Nothing Good Happens After 2:00am

Nothing good happens after 2:00am. Not the topic I was originally going to post, however as you will see it is appropriate.

The phrase, “nothing good happens after 2:00am”, was the plot of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. I never thought it would actually apply to my life. That being said, last night was one of those nights that I just couldn’t get to sleep. We were bracing for a snow storm with accumulation projections varying from 4” to 12”. Schools had already been canceled and the snow was coming down at a steady rate; a good night to stay up if it were not possible to sleep.

With Facebook and Google it is rather easy and instantaneously gratifying to think of something and or someone and get the answers to your questions. For the past week a classmate of mine from college has been popping into my head. She was a year ahead of me and good friend throughout my freshmen and sophomore years. My junior year, her senior, due to our differing course schedules, we were not as close. After each of us graduated I guess I may have seen her a couple of times, however no communication in the past decade. We had simply lost touch.

Her name was a rather unique one so as I entered it into Facebook I felt certain she would be there. Having been on Facebook for over two years now and reconnected with others we had in common I found it odd that I had not seen her name in a posting stating that she and someone else were now “friends”. But her name was not to be found in the search field.

Last night, as I sat with my laptop I thought “perhaps a Google search would help”. Well, it did. But not in the way I thought it would. She apparently passed away last summer. The search revealed an obituary.

Now I know this blog is for customer service and this post will touch on that topic. As I clicked on the search entry it took me to a site that revealed a sentence or two of her obituary. Enough for me to know it was her, but hardly enough to show the full extent of the column. There was a link to see the full text so I clicked on it. There it presented me with a $3 fee to see the rest of the obituary and any notes left by friends and family. This I found very disturbing. More so because I know my local paper has a search of obituaries for free going back several years. But this paper only went back a matter of months and then archived everything earlier.

I have no problem with papers archiving. It is what they do. But to charge for an obituary. Regular stories perhaps can be justified to warrant a fee, but announcements such as an obituary seems wrong to me. A person suddenly finds out about the passing of a long lost friend and to read more has to pay for, what, the privilege? Part of good customer service is a sense of understanding: all of this in the context of generating revenue for the good of the business. But is this really a good business decision?

So I apologize for taking so long to get to the theme of this blog within this posting, but just remember…nothing good happens after 2:00am.