momentum of expectations

It is impossible to eliminate hunger because satisfaction of a need necessarily creates more need. So if you were to feed every person on the planet, that would just be proof that the planet can sustain more people. It is a basic function of human existence to never be completely satisfied. Call it a drive to improve. Furthermore, once a person has something, not having that something is unacceptable. If you are used to surfing the internet on a computer hooked up to a T1 line, you will never be able to tolerate a 56k modem, even if that very same 56k modem was cause for much celebration, delight, and envy when you first HAD to have one.

The service industry has built a paper castle for itself. By setting up the expectation in the customer's mind for the most gracious of treatment and the most humble of service, it is disallowing itself from maintaining human dignity and still staying competetive. If they truly wanted to make employees feel like family, they would give them a purpose to life, not one week's paid vacation at the company beach house on the Jersey shore. They are constructing a defensive superstructure in the name of profits that will fall down with the slightest gust of wind. Those who are building this castle, despite their attempts to dress up the shop windows and put on a good face, are at the mercy of the customer's every whim. Every peron with a "charge coin" is suddenly Louis XIV and must be obeyed, lest that one more piece of merchandise go unmoved.