[lbo-talk] tipping and control

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Mon Nov 18 18:58:51 PST 2013


In user experience landia, it's because people don't like to wait. They feel out of control. This isn't a republican or conservative thing. AS Mary Douglas pointed out long ago, all rituals surrounding purity and danger are about putting order on things that otherwise feel out of control.

Restaurants aren't very good about their customer experiences sometimes, having often built their building to accept a certain traffic that they cannot accomodate when a location gets super busy based on new development that hadn't been anticipated at build for your Applebees or Outback. The solution in other realms is to figure out ways for people to feel in control. The useless button to close the door in an elevator (it's just there to make people think it's closing on their command), the useless walk buttons at intersections, etc. At airports, they make the path to baggage pick up take longer than it might in a direct line - making it circuitous - in order to give people something to do. In one airport, I've forgotten which, the time between departure from the plane and baggage pickup is 8 minutes. If people are walking for 2 minutes, waiting at baggage for 6, they complain, complain, complain. when they made the walk longer at 6 minutes, waiting for 2 minutes everyone was pleased and claimed it took less time than it actually did.

At 01:10 AM 11/18/2013, Jordan Hayes wrote:
>Joanna writes:
>
>>My daughter works in a restaurant and she says it's striking
>>to note the difference between customers waiting to be seated
>>(anxious, quick to anger, resentful, paranoid) and once they
>>are seated (grateful, genial, relaxed, trusting, etc.)
>
>My explaination of this is what is happening everywhere else: it's the
>self-centered outlook. This is the same reason why people have Road Rage
>(or are "bad" drivers in general). It's all about me. And if it's not
>all about me, then I'm unhappy. It's not just in restaurants.
>
>If it's really about the "betrayal of mothers" then mothers have a lot to
>'splain, because there are a LOT of people out there with their eyes
>firmly glued to themselves. Empathy is at an all-time low.
>
>/jordan
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