Transactions Aren't Experiences

I have a question for practically every business in America. When did buying something become an experience? Because apparently, I can no longer walk into a store, purchase what I need, and leave without somebody wanting to know how the experience made me feel. I bought something. You sold something. We exchanged money for goods or services, which is a fairly basic concept that human beings have managed to understand for thousands of years. At what point did we decide this ordinary exchange needed to become an emotional event worthy of evaluation, recognition, and a follow-up survey?

I think we've completely lost our minds with this shit. I can buy a sandwich, and twenty minutes later somebody wants me to rate my experience. What experience? I ordered a sandwich, someone made it, I paid for it, and then I ate it. It was lunch. I wasn't participating in a cultural event, developing a meaningful relationship, or embarking on some unforgettable culinary adventure. I was hungry, you had food, and we successfully completed a transaction.

Transactions aren't experiences. At least, they aren't automatically the kind of experiences businesses keep pretending they are. Every transaction is technically something a person experiences, but that doesn't mean it deserves to be packaged, measured, and remembered as a special occasion. Buying batteries isn't an experience. Paying for groceries isn't an experience. Having somebody scan an item, place it in a bag, and hand me a receipt isn't an experience worth discussing afterward. It's commerce, and commerce doesn't need to become a personality.

Yet businesses seem absolutely determined to convince us that every ordinary interaction is something much more significant. They don't just want to sell us things anymore. They want to provide a memorable customer journey, exceed our expectations, create meaningful engagement, and develop lasting relationships. I don't know who started teaching everyone to talk like this, but I'd like to have a conversation with them. Sometimes I need a gallon of milk, and I don't particularly want to embark on a journey to obtain it.

But I've started wondering whether the real problem is that businesses don't know how to hold themselves or their employees accountable anymore. Or maybe they don't want to do the work required to figure out whether they're actually doing a good job. It's much easier to automate an email asking customers to evaluate the employee than it is for a manager to understand what's happening inside their own business. Instead of developing effective supervision, training, and accountability, we've created systems that outsource those responsibilities to whoever happened to purchase something that afternoon.

Think about how ridiculous that arrangement is. You hire somebody, train them, establish expectations, and pay them to perform a job. Then, rather than determining whether they're doing that job correctly, you ask a random customer who interacted with them for forty-five seconds to provide a performance rating. I don't know what your employee is supposed to be doing. I don't know whether they completed their assigned tasks, followed procedures, or handled everything correctly behind the scenes. I know they handed me the thing I purchased without creating a problem, which seems like a fairly limited basis for evaluating their employment performance.

And now my opinion gets converted into a number that somebody can place on a dashboard. The employee gets a score, the manager gets a report, and the company gets to say it's monitoring customer satisfaction. Everybody has apparently accomplished something, even though nobody necessarily learned anything particularly meaningful about how well the business operates. We created a complicated digital system to answer a question that somebody working inside the organization should probably already have a reasonable understanding of.

The funniest part is what happens after they collect all those ratings. They turn around and market them to the public as evidence of how wonderful they are. Think about that for a minute. A business repeatedly asks people to praise it, collects the positive responses, and then advertises the praise as though it spontaneously emerged from an overwhelming public desire to celebrate the establishment. You requested the compliments, organized the compliments, selected the compliments, and then put the compliments on your website to tell everybody how highly regarded you are.

Congratulations. You successfully solicited applause. It's the business equivalent of walking around asking everybody to tell you how wonderful you are, then announcing that people can't stop saying wonderful things about you. Of course they're saying nice things. You keep fucking asking them to. And now you've turned those requested compliments into an advertising campaign about your incredible reputation.

I'm not suggesting every positive review is dishonest or that customers don't genuinely appreciate good service. Plenty of businesses deserve their reputations, and plenty of people voluntarily leave thoughtful reviews because they want to recognize something exceptional. But there's something absurd about the industrial-scale production of testimonials. We've built automated systems to ask people for praise, remind them to provide praise, collect the praise, and then display the praise as a marketing asset. At some point, I have to wonder whether the business is interested in learning how it's performing or simply manufacturing a steady supply of public approval.

Imagine doing this in ordinary personal relationships. I invite somebody over for dinner, and twenty minutes after they leave, I send an automated message asking them to rate their experience. If they don't respond, I follow up the next morning to remind them how important their feedback is. Then I take their five-star rating, put it on my wall, and tell future dinner guests that I'm a highly recommended host. Nobody would consider that normal behavior, but apparently it's perfectly reasonable when a business does it.

