In the wee hours of the morning, somewhere in America the peaceful sleep of any given citizen is rudely interrupted by the pounding bass of a car whizzing by, or if you are truly unlucky stuck at a red light outside one’s home.
Long gone are the days of holding a door for someone more advanced in age and hearing a polite thank you, now the act of courtesy draws a worrisome leer and thoughts of an ulterior motive.
Visions of the American Dream of success and independence once meant diligent work practices, long hours and an endless desire to learn, improve upon and polish. Small businesses flourished and when you walked into the local vegetable store you were greeted by a clerk that was not conversing on a cell phone to a friend as you patiently waited for service. The owner greeted you and often tossed an apple to the children you had in tow.
In my quest for an experienced and talented beautician last year, I went to a salon that was recommended to me by a co-worker. During my color and cut, the beautician was interrupted twenty times with calls from friends and family, and she took each call as I sat and waited at various stages of a service I was paying for. My time held no value. Needless to say, I never returned to that establishment.
“Customer Care” now means a sophisticated phone system which directs you to a foreign country where the labor rates are cheap, and often, due to the language barrier, the customers receive no care at all. What they experience is an ever increasing level of frustration as they are asked to repeat the same sentiment over and over again as the employee on the other end uses a translation system to decipher what they are saying.
The dependence of business and society on the internet has opened a whole new sector of corporate thieves who feel they are entitled to gain the trust of companies and of private citizens, and then deliberately and methodically steal trade secrets, hack into databases and personal information without a second thought. Some steal money, others steal services. No matter what the commodity, my greatest concern is the fact that these hackers have no sense of guilt. They lay their heads on comfortable pillows at night and close their eyes without a thought to the crimes they have committed or the trusts they have violated.Perhaps it is the new parenting, or perhaps the increasing need to keep up with the Joneses has reached such a distorted importance that we have come to no regard for the work of others. No matter the cause, this new sense of entitlement has come at a much higher cost than that which we can define in financial terms.
As for me, I have decided I will do all I can to preserve the ethics I was lucky enough to learn as a child.
