Service without a smile

As a senior (ish), I'm starting to pay more attention to how people act at work. Whenever I go somewhere I'm constantly watching how people do things, simple and not so simple. Well, often times I get really irritated. It's the same rant we have all heard a million times, it's a bad economy, someone else would do your job better! Well, most of the time I don't get too irritated, but since I am in the PR world, I ALWAYS focus on how people treat others on the job. How you answer the phone is so much more important than people realize.

Since I am moving into a new apartment, I needed a new TV. After searching all the stores here, none of them had my desired one in stock. Well, I could have had it delivered to my apartment, but there's this thing called sorority recruitment (aka: hell week for girls) that wouldn't allow me to actually be home while the sun was shining. So, I opted for Walmart's really helpful site-to-store. You buy it online, they send it to the store and ta-da! Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. My TV was to have been delivered last week/weekend, and I have yet to see it.

I ventured down to Wally World on Saturday, not to mention I am sick as a dog, hoping to pick up my TV. This lady was very nice, even thought I could tell she didn't want to search for my TV, she did. Devastated I returned home with no TV. So, the next day was the last day it was "guaranteed" to be in by, surely it will come, right? HA!

So instead of driving the 15 minutes to Wally World just to be told they don't have my TV, I decided to call. Well, after being hung up on three times, I finally got a human being on the phone. I told the gentlemen what I was looking for and he proceeded to ask me if I had the tracking number, I replied no but gave him my name. He then puts me on "hold" but instead of actually pressing the hold button, he simply put the phone on the counter where I could heard every word in his little rant about how annoying it is when people call and ask him to do things. Right, it must stink working in retail and having people ask you to do things, hmm. (Note: it takes half a second to push a button and actually put someone on hold, it's so rude to allow someone to hear your awful conversation.) He then picks up the phone and says, "I'm gonna have to go into the system and look this up, it might take a few minutes..." Well, yes, I did call with the intention that you would look up my order and I knew it might take a few minutes... he then says, "I mean, like, it could take five minutes, I guess you could hold on-- or why don't you just call me back later." Umm, I'm sorry, but I just need to know if my TV is there or not before I drive 15 minutes to your store. At this point I was so blown away by his laziness and lack of work ethic that I really didn't want to be on the phone with him anymore. So after this I said fine, I will go into my mom's e-mail account, find the tracking number and track it myself.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people act so annoyed that you have asked them to do their job. I believe this young man was being paid to work in the department I needed help from. I don't think I was asking him to do something outrageous either. Here's a helpful hint. If someone "bothers" you at work, and you really don't want to do what they have asked, there are better ways of getting out of it. For example:

"I'm so sorry Mr./Ms. so-and-so, we are really backed up right now and my hands seem to be tied, if you could give me your name and number I would be happy to get back with you as soon as possible"

I mean, you should never avoid doing your job, but if you must, be nice about it, please?

I'm sorry for the rant, but bad customer service is my ultimate pet peeve!