A Taste of the Other Side

So, not all of the stories about Customer Service involve being on the worker side of the issue. Sometimes, stuff happens when you deal with someone else on that end, and it ends up being just as good as some of the customers we talk to. I just have to wonder where some of these people come from. Well, actually, India is the typical response there.

Here's one situation that I just laughed at afterwards. I was minding my own business one afternoon waiting for the microwave to 'ping', when I got a call from a survey company. I was asked if I was the man of the house, and since the IRS seems to think so, I said yes. I thinking I did good that survery. Was that it? Nope, just the beginning.

It was concerning talk radio stations in my area here, and the very first question was "How often do you listen to talk radio? Always, sometimes, or never." Well, I have a radio for music, so I said never.

She asks me if I've heard of talk radio stations in my area. I mutter around a moment to see if I can think of anything and I remembered NPR. Someone I know listens to it, but it's apparently such a vital piece of info, I don't remember who.

The kicker was when she asked me which of the following talk radio programs I listened to in the last week! Apparently, "never" wasn't a good enough response to actually circumvent this question. She got to the first one before my shock wore off, and I reminded her that when I said never, I actually meant never. I said she can not bother with her little list of programs before I haven't listened to any of them.

After all, I seriously doubt my flipping back and forth between two Christian stations would come anywhere constituting a talk program I might have caught in between getting annoyed with all the chatter on my radio and looking for more music.

Now one might wonder if there was the clink of a bottle in the background, but I honestly wouldn't have been able to hear it over the sitar.

But more of a kicker to something like that is when you can tell the worker how to do their job. And while this is occasionally on common knowledge stuff, we had a time where we knew how to do something a little more rare just because we'd seen them mill back and forth on it before.

We were at a Wal-Mart once getting a gift for a baby shower. Well, it was the Queen getting the gift, and I was tagging along, since clearly the geek would not pick a good gift for a baby (apparently, there aren't a wealth of affordable baby laptops). Well, to make sure we and the recipient were covered, we asked the cashier for a gift receipt.

Surely you've gotten at least one of these little jewels before. It's a valid receipt for that store but doesn't display the price, so only when the gift's recipient decides to take it back, do they find out how little you really spent on them. But on the bright side, they can get back the full five bucks you forked over instead of the clearance price of two-fifty that got marked down to before the shower.

No, I'm kidding. We're not that cheap on gifts...usually.

Anyway, we got to the register and asked for a gift receipt. The cashier was completely clueless, and immediately called over the CSM. While the CSM was coming, we mentioned tht they needed to hit the 'S' key (I think it was), but the cashier wasn't listening. The CSM arrived, heard the situation, and stared at the register. We commented again on that 'S' key, but they weren't hearing any of that nonsense.

They screwed it up a couple of times before they gave up and called yet someone else over. Next person arrives and also stares at the register. We mention again about this pesky 'S' key, and that third person shrugged and opted to try it. What do you know? It printed the regular receipt plus the gift receipt.

The cashier was pissed. I guess customers are NOT supposed to know more than the employees. Whoops.

And finally, another perennial favorite that is brought up quite often, especially when we hit the restaurant it happened at. The thing is there's a little backstory that must be told in order to fully "get" it.

The Queen Mother has a level of notoriety for cleaning up the dinner table. Now, this is a good thing, for the most part. She'll bus the plates and silverware and glasses and she can be very thorough with this. The down side is that she can be too thorough requiring you to guard your plate if she should be bussing the table to make sure she doesn't bus your plate full of food out from under you.

So we're at this Mexican restaurant called Arizona where our families variously eat on occasion. Well, on this occasion, the story of the Queen Mother and her obsessive table bussing came up, and we all had a good laugh over it. As we're laughing about this, who should show up, but the waitress, who spoke enough English to be able to take orders, and was clearly very new.

What does this girl do? She starts to take the Queen Mother's plate. The Queen Mother says she isn't finished yet.

This was too much to bear, and The Queen cracks up laughing. In moments, the whole table is busting with laughter over this very coincidental action on the part of the unsuspecting, but well meaning, waitress.

Well, unfortunately, the inside joke was completely lost on the waitress who began to cry as she rushed off. We never saw her again.