Will you eat where the rats are? How long do we hold a grudge?

I am sure we have all seen it by now. The rats in the KFC/Taco Bell in lower Manhattan. Here is a link to the video on YouTube. The video is quite disturbing so please put down your burrito or hot wing before you watch it. Friends of mine in Europe have said this story appeared on their local news. So here is my question…. knowing these rats ran free all over the place, would you ever eat at this establishment again (assuming you did in the past) or would you consider eating there for the first time when they reopen?

Now you might be asking me, what in the bloody heck does a rat have to do with a new startup web site? So let me explain. I would never eat at this establishment now. No matter what they do, I doubt many people will go in there. They could offer free chicken for life, and people will stay away. 

And so I started to think about when a web site "does us wrong" how long do we hold a grudge. How bad does something have to be to make it a "lifer" in terms of never using the service again. Luckily, it appears that most web sites can't physically injure us (yet!) so even if the web sites get a few "rats", we will still go back to them over time.

Here are some recent examples:

• MyBlogLog fiasco – the latest bit has Eric from MyBlogLog apologizing to ShoeMoney. So in this case, a rat becomes a beautiful swan :)
• Microsoft and their Vista laptops
• Walmart and their video download service block on
• Walmart and their fake blog
• Sony and their fake blog 

For me, I have an easy rat. A buddy of mine was joking with me about a number related to my NYC trip. So I said I should play that number in the lottery. I headed down to my gas station and filled out a slip. I don't play this lottery game and so I filled it out how I thought I needed to. The machine did not take it. The clerk said you need to fill out another. I said ok and filled it out the same way. It did not go in again. I said can you help me as I don't play this often. He then decided to curse at me and tell me I should know how to play it. He finally punched it in manually and gave me the ticket. I paid and told him he will never see me here again. He cursed me again and told me he doesn't care. Here I buy all my gas from him and a couple lottery tickets a week, and all he could do was curse at me. So now he gets a lifetime rat. I think its easier to issue lifetime rats to offline "real life" shops vs. online ones. I wonder why?

An interesting side note… in a keynote I listened to from Calacanis, he notes that most times, the difference between greatness and the bad are very close. And I agree with him.

Does an apology always clear everything up? We all screw up. So I ask you, do you have any examples of a rat where you won't be going back to that service? Has a service, site, blog, etc. been bad enough to earn a lifetime rat?