The Bad and the Good of Customer Service

05 April 2010

I left Cub Foods empty-handed today, despite two attempts to make a purchase.

I’m not entirely sure why I visited their University Avenue location. It’s surely the trashiest Cub I’ve ever had the displeasure of patronizing. I mean, I knew I had stop and buy cat food on the way home, but I should’ve stopped at the Maple Grove location, near my job, which offers at least a modicum of customer service.

Anyways, after grabbing the bag of cat food, I went to the self-checkout counter. After scanning the item, I selected “I have my own bag,” and then pressed the appropriate button to pay. However, the computer kept insisting there was an unknown item on the bagging area. There wasn’t, but I couldn’t get the computer to allow me to pay. So I walked away and went to an express lane.

There was one man ahead of me in the express lane (whom we’ll call “Hobo”) and, once the cashier finished scanning his items, she walked away from the register. I watched her walk away towards the customer service counter, but I was unsure what she was doing. I contemplated going to a different lane, but there were, by this time, two customers behind me, so I couldn’t get out.

After two minutes, I asked Hobo if he knew where the cashier had gone. “Yeah,” he said, “she went to get me some cigarettes.” Another minute went by, and the cashier returned, had a brief exchange with Hobo regarding the availability of his desired cigarettes, and then she walked away again. I turned around and saw the two people behind me were getting agitated, too. They were talking to each other, confused as to what was taking so long, and why the cashier had left her station. It seems to me that the cashier should have instructed the man to venture over to the cigarette counter following his food purchase to obtain the cigarettes himself. If you’re going to smoke, the least you can do is walk over (while you still can) and buy your own goddam death sticks.

I left my item on the belt, scooted out around Hobo’s cart, and exited that Cub. I went across the street to their competitor and purchased the item there.

Later, Owen and I went out to Ray’s Mediterranean Restaurant. I have only visited this place one other time, over a year ago, where I ordered take-out and brought home a scrumptious meal to my family. I really should go there more often. The lone employee working, co-owner and wife of the the other co-owner, was very friendly to Owen and me. She helped me pick out food that the whole family would enjoy and actually had an intelligent, thoughtful conversation with both of us – while preparing our meal. I told her we had recently tried to visit Hot City Pizza (see my March 9th rant for details), but left due to their unkind disposition. She agreed that they were not nice people, adding that “they think they know how to make pizza, but they do not.” She then explained that, having lived in New York for 15 years, and having been raised on the Mediterranean, she knows how to make pizza.

I’m not sure why I didn’t notice this before, but she’s right: all the best food comes from countries on the Mediterranean: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Israel, Egypt, Morocco… Ah, the tastebuds long for more.

06 April 2010

So, my wife has been complaining about her glut of homework lately. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but her homework levels are really ridiculous. (Incidentally, I have misgivings about assigning students to read more chapters out of a book than can reasonably be discussed in the next class period.) Last week was spring-break, right? – and Jennifer still had a bunch of work to do. She seems to have piles of work; her teachers assign her multiple projects at once.

One assignment was to select a contemporary artist and write about their life. So my wife picked one and then notified the teacher as to which one she was selecting. I guess the reason for this is because the teacher didn’t want any student to select the same artist as any other student (I didn’t say it was a good reason). This paper wasn’t due until this week, so my wife kept postponing it until it finally reached the top of the priority pile. But then she realized the artist she selected has almost no available biographical information from whence to glean a paper. And this is by design: the artist claims she doesn’t want the attention (um…then don’t sell your artwork) and goes out of her way to avoid dispensing personal information.

Wow…a pretentious artist. That’s so original.

Of course, not having anything to say about this woman, and not even sure she liked this artist anymore, my wife decided it was best to switch to another artist. The problem is, to do that, she’d have to notify her teacher, and that would be an implicit confession that she hadn’t been working on the paper for the last few weeks.

So, she talked to her teacher today, and was thus given permission to switch to a less-jackass artist. Of course, he teacher was surprised that she was only coming to her now, mere days before the assigned due date, to seek an alternative. I asked Jennifer if she explained that she’d had a lot of homework and other things going on in her life, but Jennifer said: “No, it doesn’t matter anyways, they all act as if their class is the only class you’re taking.” At St. Kate’s, at least, this appears to be true.

Catholics. Go figure.