Pizza Parlors and Funeral Homes Commonalities
As much as I love pizza, I think I love those new Domino’s commercials even better. You know, the ones where the owner shows actual consumer photographs of delivered Domino’s pizzas that look terrible. Pies stuck to the box top, pies that have slid around in the box, and pies horribly out of shape. After highlighting how his company messed up their product, the owner then looks right into the camera and talks about how he’s not gonna let that kind of thing happen again. He even invites folks to send their own pictures of Domino “accidents.”
How refreshing it is to hear a “big dog” actually admit his firm makes mistakes, and to have the courage to show what the mistakes looked like! I’m more of a Pizza Hut kinda guy (probably because it was what I grew up with), but such honesty may turn my loyalty over to Domino’s. How can you not admire the attitude of “yeah, we can sure foul up a pizza or the delivery process, but we’re going to use such instances to improve our entire operation?”
I can remember one of my first summers working at Oakey’s back in the late seventies. I was on a funeral at our North Chapel and listed to drive the flower truck. That means one of my duties was to load the flowers after the funeral service and drive them (REAL FAST!) to the cemetery so they could be set up at the cemetery for the graveside service. Well, yours truly got those floral pieces loaded up, and then drove to Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens to drop them off. I drove around and around the cemetery, getting a bit nervous because I could not spot a tent set up marking the grave. Sweating now, I pulled the memorial record out of my pocket and almost went into cardiac arrest when I saw “Fair View Cemetery” listed as the place of interment! Oh no! Going into my “freak out” mode, I drove like a bat out of hell as quickly as I could to Fair View, only to see the service beginning WITH NO FLOWERS AROUND THE GRAVE! I felt like the biggest loser in the world, and have never gotten over the family having to bury their loved one with no floral pieces around the grave. To make matters worse, after the graveside when I went up to Joe Jamison (who was the funeral director on the service), he asked me what had happened. I told one monstrous lie when I said that the flower truck had broken down on the way to the cemetery. “Boy, wouldn’t I have passed you with the procession if you had broken down on the side of the road?” asked Mr. J, “You went to the wrong cemetery didn’t you?” I admitted I had, and then got a well-deserved lecture about knowing where I am supposed to go, and about telling the truth.
Yeah, we are not perfect at Oakey’s. But like Domino’s, I’ll be the first to admit it and promise that we will try harder.
