The Customer Is Always Right - Not Anymore?
What ever happened to ‘the customer is always right’?
I know I know, and I agree with what you are all thinking, that was NEVER accurate, however has anyone besides me noticed customer service as a whole has gone completely down the toilet as of late? Maybe its due to everyone being so rush rush or perhaps its the information age that has done it, but it seems as each year passes the treatment I get as a consumer gradually gets worse.
I realize this is a complaint you generally hear older people discussing. “Back in my day….” etc etc as the story goes, I however am just 32, a mere pup if you look at the average lifespan, but I still find myself relating to it. I was in customer service for fifteen years. I look back on those years fondly, and remember more than once scoffing at my fellow workers or employers even who would answer my grumbles about my customers with ‘the customer is always right, even when they are wrong’. Most of the time, it was a mix up that was easily fixed, but once it was far more serious. I was working in a restaurant with a full bar and a customer had utilized that bar for over an hour before sitting down at my table, he was incredibly rude, but I had grown to be able to combat that with kindness. I don’t mean to brag, but I was a damn fine waitress. If I had a choice of all the careers in the world with all of them having equal salaries, I would pick waitressing hands down. I loved it, and I firmly believe if you love what you do, you will be great at it. Back to my story, this guy was just too much. He was rude at every turn and didnt want to follow the rules regarding our all you can eat policy. When I brought him one thing (the rule was one at a time) he got upset that I didn’t bring both things he asked for, even though I assured him I was on my way back to the kitchen to get the next item he had asked for and I would be back to his table with it in under a minute. Well that wasn’t good enough for him and he sloppily jumped to his feet with his steak knife raised at me! His wife was mortified and kept insisting he sit down. It actually worked in my favor, I got rid of him, and the tables around his who had witnessed the commotion all tipped me extra, far surpassing what that cheap a^& would have tipped me anyway!!!
Now customer service consists of a hand sticking out to take your money and if you pay in cash you MIGHT get some change thrown in your general direction. Seriously, are we too busy to SMILE? I could give thousands of examples right now, but the most telling one in my opinion occurred on a recent trip to Walgreens. It was one I had never been to, I should know better with my disabilities the anxiety is bad enough but I felt alright and since I now depend on others for rides I tend to go with whatever is closest. In this case BIG MISTAKE! We stroll around for a bit, looking for things to buy with some register rewards I had earned earlier at a store I am entirely comfortable in. Everything was ok until we got up to the registers. Two open, we went toward the one on the right, but then the lady at the left one motioned me over. The words were almost unrecognizable but I THINK she said ‘c’Mea’, and before I said a word she was scanning my purchases. I then told her I had two orders and was going to be using coupons, I find that’s helpful when your upfront with your cashier. She then GROWLED at me! It might have been a groan, but even my friend who went to the other register used the word ‘growled’ so I thought it was a more accurate term. Everywhere has different coupon policies, some want coupons WITH the item, others before they ring you up, others after, I put all my coupons ON the item they are for, it saves aggravation for those pesky little register beeps when it says you didn’t buy one of what the coupons for, or you didn’t follow some specific of the coupon.
So this rude woman starts ringing my items without raising her head. She just keeps taking my coupons and stacking them in a pile next to her every time I put one on something even when I am trying to separate my two orders. Well then I tell her that’s it for my first order. She starts ringing up my coupons and I continue putting everything on the counter. She then snorts or makes some unrecognizable sound at the same time the register beeps. I look at the register, I am familiar with the registers and wanted to read the code to see why it beeped, and she says “don’t you look at me, it ain’t like I sneezed ON you” and someone near us said “tell her she cant CATCH black” and the cashier LAUGHED!!!! So they basically implied I was racist!!! I have never been accused of that in my life, and throughout my life I have had friends of every color, so I was mortified! My heart started racing, I got scared, felt like there was a spotlight on me, my chest tightened. All because what, because I looked at a register when it beeped??? So I just want to get out of here at this point, my illnesses have taken away any natural inclination I might have had to stay and correct this outrageously obnoxious behavior. Of course she questions two of my coupons, the first one she questioned loud enough the other cashier corrected her, the other I just told her it was for an item she had rang up in my first order and forgotten to put it with it and waved it off and said not to worry about it. By the time I got outside I was sick, honestly sick, having a violent physical reaction to the rudeness of this woman. What could I do? I sent a letter to corporate, its NOT out of the realm of possibility for this woman to come into contact with another person with my disability or possibly worse. And what do they do? Well I get a letter from them, an email, basically a form letter that sounded very not sincere letting me know they had a talk with said employee and she wont do it again. Yeah ok, I’m sure they even bothered to check what I was saying. I gave them time, date, register number, cashier name, anything off the receipt, they do nothing.
So what can we, as consumers, do about it? Start caring! Start making eye contact, sharing smiles, brightening someones day. The only way we can change in this digital age where someone can actually live their life with no physical contact, is to start making changes in our own everyday lives. Studies have shown people who have daily contact with other people live longer… I’m going to go out on a limb and say they don’t mean that people who fight with other people live longer it probably is talking about people who have FRIENDLY contact with others live longer but as far as I know this hasn’t been verified by any scientific study. Also, we have to start standing up for ourselves. When someone is rude or cold in a situation where they shouldn’t be, call them on it. To me, its just as important that a nurse talk me through things as it is for her to know where to stick the needle. And if I don’t understand something you can be sure I am going to ask someone to repeat themselves, especially in health matters. I don’t care how many people roll their eyes in my general direction, if I need help anywhere in any situation I am going to start finding my voice. If more people do this, maybe, just maybe the customer might start to matter again.
I visit them every month and treasure my time with them, and my nightly phone calls, but I cant go down there now until after the baby arrives (another reason I am rather impatient about her arrival lol) and I miss the kids so much!!! I cry every night now, I cant wait to introduce them to thier sister!!!!