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Now I’m no Dermot Cole, but I’ve seen too many of our community businesses and agencies suffer from major ailments born in healthy good intentions which, when allowed to continue unchecked, often end up killing organizations.

Surprisingly, these ailments — poor customer service and poor management — are curable with healthy doses of good training.

Let me give an example of the first disease: Last week, I committed a mortal sin. At 8:15 a.m., my robust tummy made me stop and order a wicked fastfood breakfast with all the trimmings. I was punished for my sin when the drive-thru didn’t keep driving thru. I burned precious petrol for what seemed like hours, (but which was really probably more like 10 minutes.)

Then, after exiting the obstacle course, I unashamedly opened my naughty but delicious breakfast and found myself holding an equally naughty but disgusting wrong order.

I recognize and appreciate that our local restaurants are in a tough industry. It’s difficult to keep really good help, the work is hard, wages aren’t as high as they deserve to be and with inflation starting to take off it is challenging to maintain gross margins. Add to these internal challenges the external challenges of finicky Fairbanksans when it comes to the culinary arts. We really should give more credit to restaurant owners who have invested their fortunes to please our cravings.

Nevertheless, in a rare display of assertiveness, I turned my car around, (my tummy still craving a fix), went inside and patiently waited for a cashier to ignore the drive-thru and get around to waiting on all us lobby customers. Finally, a manager came out from the back, coolly asked me why I wanted a refund and then, without any conversation, apology, compensation or vindication of her business, gave me a refund and let me leave in one of my rare moments of obvious public chagrin. I left without a word, not even a “thank you” for the refund, silently praying for forgiveness while vowing to sin there no more.

What was wrong with this picture? The manager’s obvious frustration with a rush of customers without enough help overwhelmed the manager’s customer service training (if any) and she let an upset customer walk out without trying to salvage the sale. The technical term for this is “bad thing.”

When I asked another manager why they don’t do regular, on-going customer service training, teaching staff and management how to deal with situations and role playing them until the training becomes instinctive, he said “it’s expensive — particularly if the trainee quits.”

In another rare moment of new found assertiveness (I’m working on that), I responded “how expensive is not doing the training if the trainee doesn’t quit?”

I think the answer to poor service is to inculcate all employees with so much customer service training that when everything goes wrong, as it certainly will, the competitive advantage of world-class excellence provided by great customer service training kicks in on autopilot and replaces our natural and human fight or flight response.

Last year, the University of Alaska’s statewide administration gave me a generous grant to purchase training media. I now have a great library of excellent customer service training videos that my department uses for training our students. I will loan these videos out to any local business manager who is serious about starting an ongoing customer service training program. You may borrow them at no charge (as long as you bring them back). Send me an e-mail to set up a time for you to go through the library. Ongoing training really does improve the poor customer service ailment.

Organizational illness No. 2 is the poor management problem.

Poor management is not a function of psychotic and sadistic sourpusses placed in positions of authority, but is once again a problem of training. The Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce is so committed to leadership development in our community that the Chamber is hosting a yearlong leadership training program with a special discount for Chamber members. The application period ends this Sept. 2. Call Sue Hull, the Leadership Fairbanks Committee chairwoman, at 479-5729. Remember, too, that management classes at UAF start Sept. 4.

Management and leadership training can be expensive if the newly trained employee quits. But how much more expensive is not training them if they don’t quit and then get promoted? There are lots of reasons for poor customer service and poor management, but one sure-fire cure is to train the brain:

“We have two ends

with a common link.

With one we sit,

And one we think.

Success depends on

which we choose —

with heads we win

and tails we lose.”