I won’t fly Continental Airlines because of an very bad travel experience a little over a year ago. Living in Houston, this makes travel a bit more difficult, but for me it’s worth paying a little more to never have to fly Continental again.
Briefly, they turned our plane around, halfway through a 3.5 hour flight, to return to our destination. There was no mechanical malf, or crew problem; Continental was just concerned that they would be unable to get a full day’s worth of flights out of our plane the next day, if it continued towards our destination (Seattle). The pilot FWIW, said over the PA that he’d never encountered anything like this in 20+ years of flying. After turning around and returning to Houston, they offered stand-by for us over the next day. They did not add another flight—indeed they even cancelled an additional morning flight. At the counter, they stated they could book us on a flight that would leave three days later. Waiting with ~300 other people to get added via stand-by 4 and 5 people per flight, for the next day was very entertaining. We eventually cancelled and never made it.
My understanding was that the weather would not prevent our landing—other airlines were landing at SEA-TAC while we were in the air, per my sister in Seattle. The weather would simply make it hard for Continental to get their plane flying again early that next morning. I’d even have been fine with their cancelling the flight, but to turn us around in mid-air and fly us nowhere for 4 hours?
Subsequent letters to Continental got us nothing but a weaselly letter back from their operations VP. No voucher, no discount, just a half-assed mealy-mouthed regrets for the weather.
To hell with them. I’d drive to Seattle before I ever flew Continental again.
Curiously, I began shopping more at Whole Foods after the John Mackey debacle. The store workers make some $15/hour and get good healthcare; why hate a guy who’s doing right by his company? Sure he’s nuts personally - but you don’t see people making fun of Steve Jobs for trying to cure his cancer with veganism, do you?
Like Elbows, I try really hard to avoid Chinese goods whenever possible. Food, especially - I tried some great black garlic as a store sample the other day. Had it in my cart, but left it with the cashier - it was made in China. Their standards of quality are just really absurdly low.
My favorite Jewish deli has a semi-boycott in place. Two of the four waiteresses are absolutely incompetent, moronic, and acerbic. If I’m seated in their area, I ask to be moved to another. If they’re the only ones working, I leave. The manager even noticed and apologized/offered to comp our next meal. We politely declined, but did impress upon him that it we’d be back with much more frequently if they were gone.
Ooh, I thought of one – Travelocity. They really screwed me with some reservations a couple of years ago, the service was terrible, I spent hours on the phone with them and I wrote a letter of complaint and never heard a peep from them. All my online travel booking goes through Orbitz or another alternative now.
I also try to avoid Wal-mart as much as possible, although it’s not a strict boycott. For their labor practices, and also because last year I started working for a semi-competitor.
I try to avoid out of season produce, too. While it’s nice to have everything available all the time, it is taking a toll on the earth. Also, out of season produce tends lack flavor.
And I can’t help but think that a really religious business owner would be mortally offended by my money, because I habitually use a marker to blacken out the “In God We Trust” motto on paper money. I’d hate to be the cause of distress, so I don’t inflict my Godless Heathen money on such businesses. Seriously, though, these businesses are telling me that they want and will cater to a certain segment of the population. I’m specifically excluded. I’m not welcome there. So I don’t shop there. If they want my business, then they shouldn’t make me feel unwelcome. I quit going to one doctor because his receptionist would end all her voicemail messages with “Have a blessed day!”, and I told him that.
I… don’t even know what to say to this. To simplify to the nth degree, if you buy something, your money goes to either the company, or the franchisee using the company’s name who then in turn pays the company. Either way money gets funneled upwards into the primary business for every sale, no matter how small. The business then has three basic choices as to what to do with said money: use it to keep the business going (supplies, salaries, etc.), plow any excess back into the business in someway (R&D, expansion, cash fund in case of emergencies, etc.), or remove it from the business to compensate the people who own it (a small business owner takes a salary, or stockholders get dividends). It doesn’t matter whether or not the person in corporate in NY ever directly sees any money from sales in LA. All money from all divisions, generally reported separately or not, ultimately gets combined onto a document called a balance sheet at the end of the year. And that balance sheet is the final arbitrator that the company specifically and the market as a whole is looking at to see how well the business did that year, and how much money they have to continue operations the next year.
