EARTH BITES...WHEN PATIENCE AND TACT ARE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND

I recently had a golden opportunity to shed a few layers of social graces and tact. I was in a local gas bar that had a line-up of customers (about four deep) held hostage by a lone cashier.

A typical sequence of events occurred in which the first customer had a slightly complicated series of transactions that were slightly outside the normal realm of gas plus varying degrees of lotto ticket and nicotine addiction.

I was not close (or interested) enough to determine what had slowed things down to a- molecules- at-zero- degrees- Kelvin pace, but I did notice two other employees behind the counter.

 

So I did some simple math and concluded that three employees and two cash registers equal an unnecessary customer bottleneck in the gas bar.

Eventually my patience ran out-probably prematurely- and I voiced my concerns in the line-up. I was preaching to a frustrated choir in the case of one customer; a young woman with a young child. She echoed my sentiment.

It was hot that day, and I was in a hurry, so I went to the next level and asked the two other guys to open the other till. I won't disguise the actual conversation as particularly civil on my part when I got their attention.

They explained that they were in a shift change on the second till and would require a little extra time to sort out the situation. Fair enough, except that they suddenly opened up the second till and beckoned for the next customer to come to the till.

I was at the back of the first line, so I headed over to the till and thanked them for their effort. Another young woman in front of me pointed out that I had actually cut in front of her if the rules of civility were still applicable. Her point was that she was logically the next person that should have been served on either till. She was absolutely right.

I was closest to the new till, but she had seniority in the grander scheme of things. It was too late to change things, but I did give her credit for pointing out my social faux pas.

Then I thought about the situation a little further and concluded that she was the only person that was right in the situation.

The two other guys behind the counter and I were definitely not right. I was wrong because I allowed a burst of impatience to get the better of me. I complicated matters by igniting the situation with a fairly juvenile display in the gas bar.

Which brings my point to the other two staff members: I worked on the frontlines of customer service for a long time and these guys made some cardinal business sins that afternoon. They had their backs to the customers in a highly visible retail area with a primary function as a cash-out point.

The appearance to customers was complete indifference by them- right or wrong- it simply looked that way. Then they failed to communicate their situation to the highly unnecessary line-up of customers in their business.

They flunked Customer Service 101 and I flunked Customer 101 that day. Let's hope the three of us do better on the next exam.

 Jim Sutherland @ mystarcollectorcar.com