One Person Can Ruin a Company For You

On a recent trip I was at the Denver Airport and went to get a bite to eat. Hungry. Fight delay. Snow.

I went to the Mexican Cantina. I think it’s called that. I may have the name wrong, but it was somewhere in that ballpark. I guess the lack of creativity in the naming of the restaurant that probably should have been the first clue.

So the Mexican Cantina was approximately half full. At lunch. I asked the hostess for a table of one. She said, “Yeah, we’ve run out of menus,” which I thought was strange for a restaurant.

Really? To me it seems kind of like the basics to having menus in the restaurant business.

When you’re half full on a Monday afternoon at lunch, I thought it was strange that they would be out of menus, but thought, “Well, that’s kind of interesting. Maybe they’re reprinting new ones.”

So she said, “Well, we’re out of menus, but we’ll bring you one when we have one.”

As she departed without asking me if I wanted a beverage, I mentioned that I wanted an iced tea. Iced tea arrives. Good job on that, and I wait for a menu. And I wait for a menu. And I wait for a menu.

Meanwhile, I look over my shoulder and notice the same hostess — who had just seated me without menu maybe a few minutes ago — has now seated two groups after me, who each have four people in their party and they all had menus. So I’m not really sure what’s going on at this point.

Now I’ve been there 10 minutes. No menu. A bit of an iced tea, and I get frustrated. I leave $2 for my iced tea and I depart without ever even seeing a menu at the Mexican Cantina.

Now here’s the thing.

The chances of me going back to that establishment are frankly zero, actually literally ZERO. It’s never, ever going to happen. There’s a lot of restaurants in the Denver Airport. I will never be back to this one.

Now I don’t know if it’s just a bad restaurant. Maybe it is, but maybe it’s just a really bad hostess, in which case that one person and her inability to do her job effectively in that moment in time cost them a potential customer and maybe other potential customers.

This isn’t the first time this has ever happened to me. It’s probably not the first time it’s ever happened to you.

There are companies that I will not do business with because I find a particular person in that company unethical or loathsome in some way.

There are conferences I will not speak at because there are people in the organization that run that conference who have treated me, in my estimation, poorly.

Maybe I’m just hypersensitive, or maybe it’s just an example of the simple fact that one person can make terrible, terrible decisions that impact an entire company. Even if the rest of the company is great, one person can really have that kind of an impact.

So it’s not about training so much in companies. Of course, you want to train your employees.

But the real key is to have people who understand how to treat people.

That’s why I’m always telling you on Jay Today and elsewhere to hire for passion and then train for skills.

It’s the old saw. Hire slow and fire fast.

So I want to ask you this question. Is that fair? Is it fair that I’ll never go back to that cantina?

Is it fair that there are companies that I will not do business with?

Is it fair that there are conferences that I will not speak at because one person in a much larger organization has treated me in a way that I find frankly unsatisfactory?

Am I being hypercritical, or is that just the way the world works?

Have you ever had an experience like that? Share your comments below.

Like what your reading? Please take a moment to hit the recommend button.

Overwhelmed by the daily flood of social media news and happenings? Join 20,000 others and subscribe to Convince & Convert’s newsletter: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/newsletter.