User:Dreamsmith/Scrooged

Scrooge Was Right...
One upon a time, there was a widget maker named Bob. For several years, Bob sold widgets to many people, and many people came to love Bob's widgets, and returned to his widget store often to buy more.

One day, Bob decided to give customers a piece of candy with every sale. Many customers were very happy and enjoyed the candy, but a few customers became quite upset. It wasn't that they didn't like candy. No, they were mad because Bob had stolen so much candy from them.

Bob was confused. "I never took any candy from you!" he protested.

"But I bought dozens of widgets from you over the last few years, and you never once gave me any candy," they replied.

"Well, yeah, I just started doing that this week. If you buy a new widget today, you'll get a piece of candy just like everyone else," Bob said.

"But don't you see?" they whined. "We bought widgets for years without getting any candy! You owe us all a whole bunch of candy for all those purchases over the years!"

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I do," Bob said. "I gave you the widgets you purchased and you were happy with them! Candy wasn't part of the deal."

"But people get candy now!" they cried.

"And you will too from now on!" he reminded. "I'm treating everyone equally, everyone fairly."

"But... all those years that we didn't get candy!" they bemoaned. "That's years of business we've thrown away now! We've lost so much..."

"What do you mean?" Bob was seriously confused. "You haven't lost anything! You still have your widgets, I'm not taking away your old widgets, I'm not taking away anything!"

"But it was all for nothing! Now that people get candy with their widgets, all the time and money we put into getting just widgets was wasted!  All we got out of it was widgets!  Now that people get candy too... can't you see how you've destroyed everything we previously bought?  None of those widgets are worth anything now that you're giving out candy too."

It was at this point that Bob realized he was talking to idiots. He resolved to simply not listen to them anymore.

But he learned an important lesson. Never start doing anything nice for people. Never improve your products, and never improve your service. If you do, you'll make a lot of idiots angry, and although they will threaten to /ragequit, they won't, they'll just keep whining about how evil you are for being nice, and how your nice gestures demonstrate your profound disrespect for them. In order to respect them, you must never offer them something new. Any new bonus means you owe them for all the years when you weren't offering it.

Gods forbid you take a friend out to dinner. Imagine how much money you would owe them for all the dinners you didn't take them out for from the time you first befriended them.

No no, make sure that whatever nice thing you want to offer someone, don't, unless you did it from the very beginning. There are simply too many idiots that will be enraged by the offer of something new if you don't backdate the offering to the beginning...