Respect

This week, we had an incident at one of our facilities, where one of our older and more prestegious accounts did something that was very troubling.

They sold a piece of furniture, and their people damaged it while in their possession.

At the time our people were there to pick up the items for delivery to the customer,
we noticed the damage and pointed it out to them.

However, the client or their personnel decided not to inform the customer about the changed
position of the purchased item. Maybe they did not want to take the responsibility for the
damage or maybe they hoped the customer would not notice it, or not bring it up.

I think this type of behavior just puts us, the shipping firm, in a bad light with the customer
and it is bad customer service on the client's part. What is worse, is that the purchaser of the goods saw the damage and immediately blamed us for it.

I do not blame the purchaser or the customer for this. The account was wrong, but it gets worse. The purchaser called our office and started getting upset, claiming that he saw the condition of the item before he bought it and it was not in that condition at the time it was delivered.

When we had to inform him that we had a record that the table was in that condition at the time
we picked it up, he was furious and this is where the problem started.

This purchaser told the client that we told them that they have done this before and then the client felt that we bad mouthed them. However this comes out, and even if we said something out of turn, how come it is ok for the client to screw their customer in this way. They put us right in the middle of this and all of this was their fault.

How do you do the right thing, when your client does something like this? They shift blame from
the guilty party to others, so that the main point never gets addressed. Like they were lawyers or something. Like they do not have a duty to tell the truth to cover their own asses. How small
can these people be?

Small enough to blame us for this. Truth is that the customer/purchaser was trying to get the item back into the position it was in when he bought the item. But, ask me, our client had an
affirmative duty to inform their customer before we showed up. They did not and we get blamed and bad mouthed.

Maybe this is how it works. I do not care for this behavior, as no one who causes a problem
should be able to shift the blame to the party not involved. What do they think, this is government or that we are politicians?

Why can't we just work on a higher plane? why is it that the wrong people pay? My main operations person was given a hard time today at their facility, because they damaged an item
and did not have the courage to speak up. I wish I could just let this pass, but this kind of small
mentality stuff really burns me, as it is all smoke and mirrors for those who could care less about what they do and who they do it to.