Maguire ’83: Raising Awareness about Civility

Patrick Maguire ’83, a writer and blogger—and a 30-year veteran of the service industry—was highlighted in the Dec. 9 Boston Globe Magazine in an interview about the message behind his site, www.servernotservant.com.

For Globe staffer Jenn Abelson, Maguire outlines the message behind his Boston-based blog, which also serves as a platform to launch his book-in-progress and is gaining some wider media attention. His goal is to increase civility in our day-to-day dealings with each other, in general, and with those who work in service industries, in particular, where people are often treated with little respect. The customer, he says, is not always right, and sometimes deserves to be “fired.”

However, he does not abnegate responsibility for those in the service industry to set a pleasant tone, and he praises the businesses that exhibit great service and hospitality. “Hospitality and service are a mindset and a culture,” he notes.

Maguire says the core message of his book and blog consists of three items:

• That the customer has almost as much to do with the success of every customer service interaction as the service worker.
• That the customer, especially the abusive customer, is often dead wrong.
• That all of us are responsible for serving each other with mutual respect and civility.

To view a pdf of the featured page, see http://www.servernotservant.com/media/.