One of the things that simply astonishes me in the world today is the absence of common courtesy, especially with regard to how sellers treat their customers. Here’s a quick example of something that happened to me recently. There was a new pizza restaurant in our neighborhood, and we had received a coupon to get a medium cheese pizza free with the purchase of a large. It was a good deal, and on a particularly busy night I decided to stop by the restaurant and bring it home for the family. As luck would have it, in my haste to get out the door and to the restaurant, I forgot the coupon and I did not realize it until I had all ready arrived at the restaurant. When I explained what happened to the person at the restaurant, they informed me that without the coupon I would have to pay for the second pizza . This really floored me and here’s why - they could see from my driver’s license that I lived in the neighborhood that they had just sent out the coupons out to and they also knew that I had never been there before because I wasn’t in their system. Here was a golden opportunity for them to set aside the “rules” and win the gratitude and repeat business of a brand new customer, and they totally blew it! What would it have cost them to give me that second pizza? Probably less than five bucks! what did they lose ? A lot more than that - my business that night as well as my overall opinion of their restaurant. If you ever have a chance to show a customer that you care, I mean really care, about them and their business, never ever fail to jump all over that. The benefits you will get from it will far outweigh any inconvenience or slight cost you may have to incur to take care of them.