I cannot speak for other countries, or even most of mine. But what I can do is speak of what I see around me from my own personal observation. Certainly nothing is absolute and I recognize the moments of warmth and the compassionate, sincere people too.
I am dismayed, as of late, at the amount of apathetic and deceptive behavior that surrounds and envelopes my local community. National fast food restaurant chains struggle to find young people who care enough to do a quality job. Your order is almost as likely to be wrong and poorly made as it is to be even remotely qualified to be worth what you are paying for it. And managers are apathetic to the service being given that the only time they become aware of the terrible service their employees are giving is when you complain. Then, again, people are so apathetic to the terrible service they receive that they do not complain when they should. For those of us who care that their $7 is being handed to someone who could care little more than you received “something” on your tray, we are surrounded by mediocrity with few tools to do anything about it.
I guess the good thing about capitalism when it works is that it fosters competition in the quality of service given. If there are no competitors, or very few, then companies can become uncaring, deceiving and even malicious in their treatment of customers.
A local computer business has no competition in the community. So they post a sign that says, “No cash refunds. Store credit only.” They are allowed to do this because no-one can call them on it. Basically the idea is that if you need to get something from their store, you will give them money and hope what they give you works—you will not get your money back.
I recently helped a friend wherein they needed an external hard drive casing in order to recover files from their laptop computer that fried. We purchased the casing from Martinsville Electronics and when we got it to their home discovered that we could not fit the hard drive in it due to excessive gluing inside. I returned the casing and explained/showed that they glue was preventing the hard drive from being inserted properly. The technician came from the back, took the casing, put one of their hard drives in it and brought it back out front. Demonstrating the product he says, “Looks like it works fine to me.” I took the casing and examined it and you can see that he clearly forced his hard drive down into the hardened glue. The glue had been imprinted and you can see where it was scraped by the edges of the drive—some glue shredded up underneath the corner of the drive. I pointed this out to him and told him, “You forced the drive into the glue. You are a technician and may feel comfortable taking that chance, but you cannot expect a customer off the street to risk breaking the casing or their hard drive.” He responded, “No I didn’t. It fit perfectly.” Then he repeated the elementary demonstration of the tray sliding into the casing.
If I lived in the hood, did not have a job in the public eye and so forth, this kind of blatant insult would have resulted in this young person recovering from a bludgeoned face. But we allow our weathered community and tough economic circumstances to provide an excuse for this kind of unheard of treatment towards paying customers. I am currently working through the Better Business Bureau to get my friend their refund. The surrounding news sources refuse to get involved and the Chamber of Commerce seems uninterested, recommending the BBB.
There just seems to be no-one willing to fight for what is right around here. People are allowed to get away with the absolute minimum of effort and concern or care. My landlord is finally (after at least 4 four years) making an effort to repair the rusted and depilated stairs leading to my apartment.
But even during the repairs, he has shown no interest or concerns about his tenants living at the top of those stairs. No notice was given that repairs would be taking place and I come home from work to find out they are “out of order”. They did not even put a sign warning of the current state of disrepair. I literally had to find one of the workers that understood English and asked, “Would it be okay for me to go up this way?” He said, “If you think you can make it.” So I balanced, leaned and worked my way up the parts of the stairs that were stable and exposed. If I had known that they were to be working, I would have brought my backdoor key and could have gone around.
Days of working and still no note from the workers or the landlord. The first evening, they left the stairs uncompleted and no note. Not knowing that they had NOT completed their work, I went to leave that night to visit a friend. Not only were their literal holes where stairs should have been, the middle metal plate (pictured above) was now wet concrete, which I thoroughly stepped in as I try to recover from stepping over a missing step.
No signs or notes. Just incomplete work left for people to hurt themselves in. I called my landlord to complain and could only leave a message because of the lateness. He has yet (a week later) to reply in any way. The last several days has the stairs poorly constructed with concrete and bricks supported by wood from underneath. Today, they appear to be attempting to weld on the rusted stair frames. Slightly backwards, one would think. Would you not repair the frame expected to hold hundreds of lbs of brick and concrete before you lay the brick and concrete?
Again, what recourse is there? None outside of moving to another crap landlord here. I did look for other places and unless they were charging a mortgage payment for rent, they were also in horrendous shape. I will keep looking and when I find something reasonable, I will move and I will leave a letter clearly explaining my opinion of their terrible business practice. I will also do my part as a good citizen to share my experience and pictures concerning this landlord to the BBB and Chamber of Commerce.
Do I seriously believe it will make a difference? No. Not here. This place feels lost and any hope that is expressed for the fight to hold on or restore it seems like an empty and meaningless facade. Yet, I do not want to look in the mirror and see myself as apathetic like so many around me.
These are just a couple experiences. This disease is quickly spreading through this town of Martinsville, Virginia. It really is a shame because you sense that it place was, and could be, something.
