One of the things that really has started to irk me is the incredibly poor service in many of the “service” industries here in the Bay Area. Now, I’m not usually the most demonstrative person in the world, but allow me to recap.
We decide to go and get a family portrait. The franchised place we usually go closed down in the nearby mall, but we decide to drive to another location about 30 minutes away, mostly so the kids could sleep if they were tired on the way. Upon arriving, I stand in-line for about five minutes, it’s pretty busy, so I don’t think much of it. One of the sales people asks if I had an appointment. I said “no.” She pulled our name out of the database, and says “yes, we can take you.”
“How long?”
“It’ll be real quick.”
So 30 minutes of waiting, nothing… so I decide to get back in line. There is one guy helping someone else (acceptable). While standing there, two people who work at the store walk up to the podium and walk away. People queue up behind me. The people behind me are quickly helped by their photographer (understandable). More people queue up behind me. They are helped next. Two more workers walk up to the podium and walk away; the guys is still talking to the other customer and has not made eye contact with me. Everyone else has walked away, and there are two people at the podium looking down. I clear my throat and ask if a manager is around.
“The general manager is right there.”
So I walk up to the general manager, tell him that I’ve been standing in line for 15 minutes without a single person telling me to “please wait a moment” or “we’ll be with you shortly”. Also, that we’ve seen 4 people go in ahead of us with no other indications. He offered to put us at the front of the line, but we promptly left. He followed us about 20 steps out of the store asking if there was anything else he could do.
Sadly, this is not the first time this has happened. Sharon had a similar problem at the Gap a couple of years ago. She was the only one in line with two people at the counter, heads looking down, never bothering to look up and even acknowledge that there was a customer there.
This gets highlighted when you go to a place with very good service. We were almost serviced to death a the Marie Calendar’s in Milpitas. From where we were, I could also here the manager constantly talking to all of the wait staff about how to make sure customers got what they needed. On business travel to Arkansas (yes, please get all of the laughing out now), a co-worker and myself went to the hotel to check-in. It turned out I was booked in the hotel “across town” (which turns out to be a whole 10 minutes, but that’s another story…). As we left so I could go “across town”, the manager came running after us, yelling “excuse me, sir” no less. Out of breath, he wheezed, that they found a room for me and already canceled my other reservation and kept the same rate.
I really start to bemoan the fact that people can’t stand their jobs, so they simply suck at them. I’ve had to work in both retail and in food services. Yes, it’s tough. Yes, customers are sometimes rude, but you get paid for it.