This week I finally took two well-deserved vacation days, technically they were 'staycation' days. The first day my daughter took off as well. We spent the day together checking items off our pre-college summer To Do list one at a time. We were productive and spontaneous. We stopped by her new college to make some schedule changes, moved on to Wilson Violins in Birmingham for some string bass repairs and such, then finished off with lunch and shopping in Royal Oak. The temperature was close to 100 which made walking through the downtown district a bit of challenge, but we survived. My daughter had her heart set on going to two stores. The second of the two was the Lost and Found Vintage Shop. She may be 17 still, but she has a very old soul. The vintage store carried clothing and items from as far back as the 40s & 50s. Things were classic back then. Clothes were made to last, cars were made to withstand dents and dings, and a deal could be sealed with the shake of a hand. It was a time when integrity was displayed everyday and your word meant something.
Times have changed, even in the 50 years I've been alive. Today I look around and notice how fast everything goes, how competitive everything is, and how so often people just don't seem to care about keeping their word. It's really very sad. Don't get me wrong, not everyone behaves this way, but it does seem to be on the way to becoming the norm and the acceptable for many.
I have seen many situations this past year when people in various businesses didn't keep their word. It seems like they were more concerned with just making the sale, rather than giving the customer good service to keep them coming back. There was a time when 'referrals' were the foundation of many businesses. I recently wrote a blog entry about 'being tolerant'. I suppose this entry could be a continuation of sorts.
I've been very busy lately researching and making changes for my blog. I read other blogs as often as I can, but in doing so I've also made an observation. I recently visited 3 different blogs. Two of them had Facebook pages and what is called 'Fan Fridays'. The idea they suggest is that they're being supportive to fellow bloggers; that we're all one big family. They say 'Like My Page and I'll Like Yours Back'. Fact is neither of the bloggers followed through on their half of the deal. Quite disappointing if you ask me. Kind of makes you wonder if they're only in it for themselves. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they were merely busy or on vacation, but given the fact that they've posted other entries since I think it's safe to conclude that they increased their 'LIKE' status and just moved on. That's the beauty of research. You can take it all in and learn something too. In my case I learned what NOT to do. I learned that I'd rather have 53 real LIKES on my Facebook page than 1,000 if it meant they were nothing more than a number. Sure ... in today's society we often measure our success in numbers, but inflating numbers just for show never got anyone anywhere (at least no place that I want to be).
So what do you think has changed? When did it become acceptable not to care? Why does follow through seem to be such a foreign concept for some people? Are we just getting lazy? What do you think?
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