Failure of Expectations
Penguin February 22nd, 2007
When your expectations aren’t met, second choice might be okay, but third choice is just the pits.
Ninja took me to dinner for my birthday this past Sunday. I had my heart set on chicken pot pie and I knew that Cheescake Factory had a pretty good one.
We waited the normal hour for our table by walking around the closed mall. We were finally seated and I scoured the menu for the pot pie, positive that it was there. When I didn’t see it, I just figured it was my poor eye-sight coupled with the poor lighting.
When the waitress took our order, I confidently declared “Chicken Pot Pie”, when she told me that they didn’t have it, I assured her they did. Alas, they had removed it from the menu. I was heart broken.
At a loss, I didn’t know what to order. The waitress came and went a few times and I decided on the chicken and biscuits, next best thing, I thought.
Ninja and I sat as we enjoyed each other’s conversation when the manager came around. I knew this was a bad sign. They were out of biscuits. He left us to peruse the menu once again.
While he was gone, I commented on how Cracker Barrel would never run out of biscuits. We both laughed.
I finally settled on the meatloaf, the next best thing to comfortable southern homey goodness. Of course, no matter how good the meatloaf was, it would never be chicken pot pie. It wasn’t even chicken!
We set certain levels of expectation for the things we experience, whether it be dinner, a new toy we just bought ourselves, or even websites. When those expectations aren’t met, we’re usually okay with our second choice. The marginal utility usually isn’t that big of a disparity. I would venture so far as to say that we’ve come to expect disappointment. But when we are relegated to our third choice, it’s over. Nothing can be done to satisfy.
As a business owner, I want to set the bar of expectation for our customers. There’s still some paint that needs to dry, and that’s why we haven’t launched big yet. I want to make sure everything is clean and tidy so that everything that works should, and we can set the expectation for quality and service.
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