Evil BusinessI admit it; I’m a closet Muppet lover. Actually, it’s not so much in the closet as I
have a Muppet mug, Muppet towel, and my online game moniker is based on a
Muppet character. So when the last Muppet movie came out, I made sure to watch it—and
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that the
antagonist, Tex Richman, played the role that most business people play in the
movies: Evil. Think about it, in movies, businesses aren’t seen in the best
light. In real life, it is typically worse.
And why not? After all, every single one of us has been
victimized by businesses. They may have given us terrible service, refused to
take back a defective product, or sold us goods that weren’t even close to
being what we needed. And who among us haven’t had THAT boss, you know, the one
we’d rather just forget?
When it comes to businesses and us, it seems to be an “us
vs. them” situation.
But businesses ARE us. We own them, work in them, and run
them. If you feel a store is rude, it’s really the person in that store that is rude to you. Maybe you think that the
business could have done a better job training and motivating the rude
employee. Well, then the person who
is the manager of that employee is the one who is to blame. But it’s not the
people, you say, it’s the rules the people work under. I say, you have a
problem with the authors of the
rules; again, the people.
In other words, it’s not us vs. them, it’s us vs. us. Businesses
are people, just like us.
Look, there are people who do good and people who do bad.
It’s the same in the collective we call a business; some might do good, while
others do bad. Just as we have all had horrible experiences with businesses, we
have had wonderful ones too.
One might stay open a bit longer so that you can get that
part you need. Another might make good a situation that turned bad through no
fault of its own. And if a mistake is their fault (who among us is perfect?), then there are many firms that will willingly
give up a lot of money and time to make things right.
Businesses do make a good antagonist when it comes to
storytelling. Just remember the rest of the story.
This article was published under the title
"Blame the people, not the business"
in the Wichita Falls Times Record News on August 5, 2012.
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