I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up Read Online Free PDF Page B

happen to you if you’re known, but the Average Joe is SOL.
    My friend was right in one sense: Nowadays, nobody promises you
shit
. A month after I was in San Francisco, I took a Delta Airlines flight to Chattanooga. It was a small commuter plane, with gateside bag check. I gave my bag to the guy at the base of the plane just like I was supposed to. When they gave it back to me, I saw that my wheel had been bent off. I went to complain about the damage to the customer-service desk.
    The lady listened to what had happened, glanced at my bag, and then waved her hand at me to dismiss me. “We don’t fix wheels,” she said.
    “Can you find someplace that’ll fix my bag and have it fixed for me, so I don’t have to buy another one?”
    “We don’t do that.”
    There was no apology. There was no sense of guilt or embarrassment that they had damaged someone else’s property. She couldhave said, “We normally don’t do this, but we’re going to just accommodate you.” Instead, she treated me like I was annoying her about some trifling nonsense that didn’t matter.
    I gave the woman my frequent-flyer number so she could look up how often I flew Delta. “Let me tell you something,” I said. “I’ve flown three million miles with this airline. Three
million
. Do you know why I am going to
stop
flying this airline? Because of that wheel that you broke.”
    Now it became about the principle. Not only was the customer not always
right
, they were acting like the corporation was never
wrong
. I spent an hour and a half arguing at that desk. They broke it, but they sure as hell weren’t going to buy it.
    Finally, the customer-service lady buckled. “We’ll give you a three-hundred-dollar voucher to fly on this airline in the future.”
    “Why would I take a ticket?” I asked her. “Your reward to me is to fly on the very airlines that I fucking hate?”
    She’d had enough. She went and got her supervisor—which she could have done ninety minutes earlier. The supervisor came out with a big checkbook. “We don’t normally do this,” he told me, “but here’s a check for your trouble.”
    I guarantee, getting that bag fixed themselves would have cost them less than three hundred dollars. I also guarantee that taking five minutes to take care of a problem would have felt a lot better and been a lot less stressful than spending an hour and a half arguing with a pissed-off D. L. Hughley. But people don’t think like that anymore. They just shrug their shoulders and say that it’s not their problem.
    When was the last time customer service felt like actual
service
, instead of an imposition? Half the time when you call for help, you literally have to sit through an automated message and press theright buttons. What kind of “servant” won’t even take your calls? A person won’t take your calls if they’re more important than you, not if they’re trying to help you! The computerized voice will do everything in its power to keep you from speaking to an actual person. That robot on the other end of the line doesn’t want to help you. It doesn’t actually
want
anything!
    When was the last time an American corporation bragged about the quality of its product? No, the commercials always talk about how it’s cheap, it’s fun, and you can have a lot of it. That sounds a lot like taking a big shit, don’t it? Ford had ads that said, “Quality Is Job 1.” But that was over twenty-five years ago. It’s gone from being an American motto to being the answer to a trivia question.
    They always say that pride goeth before a fall. Well, America’s already had its fall. Maybe it’s time for some of that pride to come back. That would require men and women of leadership and courage to come forward and turn this fucker around. But
there are no incentives for extraordinary men to come forward
. Bill Gates is an extraordinary man. Steve Jobs was an amazing person. Traditionally, those are the types of men who would be up