And the questions are so dramatic compared with what actually happened. "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?" Well, considering I purchased a package of batteries, I don't anticipate the subject coming up at Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not going to interrupt somebody's story to tell everyone about the incredible battery-buying journey I recently completed. If someone asks where to buy batteries, I'll probably tell them where I bought mine. But I don't think that qualifies as the kind of endorsement your marketing department is apparently hoping to receive.

I think we've confused customer satisfaction with customer enthusiasm. I can be completely satisfied with something without feeling enthusiastic about it. If I purchase a product and it works exactly as advertised, I'm satisfied. If an employee answers my question correctly, I'm satisfied. If a restaurant prepares the food I ordered and it tastes good, I'm satisfied. None of those outcomes requires me to develop an emotional attachment to the business or publicly celebrate the transaction.

And heaven forbid I give somebody four stars. In a normal universe, four out of five would suggest that something was pretty damn good. But in some customer-service systems, four stars apparently means the employee personally insulted my entire family and should reconsider their career choices. So now I have to understand the company's internal performance metrics before I can honestly answer a question about whether somebody handed me a sandwich correctly. I'm not evaluating the transaction anymore. I'm trying to avoid accidentally getting someone in trouble because I thought four stars meant what four stars should mean.

That makes the whole accountability system even stranger. If customers are pressured to give five stars because anything less might hurt an employee, how useful is the information being collected? If employees feel obligated to ask for positive ratings, and customers feel obligated to provide them, the resulting numbers become a measurement of how successfully everyone participated in the rating ritual. The business can still put those numbers in a presentation and congratulate itself on outstanding satisfaction scores. Whether the scores accurately reflect anything is another question.

There's something almost self-indulgent about the whole process. Businesses don't just want to know whether customers received what they paid for. They want confirmation that customers appreciate them, that their employees are wonderful, and that the organization deserves recognition for successfully operating. And once that confirmation arrives, they want to display it publicly so other people can appreciate them too. It's a remarkably elaborate way of asking strangers to tell you you're doing a good job.

I understand why organizations want feedback. If customers consistently experience problems, somebody should know about them, and a well-designed survey can reveal issues that management might otherwise overlook. But feedback should supplement accountability rather than replace it. Managers should understand how their teams operate, employees should know what's expected of them, and businesses should have ways to identify problems without relying entirely on customer ratings. Asking customers what they think can be useful, but it shouldn't become a substitute for knowing how to run the place.

And if the business genuinely wants to know whether customers are satisfied, perhaps it could start by paying attention to what customers actually do. Are people returning? Are they purchasing the products they came for? Are complaints being resolved? Are employees able to answer questions and complete transactions without unnecessary complications? Those are meaningful indicators of how a business operates. A survey can provide additional context, but it shouldn't become the only way an organization knows whether it's functioning properly.

Then there's the fucking tip screen. I just paid fifteen dollars for a sandwich, and now you're asking whether I'd like to add another 20% for the person who made it. What exactly did the fifteen dollars cover? Three-quarters of the assembly? Did I purchase a partially completed sandwich, and the additional three dollars unlock the premium option where somebody finishes making it correctly? I didn't see anything on the menu explaining that fifteen dollars gets me a half-assed sandwich while eighteen dollars gets me one assembled with precision.

I ordered a sandwich, not a subscription to quality workmanship. The price was fifteen dollars, which I assumed included the bread, the ingredients, and somebody putting the fucking thing together. I wasn't aware that properly distributing the lettuce required an additional financial incentive. Am I supposed to believe that without a tip, the employee might just throw the turkey in the general direction of the bread and call it a day? And if I select 25%, does somebody come out and personally inspect the structural integrity of my sandwich before handing it over?

Pay your employees, fuck face. You set the prices, you hired the people, and you decided fifteen dollars was what this sandwich should cost. I didn't negotiate their wages, establish their benefits, or determine how much labor was necessary to place meat between two pieces of bread. If the price doesn't cover paying the person who makes the product, that's a problem with your business model, not an unexpected responsibility I acquired by ordering lunch. I'm already paying you to make the sandwich. I'm not paying extra to encourage you to make it properly.

I'm not talking about traditional tipped service, where tipping has long been part of how compensation works. I'm talking about the increasingly common situation where I perform most of the transaction myself and still get asked to provide a gratuity. I walk up, place the order, pay for it, wait for my name, retrieve the item, and sometimes clean up after myself. Somewhere in the middle of that process, a tablet gets turned around and asks me how much extra money I'd like to contribute. I'm genuinely curious which part of this arrangement we're tipping for, because I feel like I was doing a considerable amount of the work.

