You sit down in a restaurant and a waiter comes over and says, \u201cHi! I\u2019m Bobby, I\u2019ll be your server today.\u201d Big smile! Friendly! You walk into a hospital emergency room and get a different greeting. \u201cHow are you going to pay? The restaurant bill will be fifty to one hundred dollars, less in the places I frequent, since my pallet is based on cheapness. The hospital bill will be twenty times as much as the restaurant bill, so you should get ten to twenty times the friendliness. <\/p>\n
Bobby is working on a five to ten-dollar tip. I guess that makes all the difference. The hospital clerk doesn\u2019t get one. Maybe they should. It\u2019s not the clerk\u2019s fault that the first thing they ask is how are you going to pay. That\u2019s the fault of executive management, who probably never manned an emergency room desk, nor ever had to get in line at one. <\/p>\n
Nothing unusual about that. Most corporate decision makers never face the front lines that employees do, or ever experience their company\u2019s customer service. If they did, our customer service experiences would surely improve. <\/p>\n
Back to the hospital service, these organizations are a special case. They are non-profit, or so they claim when they erect a new multimillion-dollar medical facility and apply for a non-profit exemption from real estate taxes. You would think a few customers running out on their bill would help them sustain that non-profit status. Of course, they do make money. How else could they build those new facilities all across the country. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying the restaurants have it right. It\u2019s just nicer. I don\u2019t really need Bobby to tell me his name. It does no good, because like everyone else I meet, I immediately forget their name. Besides, they don\u2019t call me by name. I get Sir, or Honey, or sometimes Sweetie at the places I frequent. It\u2019s what happens when you\u2019re an old guy. I call it the \u201cTreat you like a child\u201d approach. I\u2019m not complaining; it helps get you ready for what you\u2019ll be called when it\u2019s nursing home time. When that happens, I\u2019m going to be a big tipper.<\/p>\n