Do Your Best

I recently made my contribution to PepsiCo by patronizing a local KFC. What can I say? I'm a sucker for over-sized and over-greased poultry. My service was far less than desirable and irrefutably less than the best that the crew could offer. By the time I successfully procured my essential condiments, I was on the very edge of racial profiling. As I sat down to clog my arteries, however, I began to examine the details of the my frustrating experience and arrived at a few unexpected observations.

1. Employees at KFC and other comparable establishments do not, in fact, typically do their best. But why should they? There is very little demand for their jobs. The current economic crisis, with its unemployment highs, is evidently not bad enough to create a line outside KFC waiting for a chance to work the fryer. What incentive do they have? Their effort is like their pay, "minimum".

2. "The customer is always right" is a modern capitalistic concept not to be appealed to as a timeless principle. We must at least entertain the idea that the death of "customer service" merely marks a transition in our economic structures rather than signaling the end of all civility.

3. I may, in fact, not be doing my best by participating in the big business fast food industry. When did we become so accustomed to expecting so much out of $7? How many people, animals, and systems of decency have to be mistreated and disregarded in order for me fill my American appetite at that price? Oh, and by the way, I expect to get it quicker than fast and with a smile!