A simple rule about responsibility, recovery, and doing the right thing
If you break the experience, you own the recovery.
The customer didn’t receive the value they paid for—or the value you promised—so making it right isn’t optional. It’s your responsibility.
Long before I worked in operations, transportation, or service leadership, I learned this lesson in a much simpler way.
Where I Learned It First
As a kid, I loved to touch things.
I pushed buttons indiscriminately on my grandmother’s dishwasher. I fiddled with my dad’s TV and electronics. And when we were in stores, I touched everything.
My mom would warn me,
“Don’t do that. If you knock it off, drop it, or break it, I’ll have to pay for it.”
That warning didn’t stop my curiosity. As a result, my mom had to pay for more than a few broken items over the years.
I still remember the signs posted in stores:
“You Break It, You Buy It.”
Or sometimes, “You Break It, You Fix It.”
Occasionally, if the item was inexpensive, a clerk would tell her not to worry about it. But she always insisted on paying anyway. Breaking something meant taking responsibility for it.
That lesson never left me.
When Time Is Broken
Recently, my wife and son went to a popular national fast-casual Mexican restaurant. Once you hear the story, you may question the word fast.
They arrived at dinnertime, but the line moved quickly—about five minutes to reach the counter. Once there, they were told the restaurant needed to cook more chicken, which would take about five minutes. No problem. They waited.
But my son noticed something strange. Each time a batch of chicken came off the grill, it was used to fulfill online and to-go orders rather than serving customers waiting in line. Every batch disappeared. Each time, the wait reset.
What was supposed to be a five-minute delay turned into more than twenty.
By the time the order was finally completed, the total experience had stretched to roughly thirty-five minutes from the time they entered the restaurant.
When the order was finally prepared, my wife—who has strong service instincts from her time at Disney—politely questioned the manager about the extended wait and suggested the meal should be discounted.
The response?
“I can’t do that. They don’t let me.”
She paid and left.
Then came the final insult. When they got home, the chicken they had waited so long for wasn’t even in the bag.
My wife called the restaurant, only to be routed to an overseas contact center. The representative expressed concern and offered to credit the missing protein to the app.
Her response was direct:
“You made me wait 35 minutes for something that normally takes no more than 10–15. I get home, and it’s still wrong. I want the entire entrée comped.”
This time, they agreed.
And to be clear, the issue here wasn’t that the call center was overseas.
The issue was the disconnect.
The service failure happened down the street—inside a restaurant where managers could see the line, hear the frustration, and understand the impact. Yet the recovery was pushed to someone halfway around the world who had no visibility into what happened, no connection to the customer’s experience, and limited authority to fix it.
When recovery is separated from the experience that broke it, accountability disappears—and frustration multiplies.
“When we fail to deliver what we promised, making it right wasn’t optional. It was the cost of doing business with integrity.”
When Trust Is Broken
Another recent service failure came from my health insurance company.
At the start of the year, we were switched to a new plan. That required me to choose new doctors, as my existing providers weren’t in-network. Not ideal—but manageable, assuming the system worked as promised.
It didn’t.
On January 2, I logged in and saw I had been automatically assigned a primary care provider. The location was convenient, and the reviews were solid. When I called to schedule an appointment, I was told she didn’t accept my insurance—despite being listed on the insurance company’s website.
The scheduling office explained that only a few doctors had accepted this plan and provided me with their names to avoid repeated calls. I contacted the insurance company to update my PCP and was told those doctors weren’t in their system. I was advised to wait a few weeks while things “settled.”
In mid-January, I checked again. One of the doctors was now listed.
Progress—or so I thought.
I called again. Another overseas contact center. I requested the change and was told it would take two to three days. I waited five. Nothing changed.
When I called back, I was told the system wouldn’t allow me to select that doctor. No explanation. Just “we can’t.”
I asked for another provider. A name was given. The change was processed.
I immediately called the doctor’s office. Yes, he accepted the insurance—but he wasn’t accepting new patients.
As with the restaurant, the challenge wasn’t that support was handled offshore. It was that the people I spoke with were disconnected from the systems, promises, and real-world consequences of the experience I was living.
At that point, I was done being patient.
I called again, navigated the same menus and hold times, and insisted on speaking with someone who could actually resolve the issue. After pushing through resistance and another hold, I finally reached someone in the U.S. who took the time to help.
The call lasted over an hour.
Nearly a month into the year, I finally had a path to care—after breaking through layers of bureaucracy that contradicted the company’s promise: Switch to us. Choosing a doctor will be easy.
It wasn’t.
The failure here wasn’t complexity. Healthcare is complex.
The failure was breaking trust—and making the customer fight to recover what was promised.
Why Recovery Matters More Than Perfection
Over the course of my career, I’ve encouraged teams to do the right thing for customers, employees, and the business.
Sometimes that meant the customer won.
Sometimes the employee did.
Sometimes the company did.
And sometimes—honestly—no one won.
But when we failed to deliver what we promised, making it right wasn’t optional. It was the cost of doing business with integrity.
At Disney, we took this idea further. We didn’t just aim to recover from failures—we aimed to turn losses into wins.
Research showed that Guests who experienced a problem and had it resolved often rated their overall experience higher than those who never experienced a problem.
Not because failures are good—but because recovery builds trust.
Done well, recovery drives satisfaction, intent to return, and long-term loyalty.
The Standard Leaders Should Set
Service failures will happen.
What defines your organization is whether you:
- Acknowledge the failure
- Act quickly
- Empower the frontline
- Keep ownership close to the experience
- Restore the value you promised
Because when you break it, you bought it.
And now, you have to fix it.
Brian Dickson is the owner of Bus Business Consultants and author of Ground Transportation Insights on Substack. Drawing on leadership roles in motorcoach operations and Disney’s Guest Transportation, he helps operators improve performance, culture, and growth—Bus Business Consultants: Driving Performance, Culture, & Growth in Ground Transportation.
This article was originally published on March 4, 2026, at Ground Transportation Insights.
The views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the American Bus Association.