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Thank Me, Come Again
by C.L. Halvorson
My number one pet peeve
is lack of customer service. Boy was I born in the wrong decade. Oh,
it started out great. Life threw little tastes of merchants that
believed they should make certain their customers returned to trade
again.
I never saw our parents
pump their own gasoline until the 1980s. Every week we’d pull the
family car into the local Phillips 66, running over the black hose that
made that delightful “ding, ding” to announce our arrival. This
would be quickly followed by two eager beavers running out to our
vehicle. The first would diligently begin checking the air pressure in
our tires, while the other approached the driver’s window.
“What’ll it be, sir?”
the attendant would ask cheerily.
“Fill ‘er up!” Daddy
would reply.
Not only would they
“fill ‘er up” but they would wash the windows, check under the hood and
let us know if the oil or anything else needed our attention. They’d
make sure our tires had the proper amount of air to keep us and other
motorists safe.
When they were done my
sisters and I each would gratefully receive a piece of bubble gum. And
sometimes, yes sometimes, they offered Mama and Daddy free dishes and
glassware. All of our dinnerware came from the Phillips 66. All this
service and freebies besides for the low, low price of only thirty-nine
cents per gallon!
Today, my husband and I
pay nearly three dollars per gallon for gasoline. We have to pump it
ourselves. Some merchants still supply the buckets that hang off a post
with water and a squeegee to clean your own windshield. With a little
luck the squeegee is still there and no one’s dumped their coffee in the
water.
If we want to check our
tire pressure, we have to drive around to the side of the building and
spend another fifty cents to use the air machine. No one checks our oil
and other fluids. That’s done every three thousand miles at the Jiffy
Lube. Our pickup truck could be a ticking time bomb at 2,985 miles but
we’d never know it. There are no dish give-a-ways.
And now, they don’t
even want to personally take your money! The clerks are way to busy to
perform such a meaningless task anyway. What with making out with their
boyfriends and talking to their friends on the phone, how could we
expect them to make time to collect our money? Stations encourage
consumers to pay with their credit card at the pump. Of course, the
pump is always out of receipt paper so we drive off hoping they don’t
mistake us for a thief and send a posse after us.
Grocery stores are the
absolute worst offenders these days. I remember a time when you could
actually have a small grocery order delivered to your house! I
realize that the city is much bigger today and it makes home delivery
impossible. Especially with soaring gas prices. Anyway the delivery
boys are too busy running from the posse since the pump was out of
receipt paper again.
Home delivery being a
thing of the past, I would settle for them taking them as far as say, my
car. I don’t know for certain when carrying your own groceries to your
vehicle started, but I blame WalMart. Since WalMart opened their
Supercenters the grocery industry has gone to pot.
I have lived most of my
life in Texas, but for five years I lived in New York. My first trip to
a New York grocery store was a culture shock. Oh, the actual selecting
of my items went well enough. The shock came at the checkout. The
clerk didn’t say one word to me until she finished ringing everything up
then she said merely, “$184.12”. Now, in fairness, this happens in
Texas too, but manners are a discussion for another time.
I wrote the young lady
a check noting the absence of a bag person. I figured it being the
middle of the day in the middle of the week the checkers bagged the
groceries themselves. But she just stood there while I made out my
check, leaving my purchases on the counter. I handed her my payment and
waited. She still made no move to bag my items. She just looked at me
impatiently.
“Umm,” I began. “Do
they bag themselves?” I’m a master at witty phrases like that.
“Huh?” came her
befuddled reply.
“My groceries. Aren’t
you going to bag them?”
“Why should I bag
them? They’re not my groceries.”
My jaw dropped.
“You mean I bag my own
groceries?” I asked awestruck.
“Of course.”
A line was forming
behind me and I didn’t want to look like the ignorant red neck most New
Yorkers believe southerners to be, so I bagged my own groceries
hurriedly and left the store. In the entire five years we lived there
we only had our groceries bagged by an employee once.
It seems the bag boy –
yes, they actually employee bag persons, what they do all day I haven’t
a clue – was in love with the checkout girl. So in an effort to be near
her he actually—wait for it – bagged groceries! Unfortunately
for me, when I went back two weeks later the bag boy had found a new
object for his affection and I was back to bagging my own again.
Now, I could live with
no home delivery, bagging my own groceries and carrying them to the car
myself. But some genius has invented what will surely be the downfall
of Western civilization. I am speaking, of course, of the Self
Checkout. The Self Checkout is surely the first sign of the Apocalypse.
So we bag our own,
carry them to our car ourselves and now they want us to ring up the
order ourselves! Of course, they do not trust lowly consumers
to run everything they have in their buggy over the scanner. Therefore,
they appoint an employee to reign on a dais to watch over us mere
mortals like a god from ancient myth. Waiting to smite us with
thunderbolts should we forget we have the jumbo economy size toilet
paper on the rack under the basket.
But
the Goddess of Groceries is not there to take your money. Oh no!
This monstrous machine takes credit cards and checks along with paper
money and coins. We have become employees of the supermarket and
we don’t even get the Employee Discount. Next I expect they will
have us round up all the shopping carts that are in the parking lot.
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