Book Review: "The Simple Truths of Service: Inspired by Johnny the Bagger" by Ken Blanchard & Barbara Glanz

*Get the book on Amazon here*

This very short book is full of platitudes praising going above and beyond the customer service call. While sometimes inspiring, I was suspicious that either author had ever worked in a corporate retail environment. The book reads like the notes taken at a human resources seminar.

Johnny the Bagger was a bagboy with Down Syndrome who worked at a grocery store. He would print positive thoughts on his computer, and put one of these "thought of the day" slips in the customers' bags. This proved so popular that customers would line up in his cash register line just to get a new thought. The authors then follow up Johnny's story with other stories about employees who would go out of their way, doing that extra mile, in order to keep a customer for life.

While the book is short and sweet, Blanchard and Glanz have not set out to solve every problem you might have in the working world. Difficult customers, lazy coworkers, clueless human resources personnel, stupid corporate decisions, and micro-managing supervisors are not addressed. Some of the ideas are nice, showing the positive side of giving perfect customer service, but I read the stories with a lot of harumphing and rolling my eyes.

I worked retail most of my adult life, with the greatest chunk of that time spent at one big box retailer (nineteen years). I always thought about writing a book about my many experiences, entitled He Really Loves That Dog -featuring a true story about a boss who made me cancel a medical appointment for my son so I could work, but called in sick that very shift when his mutt was ill. When I complained, I was told my proposed title by another boss. I only thought about writing these incidents down but I figured "who would read them?" Every employee has stories like this, what would set me apart? I was no angel, threatening to punch that same boss after being harassed by him at work (and I was the one who got in trouble, of course), so I kept my head down and trudged through. Could these simple truths of service inspire me to be a better employee? No, because they still wouldn't inspire the various companies I worked for to be better employers. Maybe an HQ corporate higher-up, whose "surprise" visits we had to clean up for, can glean something from these little stories, but the Level 1 peon grunt out there will probably have the same reaction I did- yeah, right.

The Simple Truths of Service seems sincere, if a little overly obsessed with this Johnny guy, and maybe the book and accompanying video (in some editions) will give that boss in your life the warm fuzzies, but the truth is in the three decades I worked, I can't think of one situation where incredible customer service would help me love my job, much less make it tolerable. This "truth" hurts.