The Pina Colada Song

I was driving home the other night and a song came on the radio. It’s called “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by a guy called Rupert Holmes. It’s a classic (depending on your point of view) 70s song which tells the story of a couple who are bored with each other.

I have been aware of this song for a good while but it’s been some time since I heard it and this time I was paying particular attention to the words.

The first part of the song has these lyrics :-

I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long,

like a worn-out recording, of a favourite song,

so while she lay there sleeping, I read the paper in bed,

and in the personal columns, there was this letter I read:

"If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain,

if you're not into yoga, if you have half-a-brain,

if you’d like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape,

I'm the love that you've looked for, write to me and escape."

This got me thinking. There are relationships everywhere in life but in a business context, they might be with colleagues, suppliers or customers. Perhaps there is something we can learn from the song in a business context?

The song continues with :-

I didn't think about my lady, I know that sounds kind of mean,

but me and my old lady, had fallen into the same old dull routine,

so I wrote to the paper, took out a personal ad,

and though I'm nobody's poet, I thought it wasn't half-bad.

"Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain,

I'm not much into health food, I am into champagne,

I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon, and cut through all this red tape,

at a bar called O'Malley's, where we'll plan our escape."

Well, fair enough. Personally I don’t like where the song is going now. It’s not right to cheat on someone and everyone knows this, but it’s a nice tune so we’ll let it slide and use it to focus on the relationships between a customer and supplier in a business sense.

There are some interesting parallels here to the world of business where the whole situation is not morally questionable.

So in that situation, let’s imagine that we’re finding the relationship we have with an existing supplier isn’t going as well as it should. Things are looking up though because we’ve just seen an advert for a new supplier that we like the sound of. So we’ve arranged to meet them.

This is where the song starts going having some problems. It continues with :-

So I waited with high hopes, then she walked in the place.

I knew her smile in an instant, I knew the curve of her face.

It was my own lovely lady, and she said, "Oh, it's you."

And we laughed for a moment

Whoa there horsey! This is a HUGE problem! We’re in a bar for an illicit meeting with a new “supplier” and our existing “supplier” walks in. I can imagine blind panic would set in. What if the existing “supplier” sees me with the new “supplier” – we better hide quickly. We might even leave by the back door and try to reschedule our “supplier” meeting.

Ok, if we were really talking about business suppliers then there would be a bit less of a problem although,, it is conceivable that the existing supplier knows the new supplier you’re meeting with and this might cause the existing relationship to become more difficult.

In a business scenario you can imagine that this meeting would be a little awkward, but personal relationships are a lot more volatile than business relationships. So, if we go back to the original meaning of the song – I can’t really see either him or his wife reacting with “oh, it’s you” and then laughing for a moment. I think that world war 3 would instantly break out followed by a divorce!

However, the song ends nicely like this :-

"and I said, I never knew,

that you liked Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain,

and the feel of the ocean, and the taste of champagne,

if you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape,

you're the lady I've looked for, come with me, and escape."

Luckily for them they are both much more enlightened than anyone else on the planet. They decide that actually, they just hadn’t worked hard enough at their relationship and they didn’t know all sorts of things about each other that could have helped things along.

That is where our tale ends but what can we learn from this song? Well, going back to my supplier analogy for a last time. Any relationship has ups and downs and there are always things we can do better and different. With a customer – supplier relationship it’s perhaps too easy to think “I’m fed up with that supplier, I’ll get a different one”.

This is often easy for something like printer paper or toilet rolls but there are lots of other relationships where changing supplier is much more of an upheaval. Perhaps before jumping ship completely – it would be worth talking to the supplier in more detail about what could be different and if the relationship can be improved. Remember, you will have to learn all of the foibles of a new supplier and they might be worse than the supplier you had before!