Do-it-yourself taken a step too far
Henrietta Smith Ross, a classmate in our class of 1961 at Ballard Memorial High School, wrote to mention something that should have been included in my commentary about the deterioration of customer service.
Noting a trend in grocery stores she writes, “Worse yet, you have to check yourself out and bag your own stuff. How times have changed!”
Even if I’m in a hurry, I won’t check myself out. Maybe I would if the store offered a discount but stores don’t offer one.
The notion of beeping my purchases, bagging them and then putting them into a grocery cart doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Customer service at grocery stores used to include a cashier who would carry on a good conversation, a bagger at every checkout line who put the purchases into a bag and then push the cart outside to your car and put the sacks into the trunk.
Today, conversation probably is between cashiers, complaining that they still have to work two more hours and other negative discussions about how awful it is to have to work for a living.
The stores apparently have reduced the number of baggers, because as often as not the cashier ends up bagging the groceries after he or she has rung up the purchases and taken your payment.
Other things bug me at grocery stores.
People with an entire month’s worth of groceries going through the express lane bug me. I think they should invent tandem grocery carts like the tandem trailers pulled by semis on the interstate highways. The tandem carts should be reserved for people to take through the express lane.
I usually don’t say anything. I assume the offenders can’t read.
Something else that bugs me is people in express or other lanes who wait until all the groceries have been rung up, and then start searching in purses for checkbooks. It’s almost like they’re surprised they have to pay for their groceries.
And I suspect that some stores put their slowest cashiers in the express lanes.
One more thing that bugs me: People who decide they have the exact change, then rummage among their coins for five minutes searching for that fourth penny, only to realize they don’t have it.
Do you remember customer service?
Back when I was younger there was a concept practiced throughout the country. It was called “customer service.”
When you pulled up to a gas pump, someone came out, pumped the gas you ordered, washed your windshield and checked your oil. Gas cost about 30 cents a gallon.
Today when gas is more on the order of $3 a gallon, they don’t pump it for you, wash your windshield or check your oil.
When you called a company, someone answered, spoke with an accent you could understand (even if it sometimes was an accent from Up North), and probably could help you.
Call that same company today and you won’t reach a person at all. You’ll reach a voice that insists that you start pushing buttons on your phone.
Mostly they start their recitation by asking which language you want. Your choices seem to be limited to just two languages, English or Spanish. You’re out of luck if your language of preference is Russian or Japanese or Southern.
Then the voice starts calling out numbers and describing options that may be accessed by pushing a number. None of the options is what you’re calling about.
If you do push a number – let’s say you push 3 – you don’t get an answer. You get at least five more choices of buttons you can push.
If you keep pushing, eventually you lose your connection and start over.
If by some slim chance one of those numbers leads to an actual person, that person isn’t the one with your answer. Or maybe he or she is the right person but how can you tell because he or she is in India and, if you’re at all like me and aging has caused just enough loss of hearing that you have trouble understanding any accent that isn’t peppered with “y’all,” you can’t understand what you’re told.
If there is sufficient understanding between the two of you about your reason for calling, that person inevitably needs to transfer you to another department because you’ve reached the wrong department.
Transfers almost always result in disconnections.
I try to be polite. I usually say something like, “Pardon me, but I have trouble understanding your accent. Do you have someone who speaks Southern American?”
They never do.
Sometimes they have someone who speaks New Jersey American.
That person talks too fast for me, so I say, “I can’t hear as fast as you’re talking. Could you slow down a little?”
He or she can’t.
But you know what’s the most aggravating part of the menu?
When you first start pushing buttons, the voice instructs you: “In order for us to handle your call more efficiently, please enter your account number, followed by the pound sign.” (I sometimes give them an upraised finger sign but it does no good because a telephone menu voice can’t see it.)
If you do reach a real live person, what’s the first question that person asks you? “Could I have your account number?”
Tell me, how does it make it more efficient to enter your account number when that number isn’t transferred along with your call?
In conclusion, ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!
Hello, I’m standing in line and I have a question
I have a pet peeve. Well, okay, maybe I have a lot of pet peeves. But this is one of them.
We’ll not disclose the name of the store in order to protect the innocent or the guilty. Just the facts, ma’am, no names.
I went into this particular store recently to make a small purchase, a couple of batteries for a camera.
I picked out two that had numbers very similar to the one that was in the camera, so I went to checkout to confirm that the batteries were the right ones, and then to purchase them.
