Why Customer Care Stinks in this Country

Why is it that with jobs so scarce and so many extremely gifted people out of work these days, are the ones in the service sector (customer service, retail, and hospitality) so pathetically disengaged and horrible at their jobs?

Have you noticed that nowadays when you have someone wait on you in a restaurant, or go into a store to make a purchase, or go to a teller at your bank, or the super market, or the Post Office…etc, that the people in these “SERVICE” based settings that are tasked with HELPING (“serving”) the public so sullen, inarticulate, lazy, foul-mouthed, and disengaged?

It used to be that receiving awful service was a 50-50 proposition. Toss a coin…heads you get passable service, tails you get a lousy experience. Now it seems like virtually EVERY experience you have is awful.

As we moved from a manufacturing, production-based economy to a service-based economy, you would have thought we would have gotten better as providing service. But in fact we’ve gotten much worse.

Why do you think that is?