Posted by
Peter and Helen Evans on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 2:35:29 PM
Last week we had a few vacation days in Palm
Beach. We stayed at
a nice hotel, not the best hotels, but the Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton
variety. We are even members of this hotel's 'inner circle' as
they
call it. While we didn't let them ruin our vacation, there were
incidents that showed how our culture is changing. First, we
asked
that our room be cleaned between 9 and 12 noon. The woman at the
desk said she would put our request into the computer. Most of
you recognize the wave-off-the-blame game when you hear it. She
didn't
say that it would be done, but that she would do something to get her
off
the hook. It would then be someone else's responsibility and
we would have to direct our next request to someone else. Was
this person
hired because of affirmative action or was she just someone who learned
that she could get away with minimal effort because affirmative action
has lowered the standards for everyone?
Later at the gift shop we asked if they had any clip-on
sunglasses. After all, this was "sunny, south Florida." The clerk
looked up from her magazine in the empty shop and said they usually
keep them over there... a wave of the
hand. We said we didn't see any, perhaps we had missed them,
could she help. A barely stifled sigh, then the rememberance
that she's supposed to be nice produced a fake smile. She looked
in the
general direction and said, "I guess we're out." Now the next
thing
she said is what tripped her up. She wanted to shift
responsiblity in some way, so she said, "You never know where they will
put
something." So we asked that while we went to the room to
change if she would look around for them. She realized her
mistake. We came back about a half-hour later and asked if she
had had
any luck. She looked up dazed and then realized she told us she
would look. By her expression, we knew she had done no such
thing. But back came the fake smile and the lie, "I looked
everywhere - I guess we're out." A 'real' clerk found them the
very next day.
You probably remember many such incidents happening to
you. Do we ask, "what happened to good service?" or do we just
sigh and adjust our expectations downwards in line with the declining standards all around us? We are more
easily outraged by people wanting to take God out of the
Pledge of Allegiance, courts ruling that parents should allow
their minor children privacy in their own rooms or demanding so-called 'tolerance'
for alternative lifestyles. These are the widely-reported issues.
However, there is a more insidious offender and it's the everyday bad service
invading business because affirmative action has lowered the standards
by which people are judged.