Firing Customers – Part Three
The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers. - Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
Here's one more situation for you. We occasionally have "tire kickers" drop by the store. They may buy a small token and say, "I'll be back." Not.
Martin relates his experience with such a one.
Total disappointment in product and staff. The sourdough bread taste [sic] like plastic, ended up throwing away. -5 stars. Review wont [sic] post without a star, only reason it has one. Go to Coaldale Bakery. - Bruce Friesen.
Nice review, huh? I'd like to tell the rest of the story.
It was one of the first beautiful Sunday mornings of 2024 and the sun was shining. Bruce Friesen went for a Sunday drive with his friends and ended up at our shop to poke around and check things out.
He was wearing his Lethbridge Herald jacket, making it clear that he held a job at the Herald that he took seriously. After a few moments of conversation about how nice our building was, he asked me if I had ever considered running ads in the newspaper to get more traffic. He let me know that he's the advertising director for the Lethbridge Herald and that he could help to get a bunch more traffic to our store.
I explained to him the same thing we've told many others who have come promising to have the power to bring us new customers. I told him that we're looking for high quality customers, not a high quantity of customers. I told him that one-time tire kickers and tourists are often a cause of wasted time and energy and even problems, and that we only want people shopping here because they're convicted that proper agriculture and diet are paramount. We want relationships, friendships, partnerships. Not transactional formality and cold shoulders.
Honestly, 99% of our bad reviews are left by one-time or zero-time customers. I think other businesses can relate to this.
I went on to tell him that we've even learned as a business to share our moral convictions openly because we're not interested in feeding people who expect us to remain silent about them. I told him that the globalist left is evil and we don't want to be nourishing our enemies.
He told me that I had to respect everyone's point of view, and I told him that I didn't. He said, "Let's agree to disagree." I said that I don't believe in that. So, he left.
I was honest and earnest with Bruce and he hated me for it. There's no other way to put it. He came to tell me how important and powerful he is and treated me like I was answerable to him. It was very unpleasant.
So, I know, I overshared, right? I didn't have to pick a fight. But I'm telling you, it gets old. These people come and act like they have the authority to require political correctness from us in our own building on our own property. The presumption is incredible. As though being a customer puts them in charge. I knew he didn't want to hear what I had to say, but I also knew he needed to hear it.
I wasn't nasty. I was just open and unconcerned about whether he liked what I had to say.
We didn't hear from him. A while later we found that he had left a Google review a few months after being here. It must have been eating at him.
And look at the review he left! First, he comes offering to help our business, and now he's trashing it. Does the advertising director for the Lethbridge Herald have goodwill for local Lethbridge businesses or is he thinking he's God with the power to prosper his neighbor or destroy them at his preference?
Earlier this year, we had an off-taste in our bread that most people couldn't even notice. It was an issue with our starter, and we corrected it as soon as we diagnosed it. Brian got one of these loaves and instead of being a grown adult and calling the business with his concern like a good customer would (we'd have been glad to give him a replacement loaf), he decided to trash our business publicly and as vindictively as he knew how.
Who does that? I can understand being turned off or uninterested in returning to a business after a bad first impression. But who are these people who seek to destroy their neighbor's livelihood after feeling a little miffed?
Doesn't Bruce exactly prove our point? He was a tourist and he caused trouble. Look, we don't have a problem with people coming to check out what we do on a nice Sunday afternoon, but most of the time, the tourists just want to be entertained. They want to ask all kinds of questions and after you answer them all, they never return. It's all about them.
They always promise to return or tell others, and nothing ever comes of it. They certainly don't want to hear you say anything they disagree with. They're here for their pleasure. They want service. They want to be served. I'm not whining. I get that it comes with the territory. I'm just sharing how things are.
Bruce is exactly the kind of person that we try to filter out so that we don't have to deal with their selfish behavior. That's why we don't advertise. And that's why he was offended with me and what I was saying. I was talking about him.
We don't want people shopping here if they're going to get nasty with us every time we fall short of perfection. Why live to please someone so merciless?
And, we don't want people shopping here if they hate openness and honesty.
I can understand why Bruce doesn't like to hear out viewpoints that challenge his perceptions and experiences. I wasn't exactly trying to make him feel comfortable. But is revenge warranted? Is it a moral crime to make somebody think outside their box?
It used to be that you were only punished if you committed an offense.
Nowadays, people like Bruce will punish you even if they're just offended.
We're not concerned. We're not needing him to take down the review. We just want to make people's ugly behavior public. If they're so proud of their behavior and opinions, they won't mind us sharing it with everyone.
