Does “Boardwalk Mentality”

Dominate Your Business?

     In a diner, I might expect it,  but I visited a doctor’s office today where a beautiful, large, flatscreen TV was broadcasting full volume coverage of the funeral of a man with a track-record of highly-questionable morals, who almost single-handedly was responsible for influencing  Federal Government leadership to wreck havoc on the entire US healthcare system.

     It seemed a strange backdrop  for a medical doctor… over-the-top accolades for a leading advocate of virtually dispensing with the entire spectrum of quality physician care. Are you so out of touch, doctor, that you think it just doesn’t matter what impressions you foster in your own waiting room?

     You surely never supported  the fanatical radical ideas that man nurtured, or you wouldn’t even be in practice, yet you choose to promote them to your patients? And don’t make the excuses that your receptionist picked the station. It’s your practice.

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     As a favor to a friend,  I recently gave a retailer a sample product to consider stocking. This product performed twice as effectively, lasted twice as long, and was twice as efficient, environmentally, as the product he presently sold. Oh, and it was half the price! He refused it.

     Did I mention that this product  also had no shipping costs because it was produced in the next town and that a percentage of the proceeds was kicked back to a community program that the retailer’s wife was engaged with? “No,” he said, “I don’t want it because it lasts too long, and I need repeat sales here so it’s better that the things people buy break down; then they have to come back for more!”

     Are YOU this out of touch?

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     When I taught business  at Ocean County College, near the famous boardwalks of Point Pleasant, Belmar, Seaside Heights, Asbury Park and Atlantic City, I used to refer to this out-of-touch kind of thinking as having a “Boardwalk Mentality.”

     Boardwalk stand owners  and operators fostered the attitude for years (and some, unfortunately, still do) that it’s okay to rip people off to get their money because –first of all, they’re on vacation and don’t really care how much they spend and –second, because those people will never be back again anyway, and even if they are, they won’t remember getting bilked.

     Obviously this kind of “screw the customer” thinking  doesn’t cut it anymore… neither does the suggestion of support for the antithesis of quality patient-care standards and your professional career, doctor!

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