CAO - A Company to Stand By

[gary106334]

I'm not a fan of CAO but DAMN you can't beat that service.

[ncstogie]

cool, I like CAO america's and the lone sopranos blend i had as well. (hope to get some more for a good deal) I know alot of folks don't like flavors but I am a fan of their flavors sampler for a quick different smoke.

[Nurse_Maduro]

This is incredible, and rare for the day. My Grandmother told me once about some saltines she bought for a party she was hosting, and they turned out to be stale, so she wrote the company to complain and they shipped her a case as a thank-you (what the hell would you do with a case of saltines, anyway?). She told me that, as a service provider, you'd want to know if there was a problem with your product. But, in this day and age, nobody seems to care about good service anymore.

This post just made my next purchase for me. Thanks for letting us know.

[PerpetualNoob]

Originally Posted by Nurse_Maduro

This is incredible, and rare for the day. My Grandmother told me once about some saltines she bought for a party she was hosting, and they turned out to be stale, so she wrote the company to complain and they shipped her a case as a thank-you (what the hell would you do with a case of saltines, anyway?). She told me that, as a service provider, you'd want to know if there was a problem with your product. But, in this day and age, nobody seems to care about good service anymore.

This post just made my next purchase for me. Thanks for letting us know.

I have a theory:

Starting when we geared up for WWII, America was a society of builders and 'makers'. We made stuff, cars, airplanes, refrigerators, radios, bullets, Pop-Tarts, whatever. At the end of the day, you could look a pile of stuff and think, "That's what we did today, we made some stuff and someone, somewhere, wants it."

The few people who were in service industries were there because they were particularly suited to it. Now that we're primarily a 'service industry' country, there are a lot of people who are in service, not because they're suited to it, but because that's all there is. They do it, but they don't really have the special mentality for it, and they'll never really be very good at it. As time goes on, you eventually reach a point where there are more non-service people in a business than there are 'true' service-type people. Upper management freaks out because they see the service standards declining, and the only thing they can do is coerce, threaten, and 'beat it into them', figuratively, and everyone's miserable. They can't fire all the non-service people and replace them with service people, because there just aren't enough of them to go around.

I really think this is what is wrong with our service-based economy, and why good service is becoming so noticeably rare these days. Unfortunately, I don't have the slightest idea what to do about it. Maybe it's just a matter of one or two generations who have never known anything else. People who just accept that they're going to spend the rest of their days dealing with the a-hole public and probably never make any decent money at it, because 'that's how things are done'.

Being in a service industry, myself, I personally find there's almost no sense of ever being 'finished'. When you build a car, it's eventually done and it goes out the door. The model year ends, you re-tool the shop and build the next year's model. The model gets discontinued, you re-tool again and build something else. You build a house, someone buys it an moves in, you move over and build another one. The subdivision is full, you go across town to another one and fill that one up. There's a sense of 'done-ness', being finished. Maybe I'm the only one, but I think that may be part of the general dissatisfaction with service businesses.

The irony is, in our 'service economy' (so-called), you can't actually get any, and it is not lost on me.

[orca99usa]

Your theory makes sense. More than once, I have left a customer service counter thinking that it was the last place in the store that the person manning it should be working (because of attitude, motivation or a number of other factors). You make an excellent point about this being where most of the jobs are - an angle I hadn't really thought of. Unfortunately, it is a pleasant surprise when a company does right by you.

[LibertyToad]

Originally Posted by abgoosht

That is very cool! I actually have a problem witht the CAO. Everytime I smoke a CAO Brazilia, there'll always be a curveball in my plan.

I like the Brazilia's but they are about the most uneven burning things I've ever seen.

[Nurse_Maduro]

Originally Posted by PerpetualNoob

I have a theory:

Starting when we geared up for WWII, America was a society of builders and 'makers'. We made stuff, cars, airplanes, refrigerators, radios, bullets, Pop-Tarts, whatever. At the end of the day, you could look a pile of stuff and think, "That's what we did today, we made some stuff and someone, somewhere, wants it."

<much snipped>

The irony is, in our 'service economy' (so-called), you can't actually get any, and it is not lost on me.

Every now and then, you find a post that goes way above the standard board talk, that adds new dimensions and perspectives to the conversation and lets you see things in an entirely different way. This is one of those posts.

[Neckface]

thats impressive. i dont know many companies that would do anything so generous.

[Jimbo14]

Wow, great story. I have only had one CAO and it was fantastic - I plan to smoke more in the future!

[PerpetualNoob]

Originally Posted by Nurse_Maduro

Every now and then, you find a post that goes way above the standard board talk, that adds new dimensions and perspectives to the conversation and lets you see things in an entirely different way. This is one of those posts.

Thanks. I've been thinking about this off and on for a couple of years, and this was what I came up with that seems to best fit my observations. I'm always willing to consider that I may be completely full of crap, though.