The email got straight to the point.
Unfortunately, we have made the difficult decision to close your nearest TGI Fridays location.
The email went on to list the location that would be shuttered. I was then encouraged to visit another TGI Fridays in the future.
That wouldn’t be happening.
This was the third Fridays location to close near me. Each of them had been within range of the brand’s headquarters – also a short drive from my home. And now, they were shuttered.
If I were to follow the prompt from the email, I’d need to travel 40 miles round trip to go to Fridays. And few meals were worth that.
I shared the news with my sister. We had grown up on Fridays, enjoying many family meals there after the Red Robin location we had frequented closed its doors. We loved the brand, the food, even the flair on the restaurant walls that was lampooned in the movie Office Space.
We were both despondent. But I was cleareyed.
I’d seen all the pivots the Fridays brand had made. The restaurant had tried to upscale its image, and it had recently added sushi to the menu. Yet, its restaurants remained mostly vacant – even as rival chain Chili’s was bustling.
I explained all this to my sister, sprinkling in some tidbits from a Wall Street Journal article I’d read. That feature detailed the steps Chili’s had taken to return to success – including streamlining its menu, making its restaurant kitchens more efficient, and consolidating its discount offerings into a single $10.99 value meal.
Fridays had done none of these things, at least not overtly. There seemed to be no plan to make the financials add up in the notoriously challenging restaurant industry. The brand was dying on the vine instead.
My sister said she understood. But she chided me for taking the rational view and parting so easily with restaurant nostalgia.
It was an innocuous comment. But it touched on something substantial.
The Reasonable Person Standard.
If you’ve ever been impaneled for jury selection, you’re likely familiar with this concept. The Reasonable Person Standard is the lens through which the jury views the accused’s alleged actions. It’s a critical part of the judgement equation.
Jurors must not only assess if the defendant did what they’re accused of. They must also determine if a reasonable person would have done the same in an identical situation.
In some cases, the answer to this is obvious. A reasonable person would not murder anyone, for instance. Such action is not only against the law. It’s also one of the Thou Shalt Nots in the Ten Commandments of the Bible.
But in other scenarios, the Reasonable Person Standard is far more difficult to discern. Jurors must put themselves in the accused’s shoes – all while considering the norms of society. A society that’s decidedly irrational.
This reality can make deliberations fraught. It’s nearly impossible to fit the chaos of the human mind into a tidy box. Yet, that’s something juries across America are tasked with each week.
And they’re not alone.
Step out of the courthouse and head to the office tower down the street. High up there in the boardroom or a corner office, you’ll likely find the Reasonable Person Standard at play.
Why? Because business relies on returns. Returns on investments, returns to scale, and returns of revenue.
The steadier those returns are, the more sustainable a company is. It’s hard to get outside financing, to improve operations, or to even make payroll if there’s turbulence with the money coming in.
So, businesses strive to make their products and services regularly desirable, so that a reasonable person will buy from them again and again.
This is the theory behind the revamp of Chili’s – the menu makeover, the streamlined kitchens, and the $10.99 value meal. More generally, it’s the fulcrum of the famous 4 P’s of marketing – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. And zooming out even further, it’s the backbone of the federal economic projections that drive monetary policy.
The evidence is everywhere. Our society relies on the premise of reasonable people acting rationally.
But that narrative is nothing more than fantasy.
In the early days of the global COVID pandemic, one activity saw its popularity skyrocket.
Namely, viewings of the movie Contagion.
The film had been released nearly a decade before COVID emerged. Yet, as the world shut down, many people started streaming the movie in their homes.
Many of those viewers were stunned by what they saw, for varying reasons.
Some couldn’t imagine a world as deadly and dystopian as the one portrayed in Contagion. (Remember, these were still the early days of the pandemic.) Others were horrified about how similar the portrayal already was to reality.
No one had any idea how much worse things would get. The mask showdowns, the verbal attacks on public health officials, the incessant shaming of others – those ugly scenes would soon become our reality.
We did our best to write off that behavior in the moment. To blame an unhinged few for
for setting a horrendous example.
But more of us were acting horrendously than not at the time – myself included.
Stress and uncertainty had ripped away our carefully crafted veneer. Rationality had left the equation. The Reasonable Person was nowhere to be found.
This was the environment that our institutions contended with as the pandemic receded. Courts deluged with cases after a spike in crime. Corporations riding the roller coaster of consumer demand. Once-thriving restaurant chains now struggling to hang on.
All because a black swan event laid bare an illusion they relied on.
Those institutions are still struggling to get the upper hand, all these years later. They’re still mired in The Rationality Trap, their systems dependent on a debunked principle.
And while some have persevered better than others, such victories have proved fleeting. Our institutions remain mired in quicksand, hanging onto the edges of solid ground for dear life.
So yes, my sister was right. When it comes to restaurants – or any other institutional staple – nostalgia matters. Connection matters. The suspension of assumptions matters.
Let’s hope that we are able to heed the call. That we can free ourselves from the clutches of The Rationality Trap.
Before it’s too late.