The awkwardness of the whole thing is almost impressive. The employee turns the screen around, and suddenly you're deciding whether to add more money while another person stands there waiting for your response. The suggested amounts might be 20%, 25%, or 30%, as though handing somebody a prepared item automatically deserves a substantial percentage of the purchase price. If you don't tip, you sometimes feel like you've violated some unwritten social agreement that nobody actually explained to you. I just wanted lunch, and now I'm apparently taking an ethics examination at the cash register.

So let me understand the complete arrangement. I walk into your business, purchase something, get asked to tip somebody for completing the transaction, and then receive an email asking whether that person did a good job. If I don't respond, you might send another message reminding me that my feedback is important. If I do respond, you may ask me to leave a public review so other people can learn about the incredible experience of purchasing the thing you sell. At what point did buying something become this complicated?

Maybe I should start sending businesses surveys about their customers. After I leave, I could email the store and ask how satisfied they were with my purchasing performance. Did I approach the counter efficiently? Was my payment method acceptable? Would the associate recommend me to other retailers? Please rate my ability to locate my wallet on a scale of one to ten, and let me know how I can improve my shopping behavior in the future.

I could even add a tip screen at the end. "Would you like to recognize this customer for being polite, paying promptly, and not causing a scene?" Suggested appreciation amounts could be $3, $5, or $10, with a custom option for businesses that felt I really went above and beyond. After all, I was courteous, followed the rules, and contributed to the financial success of the establishment. If we're going to turn ordinary transactions into opportunities for additional recognition and compensation, I don't see why the appreciation should only flow in one direction.

I think part of the problem is that businesses have started treating customers as though we're supposed to participate in their internal operations. We're expected to evaluate employees, provide market research, endorse the company publicly, contribute additional compensation through tips, and explain how the transaction could have been improved. Meanwhile, we were simply trying to purchase something. I didn't walk into your establishment hoping to become a member of your advisory board. I wanted a sandwich.

And the follow-up communication can be more involved than the original purchase. You receive a receipt, a thank-you email, a satisfaction survey, and sometimes another reminder because you haven't completed the survey. I've had interactions with businesses that generated more messages than the number of words exchanged during the actual transaction. That's an impressive amount of administrative activity surrounding something that took approximately ninety seconds to accomplish. We developed technology to make commerce faster and then immediately invented new ways to occupy the time we saved.

I think businesses have become so focused on creating memorable experiences that they've forgotten how many customers would prefer not to remember the transaction at all. I don't want to spend the rest of my afternoon thinking about the process of buying groceries. I want to take the groceries home and use them. I don't want a routine appointment to become an important event in my personal history. I want the appointment to accomplish its purpose so I can get back to everything else happening in my life.

There's a difference between something being pleasant and something needing to be meaningful. I appreciate friendly employees, clean stores, efficient service, and people who seem to care about doing their jobs well. Those things make ordinary transactions better, and I notice when they're missing. But appreciating competent service doesn't mean I need to commemorate it with a five-star review. Sometimes the best thing a business can do is make the transaction so straightforward that I barely have to think about it.

I also wonder what all this constant evaluation does to the people working in these businesses. If every interaction has to produce an exceptional experience, employees are being asked to deliver something that might not even be possible or appropriate. A person working a checkout counter shouldn't have to make purchasing groceries feel like an extraordinary occasion. They should be able to do their job professionally, treat customers respectfully, and receive fair compensation for their work. Expecting every interaction to generate enthusiastic praise seems exhausting for everyone involved.

There's another contradiction here that I find particularly funny. Businesses want customers to believe their reputations are earned, but then they develop entire processes specifically designed to generate the evidence of those reputations. They ask for ratings, encourage reviews, automate reminders, and create marketing campaigns around the positive responses. None of that automatically makes the praise false, but it certainly makes the whole thing less spontaneous than the advertising suggests. It's difficult to be impressed by a company's collection of compliments when you know how aggressively companies pursue those compliments.

Imagine walking around asking everyone you encounter whether they think you're a good person. You stop people after ordinary conversations, send them follow-up messages, and ask them to rate how pleasant you were on a scale of one to five. Then you take the most flattering responses and introduce yourself to new people by announcing that 97% of respondents consider you wonderful. At some point, people might begin wondering why you need so much confirmation. They might also wonder whether you're more interested in being a good person or in collecting evidence that other people think you are.

That's what makes the entire system feel so backwards. Instead of concentrating on being reputable and allowing that reputation to develop through consistent behavior, some businesses seem increasingly interested in collecting the appearance of reputability. They want the stars, the testimonials, the endorsements, and the numbers they can display in advertisements. They want to be able to tell prospective customers that existing customers love them. And apparently, they're willing to send an astonishing number of automated messages to make sure somebody eventually says it.

