The first thing I did when I heard of this book was to wrack
my brain on what I was doing when the “United Breaks Guitars” video came out in
2009 because I have no recollection of ever seeing it. At the time I was
working as an office manager for an understaffed private school and found
little daylight for viewing anything online that wasn’t pertinent to my job,
even something humorous or related to cute animals doing remarkable things (dark
days indeed).
As someone clueless about “UBG” I read this book because I’m
interested in memoir writing and customer service and was intrigued by David
Carroll’s story. My first fear was that the subject would be too thin to
stretch into a book of almost two hundred pages. I decided to not view any of
the author’s three videos until after I read the book to see if a non-fan would
find the story compelling. It turned out
to be a quick read but it got less gripping after what Carroll calls “the
frenzy” following his first video going viral.
His experience wasn’t remarkable in itself—he found that his
guitar was broken a day after his trip.
The reader hopes lesson #1 was learned here (I.e., to not wait until
you’re out of the airport to check your belongings if you suspect damage). Carroll’s
approach to resolving the conflict was chivalrous. He promised not to get
confrontational during the frustrating process of reimbursement and ended up
failing to gain a resolution in his favor, thus inspiring him to create a video
about his experience. I wondered here how often a “squeakier wheel” gets their way
when dealing with airlines.
I applaud Carroll’s niceness and his creative response to
his run-around, but being sweet may be one of the reasons I found patches of
his story a bit yawn producing. His prose lacks an edge, as in this paragraph
that sets up the section on filming the first video:
“With
no budget for lighting, we needed a free outside location, so as a volunteer
firefighter in Waverley, I asked my chief if I could use the fire-hall parking
lot for our outside shots. He said okay, so we picked a day in late May 2009
and hoped for good weather.”
The tale gets more interesting as his video goes viral.
There certainly are multitudes across the globe who can sympathize with bad
customer service, and since I’ve read this book I’ve read news stories of some
cringe-worthy flight horror stories, one being how a passenger had to sit next
to a recently deceased body during her flight to Africa.
I felt that Carroll used this book to tell his story, but
also to drive more people to his website and announce his new career as a
keynote speaker. As a “YouTube innovator” his main message to others is “to tell
your story authentically, only as you can, and watch what happens next. To
those people who feel unimportant, as though they have nothing special to
offer, I say that your story does matter and that there is no one better
qualified to share your perspective than you.”
Carroll claims that due to his videos, large corporations
now rethink how they handle complaints. He tells many stories of how his video
changed people’s lives. I’m happy that Carroll had a hugely successful
experience and glad for all the people he touched, but I believe his story
would’ve made a more fascinating chapter in a book on customer service in the
internet age than a book in itself.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.
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