» Bug Fix
I picked up one of my most valuable and cherished business lessons back when I was working bindery at a print shop, in the evenings after college classes. It was a lesson about mistakes. The mistake isn't that important, I learned, it's the response to having made a mistake.
The worst and stupidest thing to do is deny it, or pretend it never happened, or somehow pass the buck back to the affected party. This really isn't much of an option at a print shop, where there's a written work order with everybody's signature on it and a final product. When the end result doesn't fit the description, there's a problem.
A good 99 percent of the time, everything matches. Things generally go so right and so smoothly that we don't appreciate what a fine timepiece our service economy is; success is so commonplace that it ends up in the background. So when there's a mistake, that's the time to do everything possible to get the gears of normalcy back in alignment as quickly and smoothly as possible: own up, say sorry, then redo the work plus something extra for the time and trouble. Not in a desperate way, but with extreme businesslike efficiency that suggests a laser focus. I messed this up, and instead of throwing on a potato sack and begging your forgiveness I'm going to make it up to you.
The worst and stupidest thing to do is deny it, or pretend it never happened, or somehow pass the buck back to the affected party. This really isn't much of an option at a print shop, where there's a written work order with everybody's signature on it and a final product. When the end result doesn't fit the description, there's a problem.
Granted, this only works when there's enough capability to match the accountability. Vendors that can't deliver, or aren't going to get it right no matter how many times they try, usually get Darwined out of business anyway, eventually. Unless they have blank checks from the government and are beyond accountability, like airlines.
But in most cases, the extra time and wasted by-products end up being a lot cheaper than losing the customer or client altogether, and it's better than risking all the lost business on account of negative word-of-mouth. Just own up, give them double what they wanted, smile, and keep going. Forget living up to a perfect image, trust and confidence is better. They'll start hoping you fuck things up.
This works in marriage too. Whenever my wife accuses me of doing something wrong -- whether I really did or not -- that's the for a haircut/salon combo package, a shoe-store gift certificate or a special hot-stove dinner. Trust me, it works. If you know what I mean.
That's still not good enough for some, however. There are still folks out there who are only in it for the quick, cheap power that comes with a forced mea culpa, who just want to see you on your knees.
A while ago, I was fired by a freelance web client for excessive buggery, before I had a chance to fix things up and throw in extra free services. Months later, while surfing around in a bored stupor, I stumbled back on their site; they'd hired a new design firm, who'd completely redone the design. But they'd forgotten to install the security certificate on their new server, so all credit card information that passed through their e-commerce forms might as well be transmitted by megaphone.
I wanted to drop the design firm a note, I really did. I wanted to alert them to the information cataclysm they've unleashed, or at the very least the lost customers conditioned not to enter card numbers into an unpadlocked page. But that would go against this deeply-held philosophy I've just outlined for you. Everybody's just gotta own up.
