Our refrigerator, after 23 years of faithful service, died the other day.

Needing a replacement, Bob immediately found a new one. It’s a complicated and boring story but the crux of the matter is we can’t install the new one until we can detach our old one from the water system. A plumber has to do this and he needs a part. The installer said he can return when we know a date when this is completed. Bob has confirmed a date for the plumber.

All we need now is for the delivery people to come hook up the water for the new refrigerator and take the old one. The delivery man gave us a phone number and email address where we could contact them. Bob tried via email. No response. Bob then tried to call customer service. The recorded message informed him that he would wait an hour a customer service agent would answer. Thinking it had something to do with customer service being short staffed due to the 4th of July Holiday, he decided to wait until after the holiday. He called today very early in the day, and, received the same hour wait for an agent message. Customer Service doesn’t have enough agents when you start the day an hour behind. Given that we have heard nothing via email, I am willing to bet that no one is responding to emails and that our best bet is to wait an hour to speak with someone.

I recently had a similar experience while renting a car. We had to wait an hour and half in a line of more than 30 people to see a rental agent. There were two at the desk. Once we got our contract we went into another line to get our car. This desk had one person. We waited for 30 minutes in that line. At first, I thought a bunch of planes must have landed thus causing the long lines, but the line never got smaller, it had, in fact, got larger.

Of course, it isn’t the company’s fault. There aren’t enough good employees to do the job. They claim to be trying, but really are they? Management is always blaming labor for the lack of good employees. I invite you to look at this in a different way. Companies’ can’t find workers who are will do the job at the wage you are offering. They might have better luck if they paid more money.

Indeed, this is the way the market is supposed to operate. If something becomes more expansive to deliver, say oil for the sake of argument, then the market price goes up. So, when there is war in the Middle East or hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico preventing the refining of oil, everyone accepts that prices of oil will go up. This is what we are told anyway.

Then doesn’t the same theory applies to wages. If it is difficult to find employees at a certain wage, then you need to raise the wage until you can acquire the number and quality of employees where you can deliver the product or service you are selling. American business is, for some reason, resistant to learning this simple straightforward lesson of Capitalism. If forced to choose between higher wages or delivering bad service, they will choose bad service every time in hopes that if they hold out long enough, the labor market will change in their favor.

In the mind of Business Managers, Labor is the whipping boy for all the failures of American Capitalism. If there are problems, it was bad employees. If budget cuts are necessary, where do you think they cut first. Cut the number of staff while trying to maintain the same workload. Cut benefits, raise deductibles on health insurance, do away with sick days. They brag about profits, they brag about price shares but rarely, if ever, do you hear them brag about paying the best wages in the industry. Which is odd because a customer might infer that by paying the best wages, your company also has the best people.

I can’t tell you how many Rah Rah end of the year speeches I’ve listened to where the corporate heads are blathering on about all the successes the company experienced — profits are up, share prices are up, efficiency is up, automation is up. They claim how they are the best in the industry for this and that. Then some brave employee broaches the subject of wages. The talking head has a ready answer. The company pays wages that are in line with the labor market. This sounds like collaboration to me. If they all know the standard wage, they can gauge their salaries appropriately. I thought this was illegal but never mind. For some reason this stops all conversation about wages.

Employees buy it. Until recently, I always did. I thought well what can I say to that — the company pays what is in line with every other company in the industry. But, wait, doesn’t the company want to be best at everything? Why wouldn’t the company want to have the best wages as well? In almost 40 years of working, I have never heard a company head brag that they offer the best wages in their industry. They may say a lot of wonderful things about their employees, they may even believe what they say but they rarely brag about the wages. they are paying. Curious that, don’t you think?

Which brings me back to the extra refrigerator clogging up our kitchen. This effects customer service. Because lower paid employees are the most likely staff to work with actual customers, this lack of good employees has a detrimental effect on a customer’s experience. If you can’t afford to pay good employees you are also ensuring that, at least some of your customers, will have a bad experience. Companies are hoping that most of this will be handled through better automation, the problem is that if any hiccups occur and a human needs to get involved, the company almost guaranteeing a bad experience. Let me tell you if I have to wait an hour when I call a customer service department, I have already had a bad experience. I have had to wait an unreasonable amount of time. By the time the poor customer service agent answers, I am fuming and ready to quarrel. So, the underpaid sap might begin to think — I don’t get paid enough to this crap.

And around and around she goes.