Ok so I have been meaning to blog for days and weeks now but life has kept me busy physically and mentally. I have a lot of things I could talk about but some of them are better not said in this forum. I will write a out the lack of good customer services these days.
A little bit of my background first is that I was in fast food for about a year and then in retail from associate to manager over a 9 year period so I know all about customer service. As an associate I always tried to be friendly to the customers. Now we all have our moments naturally and nobody is perfect but compared to many around our store had pretty good service. Regardless of what our district managers seemed to think it is slim pickin' in this area sometimes for good workers who work hard and are the kind of friendly you want and need. My assistant at that time would often walk around and see how other stores would treat us. We found people on the phone, speaking only to each other, sitting on the counters saying nothing to us, etc. This was all over 10 years ago when I left retail and I think these days it has only gotten worse. I am not at all saying that every place is bad but overall it is hard to find anyone who cares at all about the customers and even can be down right nasty. Now I must tell the worst story first as it was something that happened to my mom and I am still quite irritated by the whole thing.
My mom often takes my grandmother shopping and they were at a grocery store the next town over. It is my understanding that she usually buys her stuff first and takes it to the car then comes back to help my grandmother. She had bought some of the salad mix the other week that was on sale for $1. Well she notice her receipt it did not ring up on sale so she got it and took it back in to get the correct price. The lady at the return desk was not very nice stating that this was the wrong kind of salad mix and was not on sale. She did not check or anything just said that and asked did she want to return it and my mom told her yes. Now what this girl did next is what is horrible and unbelievable to me. She told my mom that was a shame because they could not resell it. She then opened the bag right in front of my mom and dumped in the trash in front of her and stated "look at this food you wasted". Now I believe my words when I first heard this were "oh no she didn't" or maybe something even worse. My mom just did not know what to do. Now the thing is after this my grandmother went through the line and her salad mix rang up $1 for the same thing my mom just had. My point is regardless of the price right or wrong what this girl did is totally despicable to me. Little did this girl know that I know one of the managers of this store so I have told her about it and was assured that is not acceptable behavior at all. I still am in shock at this happening.
While I was in this same store tattling on the girl with my grandmother we went to check out and they only had two clerks and were pretty busy. Hey that happens! The guy ringing us up was turtle slow and was talking about how he had all this stuff to do besides checking and they were so busy and only had two checkers and blah blah blah blah! Ok well I would have like to have shown him a lesson in productivity and how to getter done but I didn't. Also it is not appropriate to grip about your job you are working while you are working it in front of customers and speed it up mister!!
My last recent story is at the local taco joint here in town. Now my son orders a crazy burrito that is bean burrito with no beans. Yes you read that right. He likes cheese and sauce only and I have tried it and it is actually quite good. Anyway he has ordered it in at least three towns and it has often gotten a smile or giggle or a "what". Well this girl was kind of rude on the speaker when she questioned us but I was like okay whatever. We got up to the window and I knew the total was not enough so I started listing off what we ordered as she had not repeated it to us. I only got to the second item and she said "oh" and rang up the meat burrito cutting me off. I paid for all of that and then realized she also missed my bean burrito (normal WITH beans) so I waited as she was ignoring the window. I then told her that she forgot that item too and we had not paid for it but needed it so if she could just ring me one up we would be good. I was being my cheerful self even though I was irritated. She was so rude. She rang it up and took my money and then handed it to me never saying a word to me about thank you, have a good day, kiss my hiney, or nothing. What has happened to people these days that they are just so rude and do not care at all how they treat people?
