Dear Editor,
In response to Jennifer Parsons’ column, “Discrimination leads to unfriendly services” [Oct. 31], I want to apologize on behalf of my profession — marketing and sales. I teach my students that the customer may not always be right, but the customer is always the customer. With regard to the treatment by the health club, where apparently underhanded techniques were used to make it difficult to get your money back, I am always hopeful that retail establishments will use the marketing concept, which is to find out if the customer needs something before they try to sell it. These people are a discredit to my profession, but our students should know that they do exist — knowing your rights as a buyer is the most important thing. I am pleased that Jennifer knew her rights and eventually won out.
With regard to the comment by the Denny’s manager that they were too loud, she is also right that the manager should have said something to them while they were eating rather than afterward — maybe he expected them to use some common courtesy. This was probably a matter of a generation gap rather than discrimination. In any event, he had no right to be rude.
Customers are the reason we open our doors in the morning — all of us. There is never room to forget that without customers, there would be no business to run.
Dr. Janis Dietz
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
via Internet
