Shouldn't I be getting better service with unemployment so high?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Not enough for a pit, but it seems like lately I’ve been getting terrible customer service. Not via telephone customer service (I KNOW!), but in person.

For instance, on Friday we were out for dinner at a relatively nice place and I accidentally spilled a glass of water on Mr. Boozilu. He jumped up, I collected napkins to give to him, etc. Several waiters and the manager strolled by, glanced at our table, and kept going. No one stopped to see if we needed help. And the place was not very busy.

I understand slow service or not enough employees due to cutbacks, but this is different.

I know there are more; this is just the most recent happening.

2

Do you understand how many times people use the old worn out phrase with unemployment so high you should essentially be licking parts of me for a dime?

3

On one hand, it wasn’t exactly excusable that they didn’t get you something to clean it up.

On the other hand, your mentality is disturbing.

4

I just don’t understand why some people; servants, waiters, other persons who work in service industries, cannot always attend to my needs immediately.

They can’t possibly have anything else to do. And with unemployment so high they shoud be thankful for that minimum wage job. Because they probably have two jobs anyway.

5

It depends on the job. What’s the difference between unemployment comp and a bus boy’s salary?

Businesses are definately taking advantage of their employees big time. This means the employee is going to be more stressed and less courteous.

The real problem is once businesses get used to doing with less employees when times get better, they won’t hire more, they’ll just make do with the higher profits.

On the flip side there probably was a lot of dead wood that got weeded out during this recession.

6

It wouldn’t kill one of the passing people to say stop and say “Here are some extra napkins and I will by right back to take care of it. Thanks for your patience.”

I don’t think it has anything to do with unemployment, just bad customer service.

7

And prejudging someone as an asshole because they expect service people to do their job and stop at tables makes you better, how?

I’ve never been in a restaurant where the staff will walk by, seeing we need help, and not offer something. To do so would mean they wouldn’t get tipped.

8

You know it’s weird, I read these news articles about laid off software engineers and construction workers who say they can’t even get a job at McDonald’s. Yet, every time I go to Wal-Mart I see a “We’re Hiring Sign” and I’d say 60-70% of the fast food joints around here always have hiring signs out.

I understand I’m only in a small part of the country, but around here at least someone working a low paying (potentially minimum wage) retail/customer service/food service job can essentially change employers at will (not to anything better, but they can easily find a job doing what they’re doing now.)

9

Plenty of jobs for me these days (I only work in ‘service’), as there always have been. Fall is prime hiring time as all the college students quit to go back to school. I think the fact that I’m still attractive and relatively young has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve rarely been turned down for a job I’ve bothered to apply for… and most of my jobs have come about because an acquaintance who worked there knew they were hiring and recommended me, or because the proprietor of an establishment I frequent invited me to work there.

It’s not a bad way to make a living. I don’t take much bullshit, stress doesn’t come home with me, and I don’t work for less that $10 per hour.

10

Huh? When did they call him an asshole? :confused:

11

Often low paying employers are reluctant to hire someone they perceive as being “above” the job even if the applicant is willing.

Also(at least in California), someone on unemployment cannot be required to take a job at below their previous pay rate. Taking a low paying job rests that to the lower rate.

12

hmmmm…I get the OP’s point.

My husband comes home from his (lamentably low paying) job and tells me stories about his co-workers sometimes. They are often tales of flakes or out and out idiocy. They’d be much more amusing if I hadn’t applied for similar jobs upon getting laid off and not been hired. I do find myself thinking if I had this/that job I would be doing a better job of it.

Unless I am expected to lick parts of people…that’s not cool.

13

In my family, we were all relieved when my boyfriend finally landed his minimum wage job recently. Though thankfully we were getting by on my income, it definitely helps to have some extra money coming in at last. Just the other day he mentioned to me that he has been making an extra effort to be nice to customers because he is so grateful to be working again.
(He’s also trying to work hard in the hopes that it may at some point pay off with a promotion…I know it’s old-fashioned but we do believe in the concept of moving up in the world through hard work)

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that employees should have a good attitude and be grateful to have a paycheck nowadays when I know plenty of people who have struggled even to find a minimum wage job. Hearing about people struggling definitely helps me put my complaints about my relatively stable and relatively good-paying job in perspective.

14

I was in a supposedly “nice” restaurant where the waiter spilled a small amount of water (maybe a dollar-coin spot) on my back, looked at it, and just walked away. Yeah, we got the manager on that one.

Anyway, it is possible that the OP and husband had concealed the scope of the issue enough that no one thought they required help. I’m not a fan of being hovered over so I wouldn’t think twice about asking for assistance in that case.

