I think a lot about customer service. Or, what I really mean is that I get angry a lot about customer service.

I’m not speaking of the declining competence of tech support for a phone or Internet service, but more about things like restaurants or coffee shops, i.e. places that are supposed to be providing an experience.

And perhaps that’s just it. I think that if you care enough to hire people to create a logo, and put up signs, and promote your brand, then you should care about the impressions given off by the people representing you.

Basically, for a top-end experience, the people you interface with should exemplify that experience. For a coffee shop, it should be someone who’s an expert in coffee, drinks coffee, loves coffee, and is associated with “coffee culture” — whatever that means.

Reading comes to mind. Traveling. Stimulating conversation. Books. Mystery. Curiosity. Study. Learning. Etc.

This is just my wordcloud associated with coffee. So when I go into a so-called “coffee shop” and find people who are uneducated, don’t know the difference between dark and light roast, can’t tell me what kind of coffee they enjoy because they don’t, etc. — that’s a poor experience.

And it’s the same for any industry.

Restaurants. In any restaurant that expects to be considered high-end, I would like to be served by those who embody the culture of the place. Language. Dress. Mannerisms. Etiquette. Protocol. Etc.

I don’t want to be served high-end Italian food by some Midwesterner with no passport. I expect to hear Italian and see the signs of a high-end wait staff. I also want the customers to conform to that standard via dress code, noise level, etc.

It’s the same for any kind of high-end experience because we’re not just there for one component. The ambiance magnifies or detracts from the overall experience. Hot Dogs. Mexican Food. Thai. Italian.

And not just food. There are other types of services that need to understand this as well.

It’s not as if there aren’t many who do — there are. But I wish more people understood why it bothers me when they don’t.

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A while back I posted about having experiences through books. I was thinking again about this today and was imagining a rock-climbing experience.

I myself have never been rock climbing, but I have a feeling of it from a few things. I do, however, remember reading The Eiger Sanction in my teens, and watching several films and shows about it.

What I find interesting is that if I had climbed some mountains I might have some additional input, but it wouldn’t necessarily be that much different. Good writing about something can instill many of the same sensations as doing the action yourself.

More importantly, these experiences would largely blend together over time. It just becomes a nebulous “understanding” of rock climbing — with the lines between what I read about and what I actually did becoming increasingly blurry. As an example, many people have reported recalling something and not being sure whether it happened or if they dreamed it.

I was thinking about this in terms of an is_real attribute to a memory — or the came_from_book attribute — similar to how computers store metadata. It’s as if a source type gets stored with a memory as it gets written. These seem to naturally mix to some degree, but it’s interesting to think of mixing them on purpose, or the repercussions of having an ailment which does so unpredictably.

So, ultimately, how different is a memory that happened and a memory that you “remember” from another input type, e.g. from a book, or a film, or a story told? Aren’t they all simply representations of experiences? And if the metadata gets mixed (like witnesses of crimes hearing other accounts and telling their story and actually changing their own memories as a result).

It’d be a good foundation for a short sci-fi story, if nothing else.

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It’s that simple.

I don’t understand how the GOP allows this to continue. Gingrich winning is a catastrophe for them. Romney has a chance to win against Obama as an “anyone but him” candidate. Gingrich doesn’t even have that, as his past is full of campaign-breaking secrets, and he’s likely to say something colossally stupid at any moment.

Then again, many of those secrets have already come out.

The fact that he’s a known adulterer who’s had multiple marriages, yet still received 42% of the vote from evangelicals in South Carolina, tells you that they’re voting with their fear, prejudice, bias, and subconscious — not with their declared values.

Anyway, Romney is their only option and it’s quite entertaining to watch them squirm as a guaranteed losing proposition against Obama gets more popular. The difference in understanding between experts and the masses is more obvious than ever.