Customer Disservice

I'd hate to think I am a curmudgeon or an old fuddy-duddy.  I try to think the best of people, giving them benefit of the doubt.  Most of the times when people annoy me, it is not because of a personal choice on their part; rather, they are just doing their job.  A case in point is that sorry woman at our local movie theater whose reply to a direct and specific request (“May I have 2 tickets to the 5:10 show?”) is a nonresponsive: “Would you like to buy a Stubbs card?”  Or the unseen voice in the drive through window who asks if you want cheese on your Whopper but fails to listen to the specifics that would allow you to “Have it Your Way.”  If I “want fries with that” or wish to “super-size,” I am intelligent enough to know how to ask for it.  I don’t blame these workers, but I do blame a world that has gotten so mercenary that it pushes more and more product with less and less service.

Let’s not mistake faux-intimacy for service.  When I am dispatched to a customer service agent in a far-away land who asks my first and last name, seemingly to authenticate my account for the fourth time, but uses it merely to address me as “Ellen”—this is not customer service.  It is annoying when the agent fumbles through a script unknowingly, inserting my first name like he is reciting a MadLib.  Recently, I stopped a customer care agent by saying, “Stop calling me ‘Ellen.’  You don’t know me.  You may call me Mrs. Dodson.”  Audibly rattled, he limped through the rest of his script, continuing to trip over my first name as it came up again and again on his prompter.

As we replace people with infrastructure, interpersonal “skills” are becoming less and less valued in our society.  Total strangers call my house and feign friendship only to trap me into a conversation about lowering my interest rates or cleaning my chimney.  No wonder when I ask my friends “How are you?” it is regarded as a rhetorical question.

This week, my adventures in consumerhood hit a new high and a new low.   I received an email from a catalog collection I shop frequently, informing me they had finally opened a store downtown.  It featured an outfit in a beautiful color that piqued my interest.   This particular shopping destination is difficult to navigate; if you can find parking it can cost as must as much as $29 for the privilege.

Nonetheless, I made the trip downtown and wandered into the new store—seeing the many garments from their catalog come to life before me.  I quickly found what I was searching for and a nice sales lady asked if I would like her to start a dressing room for me.  When I told her I was ready now, she politely showed me to the back and unlocked a door, gesturing me in.  Then she did something I have never heard before.  She said, simply, “Would you like me to check on you, or do you prefer to be left alone?”  Pleased, I turned to her smiling and said, “Thank you very much for asking.  I think I can take it from here, but I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

For the first time in my recent memory, I was at peace in a dressing room.  No one was hovering over me, trying to open the door or to demand that I let her see how awkward I looked in a garment.  I took my time and I was not interrupted.  Still, I had doubts about the outfit but was inclined to purchase it, a quandary that forced me to walk around the store as I considered my options. 

Bumping into the salesperson, she asked kindly, “Did that work for you?”  I began to explain my reservations when another saleswoman burst upon us.  “I would have liked to have seen that on you!” she demanded, looking me up and down with critical eyes.  Taking the hangers from my hand, she asked, “Did you try the Parisian swing top?”  Looking back and forth between the two women, I said, shrugging, “No, I just came in for this.”  “Well,” she said, “you would really like this—come here.”  She then walked to the other side of the store, carrying the items I had just tried on.  I had no choice but to follow.  Then, she picked up something bearing no resemblance to what I had selected or wanted.  “Try this on,” she ordered.  “You will love it.”

I felt bad.  I had no interest in this other item, and I told her so.  It was not the kind of thing I would wear, it was too long for my height, the fabric was to clingy, and it was hardly a substitute for the sweatery choice I had already made.  Then she took an aggressive tone.  “What’s-a-matter,” she shot at me with direct eyes, “don’t you trust me?”  “I don’t know you,” I said, sheepishly, “but I do know that I don’t want that top.”  “But you have to trust me,” she said, emphasizing the word trust as if it were a requirement for shopping there.  “Try it on.”  Firmly, and leaving no doubt that it was the end of the conversation, I spoke the words tersely:  “I don’t think so.”

I walked away, making a pretense of shopping the rest of the store until I found my original salesperson.  “I want to buy those items you helped me with,” I said, “but that other woman took them from me.”  I wanted to make sure that the polite woman got proper credit for the sale.  It turns out that the rude woman hung my selections back on the rack.  The nice lady found them again and escorted me to the register.  While I was standing there, sorting through the accessories designed to catch impulse buyers, I was suddenly thumped hard from behind.  I turned to see that rude saleswoman, carrying three colors of Parisian swing tops on hangers, making a beeline—apparently through me—to the back room.

I would have complained to the manager, but there were only two women working in the store.  What if it turned out that the aggressive woman was the manager?  I let the nice lady know how impressed I was at the way she handled the dressing room.  I do not like to be stalked or fawned over while shopping.  She discovered a very nice way to offer just the right type of customer service, responding to my needs and my tastes appropriately. 

 

I may be a vanishing breed, but I have a lingering hope that the “customer” is still an important ingredient in “customer service.”  I am not a unit, or an address, or a node, or a sale—I am a person with tastes who exercises her discretion to buy or not.  We have not yet succeeded in making everything a commodity.  Until that time comes, I am happy to punish poor behavior by denying a purchase.  I will insist on my privacy and my dignity by demanding an arm’s length between me and the person who processes a transaction.  And I will continue to insist, when interrupted to be offered cheese on my Whopper, that I would like it exactly the way I ordered it.

And for the record, “How are you?” is not rhetorical.  If I ask it, I really want to know.