Everywhere we go these days, we have to line up to wait for service. Airports, banks, stores, governments, even hospitals, there is a line up of people waiting to be served. It drives me crazy. I hate standing in lines while I wait to give some store or service organization my money. It frustrates me to the point where I begin to convince myself that no court in the country would hold me accountable for my actions.
Maggie and I do most of our banking electronically. We pay our bills and do most other transactions online. It is convenient and gets me around a simple problem I have. I hate going to the bank.
The people at my bank are lovely people. They're polite, friendly and they remember who you are. They smile, chat and the line of customers waiting for service moves at the speed of a glacier retreating after an ice age. It’s not all their fault.
Banks have gone electronic. They have computers and networks but they have never figured out how to let go of paper so while everything is electronic when I bank at home, at the bank it is both electronic and paper-based which means we get to do twice the work for the same transaction.
This slows down considerably the line of people waiting to be served and when the air conditioning breaks down on a hot summer day, standing in line at the bank is one of the most dangerous places on earth. You never know who is going to have a psychotic meltdown while waiting to deposit a cheque.
Everywhere I go now, there is a line of people waiting for their turn to be served.
We were at the grocery store the other day to pick up a couple of things on the way home. The store wasn’t busy and again, just like at our bank, has some warm, friendly people working at the cash. We took our two little items to the cash where we stood and waited for ten minutes while the cashier helped the person in front of us fill out an application for the store’s rewards card.
I’m a gentle person but I begin to have violent thoughts when customer service is so bad it steals time from me. It’s not like retailers are doing us a favour by ringing up our purchases, we’re keeping them in business.
Maggie knew I was annoyed, she’s seen the signs before. My breathing quickens, my eyes glaze over and I start muttering incoherently. She took the two items from me, told me to go outside and she’d stand in line…..a line of two; us and the guy applying for the point’s card. Ten minutes later, out she came with our two little items.
Last night, we stopped at KFC on the way home. I used the drivethru to avoid standing in line. Bad choice!
We ordered, then ordered again and then once more because the quality of the audio/speaker system was so bad, the nice young lady trying to take our order sounded like Ozzie Osborn with laryngitis. To further complicate things, her command of English was somewhat limited and my French completely confused both of us.
When we got to the window, she announced that they only had dark meat. Excuse me? You only have dark meat? You sell chicken. How do you run out of chicken when you only sell chicken? The order included your choice of Pepsi or another Pepsi product. They didn’t have any Pepsi either.
How is it possible to screw up the inventory so badly you run out of two of the key products you sell? It’s not like the store is so busy that it was overwhelmed with unexpected customers.
I had the same experience at Tim Horton’s, Canada’s most popular coffee and doughnut store. There is a Tim Horton’s on almost every street corner and if the block is really long, there’s usually one in the middle of the block to help you make it to the next one on either end.
They sell muffins, sandwiches and soup but their primary products are coffee and doughnuts. That’s it, coffee and doughnuts. It isn’t complicated and it isn’t something that they don’t do every day. They’re so popular, local law enforcement across the nation hold their hourly meetings at a Tim Horton’s and you’re lucky to find a parking spot during police shift changes.
I went in, stood in line for ten minutes and finally made it to the cash where I ordered a coffee and a Boston Cream doughnut. They didn’t have any doughnuts. How is that possible? They sell coffee and they sell doughnuts and they bake the doughnuts on site! How is it possible not to have one of the two primary products you sell every single day of the year? I was told that their baker hadn’t shown up for work and apparently they had no backup plan. I was so frustrated I offered to go in the back and bake the bloody things myself.
The people standing in line to buy coffee and a doughnut were starting to get the news that there were no doughnuts and you could see amazed annoyance moving down the line like a tsunami rolling across a low coastal plain.
Everywhere we go now it’s the same thing. There are staff wandering all around the store offering to help you find stuff but when you get to the cash, you run into a bureaucracy that rivals anything you’ll find at a government office.
They want your postal code, your phone number or your address. I’m not applying for a loan, you don’t need that information! They ask you how many bags you want so they can charge you for them, ask if you would like to make a donation to that week’s favourite charity and point out the specials on display beside the cash register.
They want to swipe your Air Miles or point’s card or give you an application if you don’t have one. They’ll even help you fill it out while the rest of us stand in line wondering if ten years to life for manslaughter is an acceptable trade-off. Sometimes it gets so frustrating you begin to tell yourself that you might even get acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide.
To be fair, we don’t really help ourselves. Inevitably there is always one person in every line who is caught completely off-guard by the entire process of paying for their purchases. They wait until the order is rung up and then go searching for their debit or credit card to pay for it. They fish around in their purse or their wallet for the exact change while the rest of us stand waiting, thinking about throwing the thirty-five cents they’re looking for onto the counter.
Often they wait in line until they get to the cash only to tell the cashier that they couldn’t find something and we all wait until the cashier arranges for another employee, usually the one who has the most limited motor skills or motivation goes and gets the missing item.
Is this your first time in a store? Get organized. Get your stuff, get your money out and move the bloody line along.
Sometimes, the people in front of you in the line have coupons and that............is when my head explodes.
Sometimes, the people in front of you in the line have coupons and that............is when my head explodes.
I stand in line after line muttering under my breath or to Maggie if she’s with me but Maggie used to just smile and tell me to stay calm. She is very patient or at least she used to be.
We stopped at a Tim Horton’s one Saturday morning to pick up a couple of coffees on our way to play golf. Maggie opted to go into the store because the drive thru line stretched all the way to Alberta, no doubt full of environmentalists sitting in their idiling cars to pick up coffee on their way to a green house gas emissions protest rally.
She was gone a long time……a very long time.
Picture Maggie. She is a petite, pretty woman with blue eyes, blonde hair and a smile so warm that it will melt ice. She is a very patient person and pretty much has to be to have married me. She is so patient, in fact, that the Vatican is considering her for sainthood and that is pretty patient. She’s kind of like a Dutch Julie Andrews but while St. Maggie went into the store, that is not who emerged 25 minutes later with our two coffees.
It was an agent of Satan. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes were little red dots and she was breathing fire through her nostrils. People were jumping out of her way like small animals fleeing a forest fire. She got into the car, took a long deep breath, turned to me and said,
It was an agent of Satan. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes were little red dots and she was breathing fire through her nostrils. People were jumping out of her way like small animals fleeing a forest fire. She got into the car, took a long deep breath, turned to me and said,
“Stupid, f*ck*ng bimbos!”
I have two messages for those who take care of customer service in major retailers. The longer people stand in lines, the less cash you’re taking in. The faster the line moves, the more money you make because you process more transactions. It’s just good business.
The second message is that if your service is so bad it can turn my wife from being Julie Andrews into Lizzie Borden on crack, you definitely need to revisit the way you treat your customers. You have a problem and that problem could be more than just bad for business…………it could be downright dangerous!
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