There has been much speculation on the causes of the US economy’s reluctance to return to healthy growth: a commercial life which once seemed to hold the secret of eternal expansion now seems to have lost the ability to recover.
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My most recent visit inclines me to make an entirely anecdotal and inexpert contribution to this debate. When I was growing up in America – and working my way through university in jobs that involved serving the public – there was a sacred principle of employed life in the US: the customer may not always be right but he is always to be treated as if his needs and desires were paramount. The efficiency, courtesy and helpfulness provided by retail businesses was one of the great hallmarks of American life (and one that made a huge impression on European customers who were accustomed to being treated like grateful supplicants by those who deigned to provide them with any service at all). Over the years of return visits to the US I have noticed a really alarming decline in standards of behaviour and competence: attitudes which would have meant at least a serious warning if not instant sacking a generation ago now seem to go unmonitored and unreformed as a matter of course.
November 4, 2010
