How would you handle this customer service?

I went to the corner about eight this morning to get the Sunday Duluth News Tribune. There were none in the machine. On the other hand, there was at least one copy of the Star Tribune in the other machine. Generally, it is the reverse. The daily Star Tribunes often are gone by eight and sometimes even by seven.

Whoever stocks these machines doesn't practice Magree's first law of inventory: you know you have stocked enough product when you have exactly one left at the next restocking. If you have two left, you know you stocked too much the last time. If you have none left, you have no idea on how many you might have sold if more had been available.

So, since two papers are too much to read on Sunday, we did without a paper at breakfast. On our way to our cabin for the day, we picked up a Duluth News Tribune at a gas station. I didn't really look at it and put it in a box in the back of our SUV.

Before we started eating our lunch, I separated the paper, mostly set aside all the ads. There were no comics! Oh, horrors! There was no sports. So what! There was no local news and no opinion pages! We can't do without those! We were left only with the front section and "Scrapbook", the section of puzzles, obituaries, anniversaries, and other personal events. We checked and double checked for the missing sections. The only non-glossy sections we had were the front section, "Scrapbook", and one section of classified.

When we came back to Duluth we stopped at the gas station we bought the paper at. The clerk hadn't heard anybody remark about missing sections. I went back to the news rack and checked a copy. It had everything. There was no set of other sections behind the pile. I told the clerk that another copy had all the sections. I did not offer to buy another copy.

So, now what is the appropriate customer service?

The clerk probably had no authority to offer me another copy. Typical of bureaucratic organizations.

A manager might have offered me another copy. Better organizations allow this flexibility.

An owner of a locally owned service station likely would have offered me another copy. He or she has a personal interest in my being a return customer.

If any of the above knew me personally, they might or might not have offered me another copy, depending on how strongly they felt it would have been a good-will gesture.

There is no right answer, but organizations that put satisfaction of random customers above a rigid procedure often do better than those who follow every "jot and tittle" of the rules.