Yes. But as I already said, the CEO gets paid a salary (and what I didn’t mention is that they’re extremely likely to own stock in said company). Therefore, the money he is paid does contain some portion of that five dollars you paid in LA, even if it’s an insanely small sliver of it. The same thing is true of every other employee and stockholder they have. But the amount is massively larger with the CEO.
Whoever said I adhere perfectly to some sort of absolute ethical standard in my purchasing decisions? As you note, that would become impossible to do after a certain point, and exhausting to keep up with to boot. But if enough people have a big enough problem with a company or person to refuse to do business with them, they either fix it or go out of business. It’s basic economics, and how pure capitalism has always functioned in absence of other forces. If Og in the next cave stole your portion of the harvest, the community could punish him by shunning his well-knapped spear heads (or hitting him with rocks). If a shopkeeper in the 1800s was revealed as gay, the community could punish him by refusing to buy from his shop any more (or hitting him with rocks). If Roman Polanski rapes a child, the community is well within their rights to shun his movies, no matter how well made they might be or that the film company actually releasing it into theaters didn’t do the raping or approve of it (though, alas, hitting with rocks is not an option in his case).
Not totally disagreeing with your comment on the quality of Chick-fil-A’s service, but in my experience, In-N-Out Burger’s customer service is at least as good, and usually better than that of Chick-fil-A’s. Chick-fil-A’s is usually pretty good, FWIW.
I’ve always had great service at Chik-fil-a; they’ll even come by the table and offer to take our trash.
I’m also surpised (but on this board, I guess I shouldn’t be) at the perception that a fish or cross on the business sign means they don’t want my business (or my money) if I’m not a Christian. Maybe just because I’m in the Bible Belt, where those things are more common, but it seems pretty irrational to me.
Just out of curiosity, how often do you use paper money? I use it maybe once/week. Also, don’t you think the money’s just on a quicker route towards being taken out of circulation with the black out marks?
Well, I’m not sure I believe that they don’t want my money, per se. But I’m curious as what possible purpose you think that they’re serving by putting those symbols on a business sign other than proselytizing? Is there some sort of obvious rational that I’m missing?
I actually cemented my decision to boycott after they rolled out an ableist, sizist and inappropriate tiered employee discount program that rewarded or penalized staffers for health factors which aren’t any employer’s business, and in many respects are outside of the employees’ control.
In my experience, it’s the same as advertising in so-called “Shepherd’s Guides” and Christian magazines and newspapers. It’s a shorthand way of saying to other evangelicals that shopping there means supporting people of like mind and faith, and saying in general that they attempt to run their business in a Christian manner, which shorthands for being fair, polite, good corporate and community citizens. And sometimes that’s true (see: In-And-Out Burger or my local printing/copy shop) and sometimes, not so much.
What the others have said – they’re hoping potential (religious) customers are saying “Hey, that business is owned by a Christian, I should support it.” It’s similar to little rainbows you sometimes see on gay-fiendly businesses. I don’t assume those rainbow-clad businesses don’t want me to patronize them because I’m straight, and even less do I believe they want to convert me.
Where did I say I have a hard on against Russia, or I hate them? I said nothing of the kind.
I will not buy a Toshiba product because they knowingly violated US law in order to supply Russia with prohibited technology. This was not some oops we made a boo-boo. they engaged in an organized plot to acquire these machines and sell them to Russia. IMHO that makes them assholes of the highest order.
At the time Congress was so pissed there was talk about banning Toshiba from selling any more products here. But as in most things political Toshiba threw a metric butt load of money to the lobbyists and the problem disappeared.
However since I did not get any of the lobbyists money, I feel free to decide that Toshiba is a bunch of slimy assholes and I do not need to support them.
YMMV