An Angry Customer Just Clocked In
Consumers are crashing out. These same people are walking in your doors as your employees.
Viral videos on social media calling out big business has become a daily occurrence. While everyone doesn’t take to social media, the ones that do are making waves—with a flood of comments from others who feel the same way.
@LifeAccordingToKP on cries on TikTok sharing her experience shopping at WalMart as a mom on a tight budget. She tries to buy a pair of shoes for her child marked clearance for $3.00 at the shelf, scanned the QR code at the shelf to confirm she had the correct shoe before getting to the register, only for the price to increase to $18.98.
@Jimmy Wrigg posts daily sharing the short-weighting of products by retailers. In the last few months he's traveled 10,000 miles and 200 store visits. In one recent video, he weighted 21 packages of chicken breasts to find out more than half were under the labeled weight. At another retailer, he weighs containers of tomatoes to find only one at the correct weight.
Shrinkflation, dynamic pricing, and deceptive practices are only one side of the story. Private equity’s purchase of elder care (1), veterinary care (2) has increased consumer prices 19% and 60% respectively. Home services businesses pricing has followed the same pattern. Prices at PE-backed providers rising faster than industry inflation. (3)
This comes as the U.S. has experienced 1.6-1.9 million total layoffs and discharges per month during the first half of 2026 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (4) For those who have managed to keep their jobs, the national average wage increase has hovered between 3%-3.5%. (5)
Here’s the thing. Conversations about thse business practices have started to shift to suspect big business as a whole, and that includes their employer—the reason behind the leadership change, the hiring freeze, the “market conditions” mentioned at the all-hands meeting. The skepticism doesn’t stop when employees start work.
This is a call for leaders to step forward, acknowledge things are hard, and to be as transparent as they can, within reason. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. People can handle hard things; they can’t handle silence. If the company isn’t telling the story, people will make up their own, and it’s never a good one.
There is a gap between the decisions leadership intends and what employees believe about why it was made. What employees believe goes home with them and becomes part of their dinner table conversations. Those conversations make it out into the communities and can turn into new customers and potential employment candidates, or it can turn into a brand nightmare that shows up in Google reviews and Glassdoor.
I worked for Caliber Collision when the pandemic hit. The CEO, Steve Grimshaw and his team made a brief, mandatory video that would only stay posted an hour—long enough for every teammate at every location to watch. He and his team gave up 100% of their paychecks. Business leaders down to senior manager level voluntarily gave up a percentage of their pay, me included. We believed in what we were a part of—ensuring our frontline teammates would keep their jobs.
Our doors stayed open as an essential business, but it wasn’t an easy time. And when the company recovered, they restored every dollar of pay given up during that period.
Our CEO wasn’t the only one—other leaders made similar decisions. What’s important is he stopped business—revenue lost at a moment when every dollar mattered—so every teammate could watch an honest and transparent video on what was happening and what was at stake. No guarantees. No fluff. The leader people needed in a time of uncertainty.
What happened inside the organization wasn’t something you could artificially engineer. The level of loyalty, sense of comradery—it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my career. People showed up when it was hard because they were showing up for each other. That’s the difference between a company people work for and a company people believe in.
This is a challenging time for everyone—companies included. Decisions have to be made on how to cut costs, invest in technology, and to gain customers and sales. But the question becomes more about long-term tradeoffs. Right now, real damage is being done. Someone is running the numbers on what today’s decision save. Are they running the numbers on what they’ll cost—in trust, loyalty, and who’s still standing when employees and consumers finally have the ability to choose again?
This article was written by a human. The perspective is mine—based on my questions, observations and experience.
I use AI as a thought partner to challenge my thinking, identify gaps, and surface perspectives I hadn’t considered. Anything that comes from that goes back through me. I push back, verify, and decide what gets included. I only use data from primary sources. They are clearly identified in my writing with links for you. Before publishing, I run my final draft through AI again for spelling and grammar. Typos and grammar mistakes still happen. I’m not perfect and neither is AI.
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