Customer Service .. so important these days

When I was a small child my mother would grab my hand and march me down to the Maypole shop on the corner of Main Street and Station Rd.
There we’d stand in the queue with a dozen or so others waiting to be served by one of the half dozen assistants smartly dressed in long starchy white aprons.
With my foot I’d draw marks in the sawdust on the tiled floor while mum caught up with all the local gossip from the other mums in the queue, she probably even learnt a few things about herself from them; as they didn’t care who they talked about.

You could smell the rich aromas of the comestibles on offer as nothing was vacuum packed on polystyrene or wrapped in cling film.

“Hello Mrs. Clapham, how are you today?” We’d got to the front of the queue.
“How was that piece of braising steak last week, did Geoff enjoy it for his tea?” They remembered what you’d spent your money on the previous week.
“To be honest Mr Jacks it was a bit tough, he ate it fine enough, but perhaps I should’ve cooked it longer” Replied my ma ever the one to take the blame.
“Sorry to hear that” He sympathised “Hear, tell you what, try cooking it in a bit more gravy and add quarter of an hour, it’ll be our little secret.” He quickly wrapped a bit of meat in paper and popped into ma’s basket with a wink.

They didn’t need to go on courses to learn about Customer Service in those days, they’d never heard of it, they didn’t need to have done because they never stopped practicing it. It was a way of life to the shopkeeper of the late 50′s.

The rest of my mother’s list was duly dealt with all in one go, then a fish head for the cat was wrapped and handed over without a word and I had a penny lolly popped into my mouth by one of the girls as she was serving the woman behind my mother.
“Billy’ll be around on his bike to drop off your vegetables before five Mrs. Clapham”, and with a hearty “Tara” he’d wish us on our way. All in all we’d done the weekend shop in less than half an hour, and if we had forgotten anything ma would only have to send me down some time in the week with my memorised chant……..
“Me ma says can you let her have a …………” Then I’d soon be home with whatever she’d missed off the list safe in the knowledge its cost would be added to next week’s bill.

Last week I went to a well known supermarket, well when I say went I mean I drove, because it’s two miles away. Quite close really for this day and age.

Having parked my car I had to walk through the gang of miserable supermarket workers at smoker’s corner they were shivering and coughing, a lovely advert for the store, they made the produce they handle look so appetising I thought.
Arriving at the trolley park I remembered I had to insert a coin to release one, I searched through each pocket in turn and drew a blank. So I had to enter the store and stand in the queue at the cigarette and newspaper counter because although this was a Saturday morning the customer service desk had a hand written sign up saying back in five minutes (Five minutes from when?).
Ten minutes later (during which time nobody had returned to the customer service desk) I exited the store in order to release a trolley so I could re-enter the store.
Heading for the eggs I found the bread, going to where the bread used to be I found the sauces and condiments. I decided to peruse the wine aisle and calm down a bit. After a few minutes of reading labels and confusing myself over hints of oak aged smoky blackberries I realised I had a shadow. I was being overtly stared at by what at first appeared to be a poor imitation of a member of The NYPD. With relief I noticed he wasn’t armed, however he was intent on letting me know that so long as I was in the wines, beers and spirits bit of the shop then this store wasn’t big enough for the both of us. I slunk off and left the security guard to securely guard the security of his booze.

What is a colleague announcement?

Having done a couple of laps of the store I decided I could live without whatever it was I’d forgotten that I needed and I headed for the checkout.

What did I find? Half a dozen do-it-yourself checkout machines with a rather harassed looking “member of colleague staff” hurtling between all six machines and frantically cancelling this and verifying that. Clearly I was to become part of the latest drive towards not employing people any more.
Just what this country needs, less people in even less jobs, hooray for corporate greed and increased profits. Let’s not worry about whether there are enough people in gainful employment to actually come into these bloody shops and spend money eh?
I walked up to the vacant robot it displayed a welcome and invited me to start scanning. I immediately envisaged a future where the illiterate and dyslexic would crawl around in supermarket car parks weak with hunger, it was no longer enough to merely have the money to buy food you also had to be able to read instructions in order to pay for it.

I scanned my packet of Wheaty Bangs (beep) and put it in the bag on the rack which was also part of the scales. I then chose a tube of eggs and did the same (no beep!) Something was wrong I was beepless. I put the eggs in the bag and looked at the screen. A notice was asking me if I had brought my own bag? I pressed NO, it then flashed lights for the “colleague assistant” who had to come and calm it down. I now had to remove the two items from the bag as it was worried I was trying to steal them, I put them back in the trolley.
We started again, and this time we got as far as the aerosol spray which sent the robotic colleague off in a fit.
“I have to approve solvents and aerosols” explained the human colleague who merely showed it her magic brooch. How that proved I wasn’t going to drag my heels into the long grass at the back of the car park and partake in a spot of getting high on hair spray confuses the heck out of me.
I then limp wristedly waved my bargain of the day at its all seeing eye. A pack of let’s pretend ham with injected water reduced by 10np which it steadfastly chose to ignore. I could not persuade Davros to even notice it let alone allow me to buy it. Back came the frazzled colleague who had to type in a code and plead with it to let me become the new owner.
I reached into my lucky dip for the next item and came out with a punnet of strawberries the bar code was attached to the cling film lid. Turning it upside down I waved it around over the reader, guess how long the cling film stayed intact? No not even that long. I spent the next couple of minutes scrabbling around on the floor chasing after errant strawberries that were making a break for freedom. Still it reminded me of my childhood which was the last time I’d been out picking strawberries.
A few more easier items and I’d finished, now what? I searched the screen until I found a button marked how do you wish to pay? I pressed that expecting choices but instead it wailed for its keeper, who reset it and pointed out to me that I should have pressed the button marked Finished instead. So I did and then chose my preference of card payment. This time I thought I’d hit the jackpot, all the lights on the tower above it went off. Back she came and announced that my shopping included a bottle of wine which she needed to authorise. To my astonishment a menu of options came up for her to choose from, each of them referred to her interpretation of my age. She pressed the one that said “Customer is clearly old enough” Dag-nabbit she could at least have pretended to have gone through the process of deciding my age.
I returned to my option of paying by card.
Place your card in the reader, it instructed. I searched all around the screen and could see no slot to shove my card in. I called Mrs Colleague back over she sighed at me and pointed out that I was in fact leaning on the card reader.
I entered my PIN and pressed enter, and was about to whip the card out but suddenly I had to deal with a series of Earth shattering descions.
Did I have any coupons? err …. no.
How many savings stamps did I want to buy? ummmm …… none
Did I want cashback? . errrr …. do I? ummm …. no.
Do I have a loyalty card …….. this was endless.
It then spat a receipt at me, I was a couple or so steps away from it when a voice behind me said something. I returned and said pardon?
It’s ok said my own personal colleague you’ve finished now. I asked her who had spoken to me, she said it was the machine so I went back to it.
“What do you want?” I enquired down its nearest orifice.
“It was thanking you for shopping here” I was informed by the young man who had been waiting to use the machine after me.
I peered at it over the top of my specs. I’d just done £60 of shopping, the only words exchanged with a human had been to get me out of trouble, then I’d been thanked by a machine.
What the hell is going on?

