A prime example of this was going to lunch today with some friends. I'm friends with a married couple and after church this morning we went out to eat at Uncle Sam's, a sub shop right off of Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The husband is two years from being a full time orthopedic surgeon and his wife is a pediatrician. According to some elementary research an orthopedic surgeon's average earnings was $389,000 in 2007 and a pediatrician's average earnings in 2007 was about $154,000. Doing some simple arithmetic, their gross average hourly rate, assuming they work about 60 hours per week was $189/hour. The reason I bring this up was because at this sub shop, which eventually served some great cheese steak sandwiches, our meals took 27 minutes to come to our table. My buddy expressed his unhappiness to the waitress and had a small confrontation with her shortly before our meal came.
If the food wasn't so good, he probably wouldn't go back there again, but its interesting to see how such a bad experience can form distaste in a customer. In conclusion, I think that all retail establishments and customer service departments should treat their customers as if their time were worth $189/hour. What if that waitress severed her finger chopping up steak for a sandwich and was rushed to an emergency room and discovered that the person that was going to put her severed finger back on was the guy who waited 27 minutes to receive his cheese steak this past weekend. It would be unfortunate if the Doctor decided to wait a half hour and she bled a little longer just because he was busy chatting it up with the nurses. Bottom line - serve all your customers as if they are of utmost importance because the world is small (especially Pittsburgh) and you never know when you'll need the assistance of a customer or colleague in the near future.
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