I don't think every transaction needs to become an opportunity for engagement. Sometimes engagement is the exact opposite of what the customer wants. If I can complete a purchase in two minutes without having to answer unnecessary questions, that's wonderful. If I can get what I need without creating an account, joining a rewards program, or providing my email address, even better. If I can leave without being asked to evaluate the entire interaction afterward, I might actually consider that excellent service.

Businesses seem to think the goal is to make every transaction memorable, but I think they've misunderstood what people value about ordinary life. We have jobs, families, responsibilities, interests, problems, and countless things competing for our attention. Most of us aren't walking around hoping that purchasing household supplies will become the highlight of our afternoon. We want to handle what needs to be handled and get back to the things that actually matter to us. A business that respects that is probably providing a better service than one that constantly demands additional attention.

I'm not suggesting that genuine experiences don't exist. Going to a concert is an experience. Taking your children somewhere new, visiting a place you've always wanted to see, or sharing an incredible meal with people you care about can be an experience. Those things involve memories, emotions, relationships, and moments that might actually stay with you. Even a routine business can occasionally provide an exceptional experience when something genuinely unusual or meaningful happens. But that doesn't mean every purchase deserves the same language.

When everything becomes an experience, the word starts losing its meaning. A concert and a checkout line shouldn't automatically occupy the same category of personal significance. A family vacation and the purchase of a toothbrush aren't equivalent events simply because a marketing department has decided to describe them using the same terminology. We can acknowledge that people have feelings about transactions without pretending those transactions are important moments in their lives. Sometimes an exchange of money for goods is exactly what it appears to be.

I wish more businesses would recognize the value of simply being good at what they do. Sell a reliable product, charge a reasonable price, employ competent people, and make the transaction straightforward. If something goes wrong, fix it without making the customer navigate an elaborate process. If someone does an exceptional job, recognize them without requiring every customer to become an unpaid performance evaluator. Those seem like fairly reasonable expectations for businesses that want people to continue spending money with them.

Instead, we keep adding layers of unnecessary interaction to things that were already working. A purchase becomes a customer journey. A receipt becomes an invitation to provide feedback. A payment terminal becomes a tip request. A routine employee interaction becomes an opportunity to evaluate performance, and an ordinary transaction becomes something the customer is encouraged to endorse publicly. We've taken one of the simplest concepts in human society and surrounded it with an astonishing amount of bullshit.

And the funniest part is that businesses will probably send surveys asking whether customers enjoy receiving all these surveys. Somewhere, somebody is going to decide that survey participation is declining and commission another survey to understand why. They'll create a report, schedule a meeting, review the data, and develop a strategy for improving customer engagement. Meanwhile, the answer is probably sitting right in front of them. People wanted to buy something and be left alone.

I don't expect businesses to stop collecting feedback, and I understand that some of it is genuinely useful. But I would love to see a return to the idea that ordinary transactions can simply be ordinary. You don't have to turn every interaction into a memorable event or convince customers that they've participated in something special. You can provide excellent service by doing exactly what you promised to do. Sometimes exceeding expectations means not adding unnecessary complications to something that should have been simple.

The next time I purchase something, I'd like the interaction to end when the transaction ends. I don't need a thank-you email followed by a satisfaction survey, a reminder to complete the survey, and an invitation to leave a public review. I don't need to evaluate whether the employee exceeded my expectations or whether the checkout process made me feel valued as a customer. I gave you money, you gave me what I purchased, and we both continued with our lives. That seems like a perfectly successful arrangement.

If I liked your store, I'll probably come back. If your employee did something exceptional, I'll tell them I appreciate it. If I have a problem, I'll let somebody know, and if I genuinely think other people would benefit from knowing about your business, I might recommend it. None of those things requires you to chase me around the internet asking whether I enjoyed the experience. I was there, I know what happened, and I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether it deserves any additional attention.

Transactions aren't experiences, at least not automatically, and I wish we'd stop pretending they are. Sometimes buying something is just buying something, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. We don't need to manufacture emotional significance around every exchange of money or collect digital applause for every ordinary job completed correctly. I'd like to buy a fucking sandwich without being asked to tip, rate, endorse, recommend, subscribe, or explain how the transaction changed my life.

And if I come back tomorrow and buy another sandwich, maybe you can just assume I liked the first one. You don't need an automated survey to confirm it, and you certainly don't need to turn my repeat purchase into a testimonial about your exceptional customer experience. I already gave you the most straightforward endorsement a customer can provide. I came back and spent more money. If that isn't enough, perhaps the problem isn't that customers aren't providing sufficient feedback. Perhaps we've forgotten how to recognize when something is working without demanding that somebody congratulate us for it.