Thursday, July 25, 2013

"The squeaky wheel gets the grease."

The first high end restaurant I ever worked at was called Buddakan, in New York City.  It's number one priority was (and still is) to have an impeccable level of hospitality.  And while I learned a lot of valuable lessons from this, there were many times when it absolutely infuriated me.  Sometimes people who were wrong (and knew they were wrong) would complain because they realized that we would go out of our way to accommodate them.  They would argue absolutely absurd points of view, and we would still give them free stuff.  People who never leave unhappy will always come back, and they'll tell others.

My friend Cliffy was a manager there, and I remember him often saying to me "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."  This applied to the restaurant's staff as well (and just about everywhere else I've worked too); those who complain often get what they want in order to make things run smoothly.  My genetic predisposition is to refuse to be a squeaky wheel.  Where am I going with this?  Take a look at the piece I just wrote for Celtics Life entitled "Celtics say season ticket sales still strong, but are they misleading?"

Celtics Life has a a twitter following of over 150,000; it's kind of a big deal.  There's a reasonable chance people in the Celtics organization will read it.  My gut instincts and journalistic integrity wouldn't allow me to, but I wonder what might have happened if I'd taken more of a "squeaky wheel" approach to that article?

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