Two people were already at the checkout, apparently involved in a complex and fairly expensive transaction. I waited patiently, not being in a particular hurry, and besides, they were there first.
All my patience evaporated when the phone rang and the clerk stopped helping the two people while he took a call from someone. The call went on and on. In fact, the clerk left the checkout area to consult some sort of reference manual in another place.
I walked back to the battery rack and returned the two batteries.
I decided a few years ago that I would not stand in line with purchase and money in my hand while a clerk waited on someone who “broke line” by calling on the phone.
You’ve got to hand it to the phone company. They’ve convinced us that a caller deserves more attention than a person standing right in front of us, even a person with a handful of money.
I walked out of a store a couple of years ago and crossed the street to make a sizeable purchase – a computer – because people on the telephone were getting more service than I was. I was standing right there, just wanting someone to bring a computer and monitor from the bowels of the building where they keep boxes filled with electronic devices.
I crossed the street to another store and within minutes walked out with my new computer.
Here’s an example of why this priority to the phone is so ridiculous and outrageous:
Let’s say there are 10 people in line, all wanting to ask if the V76X battery will fit their camera.
While they stand there waiting their turn, the phone rings. It’s someone asking if the V76X battery will fit his camera. That person has his question answered first. He’s cut line, with the aid of the store clerk.
Let’s continue this speculation: Let’s say I’m that 10th person in line. I’m one of those impatient types who believe that my time is much more valuable than anyone else’s time, especially the time of those nine people ahead of me. So, I take out the old trusty cell phone and dial the store number. The very same clerk who is serving my line answers, I ask about the battery, and I have jumped ahead of all nine of those people.
I think telephone calls should be treated like people in line. If there are three people in line and the phone rings, the clerk should answer and say, “I have three people ahead of you. I’ll call you back as soon as I have served them.” Of better yet, all stores that won’t hire someone to take customers’ phone calls should have an answering system that says, “All of our staff members are serving customers standing in line with money in their hands to make a purchase. There are eight customers in line. You are number nine. You may hold or leave your phone number and we will serve you once we have finished serving the eight live people waving their cash at us.”
We could stop this behavior of all of us would just walk out when the store clerk answers the phone instead of serving us.
Ooops, sorry, I have to cut this short. My phone’s ringing.
Avoiding death
People used to die. Today, for the most part, they avoid death.
They avoid it through the language of obituaries.
I’ve collected obituaries from several newspapers for a couple of years. I collect ones that contain language suggesting that the beloved person did something besides die.
I’ve wondered whether or not that reflects an unwillingness on the part of the survivors to accept their own mortality.
I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with this. I just find it fascinating.
Here are some actual examples of obituary statements:
“…flew away to be with the Lord on Friday….”
“…fell into peaceful sleep and left her earthly body behind….”
“…went fishing in heaven….”
“…traveled her last mile to her permanent home on Heaven's Avenue.”
“…changed his address to heaven.”
" ‘I'm tired and I want to go home.’ God granted her wish….”
“This parrot head left for the ultimate paradise ‘not Key West’."
“On Friday, at age 65, she heard the voice of the Lord saying ‘come home.’ She answered him.”
“…exchanged worlds Tuesday….”
“…journeyed on in life to new destinies.”
Stages of life, indicators of your age
1. The wallet:
Age 15: Your wallet is marked by a circle caused by the dry-rotting condom you've carried for a year, fueled by optimistic but unfulfilled hormonal hopes of backseat sex.
Age 65: Your wallet contains photos of your grandchildren and a list of the medicines you take.
2. The urinary tract
Age 15: You can travel for 500 miles without taking a restroom break. When you do finally go to the men's room, you can stand with your back against the opposite wall and you have enough force to hit the urinal 10 feet in front of you.
Age 65: You stop at every rest area, hoping you can make it to the next one without having an "accident." In the men's room you stand flush against the urinal and hope you have enough force to clear your pants leg.
When the economy began to deteriorate
I knew Sonny Robinson when I was editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper in Spring City, Tennessee. His father owned the drug store in Dayton, Tennessee, where a group of town leaders gathered around an ice cream parlor table and planned to get publicity for the town by having a trial that became one of the best-known trials in history: the Scopes trial, better known as the monkey trial.
I was talking to Sonny one day when he shared his assessment of when our society and our economy began to deteriorate. He said it started “when bankers began wearing polyester suits.”
