there is something wrong with your food, you need to tell your server. When they ask you how is everything, don’t say it’s fine if it isn’t fine. Especially if you’re then going to go away and never come back because you weren’t happy with your food. Tell them, so they have the chance to fix it. This harkens back to something I know I talked about in an earlier post: don’t blame somebody else for a problem if you aren’t going to tell them there is one!
That’s why I think it’s important with kids, (let’s talk parenting now, shall we?) If the kids made a mistake, spilled something, or made a mess of some kind, we always enlisted their help to clean it up. It helped them to understand why they maybe shouldn’t have done that thing, and definitely put some control back in their hands, so they learned from the situation, rather than just feeling crappy about it. Which then taught them to work the same way in their lives as they grew up.
Another thing to keep in mind regarding making mistakes… something it has taken me years to learn, is that in the long run, most of them don’t really matter. It’s important to take responsibility for your errors, and address them wherever possible, but keep in mind that, as Stephen King pointed out, somebody said the Titanic was unsinkable.
I certainly don’t go to bed with *that* on my conscience.