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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

How a small mishap blacked out Florida

This morning authorities are probing how a small fire and a problem with a switch caused a blackout to happen that covered large areas of Florida. 

Yesterday, I just discovered Starbucks was closing for three hours nationally when I saw on the news that Florida was blacked out and thought "I like coffee, but isn't that a bit extreme?" Then I realized that Starbucks wasn't that powerful. 

Yet. Although they are promising customers perfection, i.e., if you don't get your beverage exactly the way you like it, they guarantee it will be fixed. Wow. If we could only spread that philosophy to social problems.

Imagine - your insurance claim is denied and you can call them up and actually negotiate and reason with them so that you feel satisfied that the product they sold you is actually worth something. Or you can negotiate the price and quality of your assistive device or- even better - your health care.  Or the access thereto.

Right now this perfection thing is only a policy at Starbucks, however. Not anywhere else. The rest of us have to settle whenever we're not in Starbucks drinking the beverage of our choice (if we can find a table we can fit at, but that's not covered in the perfection policy.)

For the people in Florida, I bet this morning they're just satisfied that  the lights are back on and they can see the beverage they'll be drinking this evening. 

Small mishaps. They really can lead to giant blackouts. Most of the time, however, it's not something you can see that obviously.