High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service by Micah Solomon

Author:Micah Solomon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMACOM Books
Published: 2012-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 7

sangria, sippy cups, and jesse ventura

autonomy versus standards

in news stories that had the Twittersphere absolutely buzzing (there’s no better word for it), two of America’s largest casual restaurant brands—Applebee’s and Olive Garden—managed, in separate incidents, to serve alcoholic beverages to a fifteen-month-old and a two-year-old, respectively (alcoholic margarita mix in a sippy cup to the fifteen-month-old; sangria to the two-year-old), between late March and early April 2011.1 In a more deadly incident, one of a string of similar incidents at medical facilities, the Fresno Community Regional Medical Center in December 2010 gave Elena Silva an accidental 300-milliliter, instead of the intended, similar-looking 300-unit (6-milliliter), dose of the blood-thinning drug Heparin. In other words, Ms. Silva received fifty times what had been prescribed, thus making Heparin toxicity a “significant condition” contributing to her death.2

Does this mean the cheery service professionals at Applebee’s or Olive Garden enjoy giving toddlers a buzz? Or that community hospital nurses don’t care whether they’re administering a lethal dose of blood thinner? Assuredly not. Rather, I believe the mixups were due to a lack of standards. The kids got the booze, I’ll bet, because the restaurants lacked appropriate standards for how to store and administer similar, mixup-prone drinks. The hospital apparently overdosed Ms. Silva because it hadn’t worked out standards for how to distinguish similar sounding, but very different, dosages.

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