Customer Satisfaction

Everybody knows it's tough to make a go of an independent business, big or small, right?

As someone who probably would never in a million years have the nerve to put all his eggs into a small business and run it for his life, I should go nowhere near this topic...but what the heck, being all judgey probably goes completely hand in hand with not doing any research, so here we go:

Part of what has been astonishing to me over the years is the number of very small businesses, handymen mostly in my case, who do things like just don't finish jobs, or don't show up to do jobs they've agreed to do, or don't arrange to get that final payment from you for work they actually did do, or appear super uncomfortable to be dealing with you, or very obviously employ people who have zero interest in doing or ability to do the job at hand.

I often end up wondering how they ever stay in business, a thought which is quickly followed by reflecting on the old trope about how hard it is to make a go of a small business. I mean yeah, it's probably really hard to stay in business if you're a nitwit about it.

Usually, there's a burst of resentment in there somewhere, too, because they're driving way nicer vehicles than I've ever been able to afford because they can write off payments on them. On top of that, I'm betting vehicle licence fees are being avoided on very many small-business Ford F-350 pickups that are not correctly licenced for what they're doing. The truck below isn't a Ford, but may be the Dodge version of the F350...but if I were attending here I think I'd be looking at the driver, not the vehicle:

...and when it happened, there WAS a car in the space below the truck...

That picture was taken by my daughter Hayley at her place on May 15.... it wasn't submitted by the Autonomous Car Cabal. I like to imagine the conversation the woman in the foreground might be having.

For fun, and because I'm not sure where this is all going, here's a picture of a truck doing a government job that (a) I defy any pollster to get positive survey results on and (b) I had no idea existed at all and (c) is probably correctly licenced. It was in the Costco parking lot in Port Coquitlam in the middle of a work day:

I'm thinking bullet proof vests and danger pay, for sure...

I don't know what else to say. Statistics suggest that although the number of small businesses in BC has not really increased since 2007, and peaked in 2010 (not too surprisingly), the number of jobs and people have remained about the same excepting that bulge around the Olympics. I'm none too sure the stats provide a conclusion I can draw about the impact or lack of impact of running small businesses badly.  A simple table of stats on small businesses in BC is here

Maybe what I should be going on about is whether some of our tax dollars would be really well spent educating people on how to run businesses, but I'm going to bet there's plenty of dollars being spent on that already. The BC government provides loans and services already.  I didn't find out how much or how many, but I wonder how many of the guys driving F350s and pulling trailers crowded with lawnmowers and garden tools are spending their evenings on sites like this one for providing info to small business owners?

Soooo...I'm still blown away by the number of people who seem to be running small businesses very badly yet appear to make a living at it.