Now that the holidays are
over, we as Americans are in a position to once again
demand our God given due….good service from the people
wanting to sell us things.
Yes, the time honored tradition of “the customer is always
right” is usually suspended from sometime after Halloween
and the first week of the New Year. During this time,
Americans are caught up in what is known as the ‘annual
shopping frenzy’. The common rules of civility and decency
are suspended during this hectic period. Waiters and
waitresses, sales clerks of both sexes are simply too busy
to do anything except take your money in exchange for some
semblance of a product of one sort or another.
Take holiday lunches, for example….most restaurants are
overflowing with people standing outside bribing busboys
to get them a table. You want more coffee? You want
silverware? Forget it, mess with me buster and you’re out
of here and one of those poor smucks standing outside with
their faces glued to the window can come in and have your
seat. We have plenty of customers. We don’t need any grief
from the likes of you.
The sales clerks in the stores aren’t much better. They
are usually employed on a part time basis with the mission
being to do just one thing, sell everything in the store
before Christmas. If you will notice most of these sales
personnel don’t even live in your hometown. They get
bussed in from other parts of the country during the
holidays and are sent back to their hometowns after New
Years. The reason for this is simple, there were too many
assaults on sales personnel after the first of the year,
when some irate customer who didn’t get their discount for
the Dancing Elmo doll recognized the sales clerk in the
concession line while trying to see “Lord of the Rings,
The Return of the Blender” or some such new movie. It’s
just better if these sales people weren’t a permanent part
of our communities. This reasoning is the result of a vast
governmental survey costing only $497,000,000…but then
who’s counting?
So, if you think you’re going to waltz into some
department store and get the attention of an underpaid,
part time, transient sales clerk from Iowa to go back into
the warehouse and see if these towels you like come in any
different colors, you are living in a tree. Nope these
people have hundreds of other customers standing patiently
in line waiting to plunk down those hard earned dollars
and those plastic credit cards to buy that purple vase for
Aunt Matilda. It doesn’t matter that you bought the same
vase for Aunt Matilda last year; it’s the sentiment that
counts. Besides, once they’ve paid for this last gift,
then they can look forward to trying to find their car and
then attempting to flee from the parking lot in an effort
to go home. So, when you ask about towels and other colors
you are in effect stifling the freedom of all of those
people in the line who have wisely made their choices for
another ugly vase for their Aunt Matilda. You are not the
favorite person in the store right at this moment.
But, now that the holidays are behind us, we can look
forward to saner times, can’t we?
Yes, since the rush is over, we should be able to get the
kinds of service we all deserve and pay for with a smile.
No one should be surly or rude to us for any reason,
should they?
I’ll reserve my comments on this until I have time to see
if anything actually changes.
My one other dream for this year is to be first in line
for some sort of voice mail customer service. You know
when you call the phone company or some one else to
inquire about some issue or another and the seventeenth
level of voice mail nirvana gets you to the point where
the computer generated voice says something like….”Your
call is very important to us, please hold on, our
representatives are helping other customers just like you
at this time, we anticipate your wait may be as long as
….four days.”
I just want to be one of those “other customers like you”
whoever they happen to be. How do they manage to always
get in the line so far ahead of me in the first place?
If I had to guess these call centers are probably filled
with former Christmas store clerks who live in Iowa.
Have a good week.
