Picking On His Guitar

As Dave Carrol was getting to his seat on the plane, he overheard one of the passengers exclaim that “the baggage handlers were literally out there throwing guitars”. This worried Dave since he and his band were musicians traveling to a gig and they had just checked their guitars.

Sure enough, when he picked up his baggage, his guitar was damaged beyond repair. He was of course upset and tried to get the airline to fix its mistake. Yet, like many companies in our time, they didn’t seem to care much about customer service. After spending months trying to get them to pay for the damaged equipment, the airline only said they you give him a $1500 voucher rather than pay for the $3500 guitar. Except they would do that either because they said Dave had made the claim incorrectly.

So, what could a musician do about it? He wrote a song about it. His ballad United Breaks Guitars was a catch little ditty about his poor experience with the airline. The song went viral on the internet. The tune did more than hurt the company’s reputation, however.

The song gathered enough bad PR for the company that their stock was reduced by 10% costing the shareholders $180 million. Four days after the song was released, they lost enough money to pay for 51,000 guitars for Dave.

Do not go out hastily to argue your case; Otherwise, what will you do in the end, When your neighbor humiliates you? Argue your case with your neighbor, And do not reveal the secret of another, Or he who hears it will reproach you, And the evil report about you will not pass away.

Proverbs 25:8-10

Trying to justify ourselves when we are wrong oftentimes make thing much worse for us. Instead of helping ourselves, it just tends to make us look bad. Trying to pick a fight rather than swallowing our pride will lead to more than just our ego being bruised. Don’t make bad worse by trying to justify what you have done.

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