08/24/2026
Not apologetic for the following statement.
WHEN DID WE DECIDE THIS WAS AN ACCEPTABLE WAY TO SPEAK TO SMALL BUSINESSES?
Today, I received an email that said:
“YOUR WEBSITE AND MARKETING IS FILLED WITH AI GENERATED S**T. CRAP. TRASH. GARBAGE… DO BETTER, YOU IDIOTS!!”
It went on from there.
And while I normally wouldn’t give a random hateful email the time of day, this one bothered me for a different reason.
Because I think we need to talk about the way people are increasingly treating small businesses.
Arrow Coffee & Desserts isn’t a giant corporation with a marketing department, graphic designer, social media manager, photographer, videographer and content creator sitting in an office somewhere.
We’re a small, family-run business.
We work seven days a week.
We make drinks. We prep food. We load and unload. We drive to events. We serve customers. We clean equipment. We order inventory. We answer emails. We book events. We handle payroll, scheduling, accounting, maintenance, permits, marketing, social media and about a thousand other things that come with trying to keep a small business alive.
And yes — sometimes I use AI to help me create marketing materials.
And I’m not ashamed of that.
AI gives small businesses access to tools and capabilities that historically required paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to designers, photographers, marketing agencies and content creators.
Would I love to have professional photography for every product?
Absolutely.
Would I love to employ a graphic designer to create every flyer, a web designer to perfect every page and a social media manager to create original content every day?
Of course.
But that’s simply not the financial reality for many small businesses.
So we use the tools available to us.
We learn Canva.
We take pictures with our phones.
We build our own websites.
We stay up late creating flyers after working all day.
And sometimes we use AI.
You don’t have to like it.
You don’t have to like our marketing.
You don’t have to like our website.
And constructive feedback? Absolutely welcome. If something on our website isn’t functioning correctly, I genuinely want to know about it so we can fix it.
But there is an enormous difference between saying:
“Hey, I had trouble submitting your contact form. You may want to take a look at it.”
and calling complete strangers “idiots” and telling them their work is “sh*t, crap, trash and garbage.”
Being behind a keyboard doesn’t give someone permission to forget basic human decency.
There are actual people behind small businesses.
People working incredibly long hours.
People risking their savings.
People missing weekends.
People trying to support their families.
People learning things they were never trained to do because hiring someone for every role simply isn’t possible.
So maybe before firing off a hateful email to a small business because their flyer wasn’t created exactly the way you think it should have been, remember something:
You have absolutely no idea how hard the people on the other side of that screen are working.
Support small businesses.
Give constructive feedback when it’s warranted.
Choose not to purchase from businesses that aren’t for you.
But this growing culture of treating small-business owners like punching bags because someone doesn’t like a website, a social media post, a price, a policy — or apparently the technology they use to create a flyer — needs to stop.
Small businesses don’t need perfection demanded from them.
They need customers who remember there are human beings behind them.
And if our use of AI means Arrow Coffee & Desserts isn’t the business for you?
That’s completely okay.
There are plenty of coffee shops in the world.
But disrespect isn’t feedback.
And kindness is still free.
