Letters

Inc. readers offer questions and comments about issues and topics discussed in past editions of the magazine.

Want to talk hot buttons? Just mention certain issues like economic anxiety (October Letters) and customer service (November Letters), and then duck when the mailbags come flying at your front door. A sampling of the letters:

Service-Centered

A letter writer (August Letters) asked readers if they had noticed, as he had, a deterioration in customer service. We were deluged with responses, most of which condemned businesses that regularly disappoint. The following letter echoes a standard refrain:

I was so glad to see that question in your magazine. I thought it was just me. It's as though we're not customers anymore, only problems that servers have to deal with. They get their minimum wage, and who cares if the customer is right, wrong, whatever. What's happened to customer service? Is it gone forever? Should we just simply learn to live with it, or, I should say, without it?

Sherrol L. Ledbetter
Owner
Ledbetter Reporting
Shreveport, La.

One reader notes that poor customer service has driven her to buy through a kinder, friendlier channel of distribution:

Look out, Home Shopping Network; here I come. At least with you, I get a happy voice and a great smile.

Shira Wein
Legal Recruiter
Elinvar
Raleigh, N.C.

In defense of retailers everywhere, this reader offered one possible explanation for the divide between many consumers and the salespeople who attend to them:

I, too, can give numerous examples of poor as well as exemplary customer service. But I must speak out on behalf of the people behind the counter.

I worked in a café and would be able to pay back my school loans in a heartbeat if I had a nickel for every rude customer I waited on. Many customers assumed that because I was working behind the counter, I was completely incompetent. They would tell me their order as if I didn't understand English. I don't condone poor customer service or rude behavior, but I wanted to give you a different perspective on the issue.

Alyssa Haynes
Recently Graduated M.B.A.
Pacific Grove, Calif.

High Anxiety

Despite a fairly robust economy and a predominantly satisfied workforce (see the Inc./Gallup survey), economically anxious readers are quite vocal. Are we in for tough economic times? Or are we still coping with irrational post-recession fears? One reader claims:

Many hard-working, honest Americans who have worked their way up in a company to a decent salary of, say, $30,000 to $35,000 are now forced to make a career of hopping from one temporary position to another. If this ever-growing scenario does not get your attention and make you worry that it could happen to you, you are already wealthy, insensitive, or brain-dead.

Thomas R. Miller
Case Management Supervisor
Guardian Inc.
Grand Rapids

Another reader says economic anxiety can affect even calm folks:

I'm an entrepreneur with a growing company (#161 on the 1995 Inc. 500) and an M.B.A. from Stanford. I'm not the least bit anxious economically. That doesn't seem true for many others in our society, however. Their concern over making ends meet is an issue for several reasons. First, entrepreneurs need people willing and able to spend money to buy products and services. Second, the growing number of poor and disenfranchised people seems to correlate with increasing violence, a phenomenon from which no amount of affluence can fully protect me. Finally, while I'm very glad to be an American, I'm not proud that we rank at the bottom of the list of industrialized nations in how our less-fortunate citizens fare. I'm not economically anxious, but it's harder to enjoy my success when so many others are distressed.

Mark Zitter
President
The Zitter Group
San Francisco

A reader says anxiety isn't new:

Times just seem tougher now because we don't know how things are going to turn out. People in the past thought times were tough while they lived through them. Nothing has changed.

Tim Berkesch
Principal
Sales Systems
Greenville, S.C.

A "friend of Bill" criticized our wording and urged us to stop beating up on the economy:

Despite continuing scare tactics used by the largely conservative business media, most Americans, including this one, continue to appreciate President Clinton's economic policies.

Happily, Inc.'s right-wing bias is weaker than that of other business magazines, yet the way you phrased the following question proves the point. The headline "How economically anxious are you?" (July Letters) assumes that anxiety exists. Perhaps. But not, so far as any professional pollsters have assessed, to a greater degree than in the past.

Opinion polls consistently show upbeat public attitudes about the economy. Stop writing as if all entrepreneurs are Republican, pro-business drones desperate to find chinks in Clinton's economic armor and relief from "big government." Focus instead on the economy's incredible performance since January 1993 and how we can benefit from it.

David Burket
President
L. K. Burket
Wayne, Pa.

Another entrepreneur is planning for the bad times ahead:

After struggling for six years, my ammunition-manufacturing business started paying off, and that's when I began planning for leaner times. I paid off our home and acreage and had a huge metal barn built for future needs. I paid cash for two new cars. I bought a 1996 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle (cash), which I'll ride until it's used as an urn for my ashes. And I blew tons of cash on semiessentials (riding mower, new Power Macintosh, motorcycling the Alps and New Zealand, expensive jewelry, extensive dental work, and so on). Quite a chunk of profits also went into a SEP-IRA and into mutual funds and stocks.

And, of course, all inventory is paid for. The defense-ammo business is on a huge downsizing after two barn-burner years, but we can sit back and live pretty well on 20% of the sales volume of 1994 or 1995. So I'm not worried. I planned for bad times, and overhead is zilch when you work out of your home and you own every damned thing in sight.

Joe Zambone
Proprietor
MagSafe Ammo
Olympia, Wash.

And this from a reader who may have been only half joking:

I hope my company does not downsize. I run a single-person business, and if I started laying off people, I would be in trouble.

P. J. Neal
West Hartford, Conn.

Principles: Year of the Dilbert

By far, our readers' favorite cover boy during the past year was Scott Adams's Dilbert, in July. After we ran our cover, Newsweek followed suit in August and December, Fortune and TV Guide in January of this year, and countless others in between and since. We couldn't help but notice that it's been a Dilbert kind of year. Call in your comments to 800-238-1756, or E-mail them to editors@inc.com. Please be sure to give your name, position, business, address, and phone number.

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Please address all correspondence to Inc. Letters Editor, 38 Commercial Wharf, Boston, MA 02110, or call our editorial-commentary line at 800-238-1756. (Messages will be recorded.) Or E-mail your letter to editors@inc.com, or fax it to 800-335-3348. Include your name, address, and phone number for verification. Letters must be signed, and all correspondence may be edited for space and style. For help with subscription problems, call 800-234-0999.