11/15/2009
Disposable Society
Kerry Herndon
I recently received an e-mail through my website from an angry consumer. She wasn’t unhappy with the product, but with the words on the care tag. Here’s the email:
“I recently purchased one of your bromeliads. After I got home and looked at the stick I was appalled to see this line printed: ‘Plants can also be discarded when no longer flowering … it’s okay, we’ll grow more.’ Shame on you for encouraging our increasingly disposable society. I guess it’s all about the bottom line, right? Throw out a perfectly fine living thing, and buy a prettier one from us. I will never buy a product from your company again, and have already advised my friends in my garden club about your business ethics. They also agree it is heinous and will urge their friends to avoid your products as well.”
It’s kind of scary to get angry consumer e-mails, and it made me doubt the correctness of the message on the tag. But I decided that the message is correct and fair and the writer of this was not. So I wrote her back. Here is my response:
“I understand that you are very angry about the line ‘dispose of plant … it’s okay, we’ll grow more.’ I am the author of this line so felt it was only fair that I respond. First, no one loves plants more than I do. Second, we give full instructions on how to keep the plant alive forever. The fact is, being a member of a garden club puts you in a tiny minority of sophisticated buyers of plants. The vast majority of our customers want to have our beautiful plants in their home and they truly feel guilty when they cannot successfully care for the plants after flowering. They feel terrible about throwing away these plants. I want to take away the guilt that is an unnecessary impediment to fully enjoying these wonderful plants. Should these people no longer be allowed to enjoy the beauty of the bromeliads we sell? What should they do with the old, dead plants?
“Every year at Christmas I buy poinsettias and enjoy them for many weeks and then dispose of them, although they are quite alive at the time. Is this a bad thing? I also buy potted mums from time to time because I also want to enjoy the fantastic colors for the time they last. Is that a bad thing? And what of cut flowers? Are they all evil parts of a disposable society? I think you are being unfair to me and the fine people that work hard to provide beautiful plants at low prices that I believe improve the quality of people’s lives. I don’t know if the tag you saw indicated our VeriFlora certification. This means that we produce our plants in the most sustainable methods and continuously improve on that through inspection and verification yearly.
“As far as your comments about this being all ‘about the bottom line,’ I will tell you that as a private business I must make money or go out of business. The fact is, private business pays for everything that is not private. They say that between federal, state and local government, private businesses are now 40% of the U.S. economy. So, as a private company I must provide the funds for my employees and the money for all those government employees, including benefits and retirement. It is unreasonable to be against companies making a fair profit. If not for us hard-working private companies, we would all be very poor indeed.
“I hope you will change your mind about plant tags and continue to buy my product and recommend them to your friends, but as a consumer you are free to choose. I welcome any further comments you may have.”
I seriously doubt that I will change this person’s mind, but it was worth a try. In this world of extreme connectivity it’s important that we take the time to respond to those who love and hate us. Although ignoring an isolated complaint saves times and energy, not responding is just not acceptable today. The complaint also caused me to reexamine the tag wording.
Plus, I got column out of it.
Kerry Herndon owns and operates Kerry’s Bromeliad Nursery in Homestead, Florida.
He can be reached at kherndon@kerrys.com.