You know things aren’t going right when…
One good indicator that things maybe aren’t going the way you would like is when you go to the bank to check on your account the teller asks to see some ID, and asks for your birthday and your mother’s maiden name, but when you go to the auto repair shop everyone knows you by your first name.
Support the troops
It inevitably upsets me when I hear one of the political folks talk about supporting the troops by making sure we appropriate money to provide equipment and supplies for them to use in Iraq. It seems to me that the message is, “When one of our soldiers gets killed, we want to make sure he had the best equipment we could provide.”
When I was serving in the military – Army first, Navy later – if given the choice between dying surrounded by the finest available equipment and living surrounded by junk, I would have chosen the latter.
If we insist on leaving our military people in the dangerous situation they face, I agree that we have an obligation to make sure they have the best weapons, ammunition, armor, vehicles, and supplies we can provide. My preference is to take them away from that danger.
And it seems to me that many of the folks who are the biggest supporters of continuing this combat situation into which we have placed our military have never accepted the risk of facing bullets and explosive devices themselves. They haven’t served in the military.
I believe that when we enter a war, those who declare it should be forced to fight it. We would have fewer wars. It doesn’t make sense to me that the people who make the decisions about sending people into combat are the least likely to put their lives at risk, and with a few exceptions that protection extends to their families.
In fact, if the people in the nations where we are fighting and other nations where some suggest we should start fighting were able to launch attacks here in the United States with weapons such as we possess, the people who have bunkers in which to retreat to make sure they aren’t killed are the same ones who decided we should be fighting. The rest of us become targets locked out of those bunkers.
What’s going to happen to Paris Hilton?
But the more important question is: Why should anyone outside her family and friends care? And the basic question has to be: Why do millions of people know about her problems?
I think it’s an indictment of what we continue to mislabel “the news media” that the vacuous, unattractive (in my opinion anyway), no-talent young woman has dominated the news.
I usually don’t watch Fox because that network’s politics and mine don’t match. My remote happened to stop advancing up the channel board the other night as Fox was entering into something called “The Big Story.”
I paused, thinking it might be coverage of some important policy issue or an announcement of something that would benefit all of us. But No! It was a story that Paris Hilton was going back to jail!
I don’t wish any ill on the young woman, whose claim to fame, I believe, was that a tape of her and some man having sex was available on the Internet. But, frankly, I don’t care if she’s in jail. I don’t care if she’s not in jail. I don’t care that she is able to pause in mid-stride and strike a pose in which her face reflects the emptiness that lies within it. She’s not news. None of us should care what she’s doing.
The actions that your city or county governments take are far more important to you than is Paris Hilton, but I feel very confident in saying that you pay more attention to her than to the various governments whose votes can have a direct bearing on your life and your pocketbook.
News media, start covering news. Leave the celebrities to the magazines that should be hidden under counters at the stores that sell them.
What’s a hero?
I started to say that “hero” is the most overused word of the day but I think it would be more accurate to call it the most misused word.
Before I go off on a rant, let me describe when it’s appropriate to call someone a hero.
Morris Eugene Crain was a Ballard Countian who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. He won it posthumously. His daughter, whom he never got to see, attended Ballard Memorial High School at the same time I did.
Crain had advanced to platoon sergeant. His platoon was dug in at a bridgehead that had been secured. When the counterattack came, Crain’s platoon was forced back house-by-house, taking casualties along the way.
When reinforcements came, he led them back into town. Crain and his men made their way to a house where five men of his original platoon were holed up. There were German soldiers in other rooms of the same house. Crain took a submachine gun, killed three of the enemy and drove the others away.
Then an enemy tank came. Crain armed himself with the heaviest weapons they had and ordered his men to get out. He held off the tank while his men escaped. He was killed.
Today, it seems like you can get shot in the ass running away in fear and you'll be called a hero. You can be sitting in an office building and an explosion takes your life. You’re called a hero.
Not to take anything away from people who get killed because they’re doing their job and they’re in a line of attack, but when I was growing up a hero was someone who did something brave and dangerous and put himself at risk, often to make sure other people were safe. A hero was someone like Morris Eugene Crain.
I wish we didn’t use the word so often today to describe just about anyone who gets killed by attackers, whether or not that person did anything brave.
If those folks are heroes, then the word “hero” isn’t ample for people such as Crain. I would think of them as “super heroes” but that seems to be associated with cartoon characters.
I would like to see us go back to reserving “hero” for those who have faced danger and done something truly heroic while facing it.