15

How about fast food places where you give your order and the order-taker patiently asks the same questions you just told 'em?

“Hello, may I take your order?”

“Yes; I’d like, for inside, a medium coffee, milk and 1 sugar, a BLT, and a cranberry muffin, please.”

Order Taker: “You want a medium coffee?”

“Yes; with milk and 1 sugar, please.”

O.T. : “You want a BLT?”

“Yes, please.”

O.T. : “And a muffin?”

“A cranberry muffin, please.”

O.T. : “Will that be for here or to go?”

“That’s for here, yes.”

Then they tell me the price, say, $6.37, and go in to a trance if I give them a ten dollar bill, two quarters and two pennies.

Then they go to pour coffee for the person three customers ahead of me in line. Or help whoever is on the drive-through window to put orders together there.

I know it’s not easy to keep everything in one’s head; I know when you’re starting out, you may not hear anything other than the last part of the order that registered in your mind; I know you also have to make more coffee, make hash browns, sell / rent out newspapers, and so on.

“Customer service”, to me, would be that you acknowledge what is going on so I don’t feel abandoned, especially when I am standing there watching my items come up to sit
under the heat lamp (the BLT) or languish, rapidly cooling, in front of the coffee machine.

And while I am on this rant, I understand the staff turnover is about 300% per annum, or better - but if I am going to help train your new staff, I’d like a discount or something.
Or, as has happened recently, I’ll just go somewhere else - I can’t handle having to watch you closely so as to correct your obvious mistakes. Can’t you tell that the order
should have been less than $10, not $14.94??

And isn’t there some way to control the flies? (Or stand back, and hand me a dish towel,
or a flyswatter … I have ire to burn off:)

And yes - at one time I worked in a fast food restaurant - a local chain - using the menu
(which had lovely colour photos) as a guide as to how to assemble the sandwiches. And
within 2-3 days at the most, I was ok without a guide:) Back in those days, we counted change back into the customer’s hand. <— dating myself, here, eh?

Let’s not go where the counter help handles money, then handles the food. I work where we have to pay attention to infectious diseases, and the careless way with food handling give me considerable pause.

Thank you for this unscheduled get-it-off-my-chest. Your patience is appreciated.

an seanchai

16

They are confirming your order, so you can’t rant back and say “You idiot I ordered the McFatty with extra chese, not the BLT!”

If they didn’t repeat it back to confirm and got it wrong would you give them a pat on the back for not wasting your time by repeating your order back to you? I’m thinking not.

17

I got some of the same at my local Wendy’s the other day, but the biggest problem I had was that I’d get two words out and she’d be talking over the top of me.

I’d like a Chicken Club Com…
“You want a Chicken Club Combo?”
Yes, Small with a Co…
“Do you want it small, medium or large?”
As I said, I’d like it small with a…
“What do you want to drink?”
I’d like a co…
“Do you want a coke?”
Yes, I’d…
“So a small chicken club combo with a coke? Is that everything”
Ye…
“That will be $n.nn”

(and yes I did actually say this)
You know, perhaps you should shut the fuck up once in a while and not talk over the top of me every time I start to say something.

dead silence.

No, no one messed with my order, I looked it over carefully. I know the manager listens in to the drive-through at that place and heard me.

18

I guess it depends on the job. My daughter was walking through the aviary room at the zoo recently (with a sparse collection of birds - a toucan, a parrot, a few ducks, and a smattering of sandpipers and such).
A rose-breasted something glided out of a tree, landing directly onto her head, and of course she freaked out! Was immediately surrounded by zoo people who were very calm, soothing, and caring - to the bird, LOL! :stuck_out_tongue:

19

I enjoyed your post, seanchai, but was disheartened to see by your profile that you live in Canada. I had kinda hoped this sort of …service… hadn’t crept north.

20

It works the other way around too, though. I worked at Wal-Mart during the summer while I was in college, and we did an experiment a couple of Sundays…

When a customer would call, it would either be answered by Customer service, or for some reason the fitting room which also could redirect calls to other departments, and everyone who worked in the clothing departments took turns being the person stuck answering the phone at the fitting room. We noticed that most calls on Sunday were to ask the hours, so we decided to answer the phones “Hi, you’ve reached Wal-Mart. Our hours today are _ to __. How may I direct your call?”

Despite giving the hours, we still had 60% of callers ask us what the hours were. Not anything like “could you repeat the hours? I didn’t catch them” but “what are your hours?” as if they were never mentioned at all.