My youngest cousin is a recent high school graduate working at a restaurant in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh.
The place isn’t fancy, but it’s always packed. It also happens to be frequented by numerous members of Pittsburgh’s three professional sports franchises.
While it was somewhat surprising to hear how often the players visit this particular establishment, I was frankly shocked to hear my cousin’s next bit of information: Many of these wealthy athletes are extremely poor tippers.
You’d think people who are dependent upon the loyalty of fans to pay their salaries could see the damage that behavior might cause to the public’s perception of them and, by extension, their future earnings potential.
We’re in 2011 — just how fast do you think the wait staff was Tweeting out its disgust to everyone it knew?
Consider (and perhaps shudder at) the following insight Michael Maslansky offers in “The Language of Trust,” which discusses the challenges of selling ideas, products, services and even yourself amid a society of skeptics.
“In the offline world, it actually takes work for critics to say something bad about a company, a person, or a product . . . But in the online world, you can tell hundreds of people (or more) about your experience in thirty seconds. And if you do a good job, your criticism will be passed happily along thanks to a circulation culture that rewards those who redistribute.”
Maslansky, however, then throws some water on the flames he just fanned by pointing out that easy access to share opinions “means that much of this outrage is superficial and, more important, fleeting.”
It’s also important to note that not all (or perhaps even most) professional athletes are negligent in their tipping responsibilities, appearance commitments or community obligations, of course, but they often will be lumped in with the guilty parties whose behavior does negatively impact the reputation, credibility and trust of an organization, much like the actions of a derelict CEO will reflect poorly on everyone at his or her company.
The point is this — image is everything. Yes, that is an old Andre Agassi line from his Canon camera commercials, and yes, the spots were widely criticized for the style-over-substance message they seemingly advocated. However, that doesn’t mean they were wrong, at least in terms of substantiating how fast public perception can turn against a person in the public eye when he or she makes just one mistake. (Let’s also forget the irony that Agassi’s “image is everything” mantra came across as more-than-slightly disingenuous after he later admitted to wearing a wig during that time period to hide his premature balding, but I digress.)
When an organization hires a public relations firm to share its story and help position itself as a respected, trusted partner in the business community, its members can quickly and easily negate those efforts by engaging in inappropriate or inconsiderate (to say nothing of illegal) behavior outside the office, boardroom, courtroom, field of play, etc.
You don’t have to be an athlete the caliber of Ben Roethlisberger or a politician such as Anthony Weiner or Eliot Spitzer to understand the damage just one negative story can do to your reputation. (What’s up with New York’s male elected officials lately, anyway?)
Business leaders, especially in this day and age, are being held to a higher standard. Is that fair or unfair? It doesn’t matter, because it’s reality.
How many good deeds will it take to rebuild the trust broken by just one bad decision you make in the public eye? How do you think business professionals, politicians, athletes, etc. should behave outside the office? Do their actions impact your view of the organization? Does it matter how high profile they or their company are and what status within the company the person occupies?
My thought is this: Sometimes in life you might not have to pay for a meal, but when it comes to protecting your image, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
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Jeremy Church is an account supervisor for WordWrite Communications.
He can be reached at jeremy.church@wordwritepr.com and on Twitter @churchjeremy.
