“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 49
One of the fundamental laws of life, and therefore of business, is that you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you penalize. In every social context, certain behaviors are rewarded (in some way), and other behaviors are not rewarded. Once the calculus of blessings and curses, rewards and disincentives, is done, you will have less of what you chastised, and more of what you blessed.
This can be overt (no shoes, no shirt, no service), meaning that you know exactly why the restaurant is not full of shirtless, shoeless customers. Or it can be subdued (slow or poor service given to the same customer two times in a row), meaning that you lose him and many of the friends he discouraged from trying your establishment out.
This does not just apply to the customers; it applies to the employees as well. If you encourage late arrivals for work (by doing nothing when it happens) you will get more late arrivals for work. This is because employees often gauge what the true policy is from the point of enforcement. If an employer does not discipline in terms of his standards, then he obviously does not care for his standards. And if he does not care for his standards, then why should anybody else?