As the old joke goes, I would like to say that I received a little Mardi Gras joy during a challenging winter of comfortable isolation.
The fact that Langenstein's markets of New Orleans reneged on a year-long promise to mail me a treat COMPLETELY at my expense was stressful; the manner in which they REFUSED to do ANYTHING to make it better aggravated me to the extent that it exacerbated a serious medical condition and caused emotional distress. The textbook business management aspects of all this warrant this detour into Blogland.
The broad background of this tale of woe is that your New England-based not-so-humble reviewer has visited New Orleans four times and had thoughts of returning post-Covid and of making it a winter home. The appeal lies not in the drinking and debauchery for which The Big Easy is known, but the unique style, culture, and food of the city. Readers of the Inn Credible New England posts on this site know of my disdain for cookie-cutter hotels and communities.
The delicacies of The Crescent City include king cakes, which are glorified sugar-coated coffee cakes that offer a variety of fillings. The lore of this Mardi Gras treat is that a plastic baby Jesus is baked into it, and that the person who finds that newborn must host the party the following year. Sadly, these cakes and most other New Orleans sweets are almost impossible to find in any New England store.
The rest of this story is that getting a king cake, which arguably has a $15 retail value, shipped typically costs $50 and often more. An aspect of this is that the big boys, who are far from po', that include Haydels and Randazzos ship these semi-perishable baked goods via expedited FedEx or UPS. As a guy who has found sugar-laden week-old king cakes adequately fresh, sending them via the U.S. mail is a reasonable alternative so long as the filling is not cream-based.
As indicated above, an employee who ships products for Langenstein's told me last year when I tried to order a king cake that they were out but that she would mail a cake this year. She remembered speaking to me when I called this past Friday, and she repeated the promise to mail the cake as well as other Mardi Gras sweets that I wanted to order. She also told me that she was wrapping up her day and asked that I call back this past Tuesday.
On my calling, the same employee acknowledged the repeated pledges to use the postal service to send the king cake. The only extra effort that this would have required compared to FedExing a package would have been to have a free box sent from the post office and going online to calculate the cost. She knew that I gladly would have paid the postage.
Also as indicated above, the article-worthy aspects of this series of unfortunate incidents relates to the case-study elements of what I consider a deplorable manner in which Langenstein's operates.
The broadest aspect of this is the complete failure of Langenstein's to show awareness of the basic principle that the customer is not always right but always is the customer.
If CEO Ellis Lanaux or COO Trey Lanaux had responded in any manner, tears and recriminations would have been avoided and I likely would have had my desired treats without the company losing a penny. I also would have continued my practice of shopping in their Uptown store when in New Orleans.
Neither executive acknowledged any of the telephone message that a REFUSAL to provide a more direct number required leaving with a store manager. Nor did these "suits" respond at all to outreach via LinkedIn and direct e-mails.
A related (pun intended) factor is the practice of disingenuously identifying businesses that the same clan has operated for years as "family-owned" to create a pretense that their operating model reflects "peace, love, and understanding." This is akin to my consistent experience that every politician or CEO who identifies herself as a mother lacks any iota of caring as to how she conducts business.
Another example of this principle is that I am an animal lover to the extent that I say "doggie" just about any time that I see a canine, stop to pet just about every furry creature that I encounter when walking, and quickly bond with all creatures great and small. However, I do not publicly identify that element of my personality because doing so would falsely assert that these warm-and-fuzzy feelings extend to the general population of homo sapiens.
A more narrow aspect of this is the decades-old management theory that the quality of the leadership of a family business deteriorates with each generation. My experience with fifth-generation grocer Ellis supports that. This also seems to be a theme of the HBO sitcom "Succession."
Reading about that theory while studying for my management degree at a top-ranked school years ago precludes providing definitive details as the reason for this phenomenon. PURE speculation is that these "kids" resent having to spend most of their lives from tweenage to adulthood "helping out" and/or have a sense of entitlement as to occupying the corner office of the increasingly large family empire and not even having to worry about keeping any outside directors happy. There also be some cases of the offspring being "pulled back in" out of a sense of duty. Some of this might be akin to senior tenured professors at institutions of higher-learning who know that their employment is secure regardless of the quality of their work.
A more period-specific theory is that many companies unduly exaggerate the acknowledged tough challenges of keeping the doors open during a pandemic. This animal lover is sympathetic to the folks who must face an unhappy public these days, but this does not excuse a lack of a reasonable effort to conduct business. I suspect that I am far from alone as to walking away from many businesses the past two years and pledging to stay away after it is safe to go back in the water.
The bottom line this time is that a year of looking forward to a little joy during a Covid period in which chemotherapy is a recent memory unnecessarily ended up being another in an endless string of days of suck the past two years.
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