Whilst loading my car I espied a very official metal sign strapped to a lamp post, I walked over and peered up at it. Its opening statement was to welcome me to their car park. Now I don’t know about you, but when a notice starts like that I am instantly reminded of a large Canadian smiling down at a seal cub whilst hiding a very large club behind his back. I read on.
It merrily lead me down the garden path and waffled aimlessly about the following being about the supermarket’s customers’ interests. Yeah, right! It wasn’t so much about my interests but it certainly was interesting.
I read on ……
Apparently I was allowed to park for two and a half hours if I was a customer …. Hmmm … understood, but what if there had been a multi trolley pile up in Home Baking just by the Self Raising Flour? It didn’t seem to allow for this as it categorically shouted that a £50 fine would wing its happy way in my direction.
I read on ……
It informed me I was not allowed to return within 5 hours. What is more they used cameras and number plate recognition to check on me.
I re-read this several times deciding to ignore the bollocky “welcome” and the shite about it being in their customers’ interest I consequently concluded “Fuck ‘em” if they think its a good business model to bully customers and instruct them when they have or haven’t permission to drive to their shop and spend money with them then thank heavens I don’t have any shares in such a flawed concept.
However there was a nagging question at the back of my mind about this which I couldn’t quite put to rest.

I drove out of Stalag IV car park and as I went round the mini roundabout by their petrol station I suddenly realised what was really troubling me about the notice, it was Custard Powder!
I’d forgotten the bloody custard powder, I knew why of course, it was because disposable nappies had evicted custard powder, mainly because tinned bananas had usurped the said nappies in favour of its old haunting grounds which was where cottage cheese had moved on to.
Perhaps the shop had also levied a restriction on how long its produce could stay on the same shelf, whilst not allowing a return within 5 hours?
By now I’d gone round the roundabout three times whilst wondering what to do. I needed the custard powder and so far as common sense indicated there was nothing illegal about buying it, however they had decided that unless I waited five hours ( I suppose as a punishment for having an addled memory) the custard powder was going to cost me £51.65 …. and serve me right! I almost settled on fresh cream instead as it goes very nicely with stewed apples and would be much cheaper at only £50.85, but by now I was getting dizzy and decided to go home instead.
That night I had the stewed apple on its own and promised myself then and there that in future I’d save up for the custard powder as it’s really so much nicer, and hang the expense.

Over the weekend looking at the situations vacant in our area I spotted what seemed a worthwhile use of my free time. Volunteers were needed to take the elderly and infirm shopping one at a time in your own car. I screamed in horror and threw the paper away as far as I could, not far as it transpired, have you ever tried throwing an open newspaper it just has no urgency about it and flaps lethargically to your feet. I pondered about this volunteering opportunity it disguised itself as a pure and altruistic activity, but I suspected that financial folly and bankruptcy lay this way.
I cranked up the internet and whacked off an e-mail to yesterday’s supermarket.

I pointed out to them that I didn’t think they had thought through the true implications of their car park policy and put to them the scenario of my volunteering to take Mrs Ironing-board to do her shopping and then a couple of hours later transporting Mrs Licorice on the same offensive. Why should I be penalised for my generosity in both helping out two OAPs and choosing to patronise their shop? What were they going to do to rectify this mis-justice and persuade me not to go to Tescosons or Liddle ol’ Aldi ?

I requested that they didn’t bother replying with the tired old tosh about it being to the customers’ advantage or any other meaningless platitude which would result in me feeling my intelligence was being insulted. I merely wanted to know what to do about a situation that they had created.
Their response, like a twangy arrow zeroed straight back into my inbox just over a week later.

“Yes” they agreed.
“That was an issue and no mistake Guv!” They conceded.
“And there is a solution”
They then explained that it wasn’t them being unreasonable, you see they had sold their car parks to a company called Euro Car Parks. And if I went to their website I would be able to give them my bank account details and buy a season ticket …. there, problem solved!

BUY! Buy! buy!!! Did I just hear right?
Yes I surely did.

I have to seriously question the thought processes of a management team that value the income of selling its car park over the inconvenience caused to its customers who, whilst having every right to go anywhere else, are only trying to support that business in what is after all its core activity. Bunch of amateurs.

A pound to a penny says that they don’t even use that income to put sawdust on the floors for bored little boys to make pictures in with their feet.