Arghhhhh

Ok, maybe I’m getting old and crotchety at 40. However, it seems that lately, the level of customer service has dropped off into some abyss. Example: I’m in the local supermarket the other day. It’s a Saturday so yeah, there are a lot of people and so I get the very basics, frozen Indian food, Bar-B-Q chips and lemonade. With a few other luxuries like toilet paper and diapers, I have about 14 items in the cart, along with an increasingly antsy three-year old. The one to eight item express lane is empty and at every other cashier, there are carts lined up like jets at Pearson Airport on Christmas Eve, each piled to the top with groceries. So, I try to use the express line. However, even though I am the only person in line, the cashier refuses to serve me. And while I wait in line at the next cashier, she is empty most of the time. Yet, never once does she show the courtesy or even the common sense to call me back, even though my three year old son is growing ever more noisily restless. Should I have insisted she ring my groceries through rather than standing around doing nothing? Probably. Should I have had to ask? No. It’s not just that customer service is no longer as good as it used to be; customer service is no longer there, many times. It’s been replaced in many cases by clock watching automatons who resent being made to do any more than the least they can and still get a paycheque.
In a way, I feel for them. I worked in retail for a few years, so I know what it’s like: the pay is bad, the hours are long, usually and your Manager thinks he or she is God’s gift to Retail. And, more often than not, this isn’t the career path they want. Many retail staff even have a post-retail career all mapped out. However, like it or not or big plans or not, this is their current job and, although I’m not the one who physically hands them a pay stub every second Friday, I’m one of the ones that help make that pay stub possible.
So, next time they are tempted to exercise their little bit of "authority" by imposing an arbitrary item limit, I want them to remember that they work for us, the consumer.