The Death of Customer Service

Customer service is officially dead. Check this story:

I go into the bakery to pick up the cake for my mother's birthday. It is 11 a.m. and I'm in a tad bit of a hurry and there's a cast of thousands of kids and moms in there all lined up. So I hunkered down to wait patiently. And wait I did.

The final mom/child pair in front of me ordered two plain bagels toasted with cream cheese. The child was about 2 and was climbing all over everything and mom was trying to get out of there. When she placed her order with the woman behind the counter, she said "Whoa! You smell good! Are you wearing perfume?"

The mom said, while chasing her child, "No. It's not me." (Believe me, that woman was likely smelling like last night's dinner since she probably wasn't able to even bathe that morning with all the work the child was.)

"Well, someone smells fantastic! I just got a whiff of it!" and she fanned her hand in front of her face to show how the whiff came through, as if we didn't understand how whiffs work. Finally, able to focus again, the counter-woman said "What did you want again?"

And the poor, exasperated mother repeats "Two bagels." "Toasted?" "Yes." "Cream cheese?" "Yes." And so, the order placed completely over again, this time in parts, the girl finally gets the two bagels, saunters back to the cooks and tells them what she needs. She comes back, rings the woman up, and it is finally my turn.

"I'm here to pick up a cake," I said. A blank stare.

"A cake. I ordered it." Blank stare. "Can you get it for me?" I allowed about 5-10 seconds to pass between each utterance on my part. "I'm in a tiny bit of a hurry, and this is taking a while, could I give you my name?"

Finally, she speaks. "No." She walks around to the cake counter and says, "Are you Amanda?"

"No."

"Are you Anne?"

"No. I'm Karen if that helps you."

"Oh! 66?" "Yes, that's mine."

Oh my god, I'm thinking at this point. I should've just pretended to be Amanda. Perhaps Mom would've gotten a cake with a Winnie or Minnie on it, but she would've gotten it that day.

She puts the cake in front of me and goes to get the box. When she arrives back, she has to build the fourth side of the box, but the top is not folded yet, so it keeps flopping back on her. So she flips it up and it flops back 3 times. Finally, unable to contain myself, I say, "Here, I'll hold it for you." She does the fourth side of the box and then places the cake inside. I hand her my credit card and tell her I'll finish off the top of the box, lest the flip-flop gets the best of her.

She runs the card and hands it to me along with the slip that requires my signature. I stand there for a couple of beats and then say "Do you have a pen?" She hands me one and says "You are in a hurry, huh?" What? Well, yes. But more than that, my strongest state at this point is not hurriedness. It is complete amazement at your idiocy. But what I say is "Yup! Gotta go." And I sign, grab the cake and head out the door.

I realize it's a coffee shop/bakery. I realize at 11 in the morning, perhaps folks are more leisurely than at 7:30 during the morning commute when everyone wants in and out of there. But I don't need to hear all about the smells you're smelling, I don't need to watch a tortured parent have to order twice, and I don't need to know every woman in JP who ordered a cake for that morning. When someone says, "I'm here to pick up a cake" the answer is generally "What's your name?" or "What's your order number?" or "Do you have your order slip" or "What does it look like" even. Not a blank stare and a poll of women's names.

This is just the most recent in a long string of lunacy that seems to be attacking the service sector. The week before, I'd called the delivery service that Delta uses to deliver lost bags, looking for 8 missing bags belonging to Singaporean students who had travelled for an event at my work. I dialed the number. The woman said only "Hello." Not sure I had the right number, I said "I'm trying to locate 8 suitcases." She responded with "I don't know who you are!" So I apologized for calling the wrong number and dialed again. Same lady. Same exact exchange. Holy crap. The bags ended up located and delivered, but only after I heard every address of every person in the entirety of Massachusetts who was awaiting a bag delivery and asked her a few times to please stop yelling at me. And this was AFTER I'd told her our reference number for the bags, which she claimed the entire time was attached to an order going to Sudbury.

The economy sucks. Lots of people are out of work. Perhaps some of them want these jobs at the bakery or the delivery service or any of the other places people have been idiots lately. I think they might do a better job than these folks are.

Books! Books! Books!

I'm taking a Children's Lit class this semester through the Child Development department at Tufts. It's focus is on picture books through juvenile novels (up to 6th grade). Here's some of the highlights of what I've read so far this semester, all of which is new to me.

1. Re-tellings of Little Black Sambo. This incredibly controversial book, published in 1850, written by a white woman living in British-ruled India for her two small children, has been re-told uncountable times. These are my two favorite modern versions:
The Story of Little Babaji, Bannerman and Marcellio and Sam and the Tigers, Lester and Pickney. Both are done wonderfully. The art is beautiful and the stories are awesome. The first is completely original in the text save for the names of the characters and the second is completely retold.

2. Picture books by Tomie de Paola, my new favorite children's book author. His books are really really wonderful. He is an artist and author and grew up and still lives in New England. He had an Italian father and Irish mother, and some of his books are autobiographical. Seek him out! Here's some titles: Bill and Pete, Oliver Button is a Sissy, many books featuring Strega Nona, Nana Upstairs Nana Downstairs, and more.

3. Ruby, by Michael Emberley appears to be out of print, but you can get it at the library. What a wonderful, modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood with a clever twist at the end! His site is here if you want to visit it. I've not read his others, but they look great.

4. Anything by or illustrated by Ed Young. Look for the hidden embedded art in his books (is that a mountain or a donkey head?). See his gorgeous site here.

5. The Seer of Shadows, Avi. I'd never heard of this author prior to this, and I will read some of his others when I catch up a bit. This one was phenomenal. A ghost-story so cleverly done. He's won a lot of awards. Check him out here.

6. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village, Laura Amy Schlitz, was written for her students at the Park School in Baltimore. She wrote this book in monologue parts that children can learn and perform while learning about medieval village life. The set up is very interesting and it's really beautiful.

7. Chicken Boy, Frances O'Roark Dowell tells the story of a young man with problem parents, not enough taking care of, and a slightly lunatic grandmother. It's realism for young people and it's good.

8. Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko takes place in 1935 on Alcatraz, back when the guards' and workers' families lived on the island with them. Moose is a boy with an autistic sister in a time when autism isn't known and is a wonderful story that any child can understand and appreciate.

9. Going Bovine by the formidable Libba Bray is a whirlwind of a trip through an ill young man's delirious dreams.

10. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly was so good, I emailed her when I was half-way through to thank her. This one takes place in 1899 and is just awesome. Callie Tate lives in Texas with her parents, lots of brothers and an aging grandfather, who she befriends and learns from. It's really beautiful. I kept having to stop and re-read passages because they were so well written.