Are You Meeting (and Setting) Customers' Expectations? To succeed, the value of what you offer must be greater than what people expect.

My family and I went out for brunch recently in Miami. We ordered about $60 worth of food, and when the waiter asked what I'd like to drink, I said what I always do: "Just water, please."

"We charge 50 cents for water because we filter it five times," the waiter said. That's ridiculous, I replied. The waiter agreed -- in fact, he said, he'd been trying to talk the restaurant's owner out of this policy for a while now. But the owner wouldn't budge because he'd invested in some fancy filtration system.

I was irritated, but I wasn't going to buy a costlier drink simply to avoid the small fee. "Fine," I said. "I'll take the water." When the check came, the waiter didn't charge me the 50 cents after all. It was his small act of rebellion, and I showed appreciation in my tip.