Customer Disservice - Coffee Maker

Inez isn’t really into her job anymore. She’s in her 60s, wears a contracted company’s pre-approved, mandatory outfit on a daily basis, and like anybody with a badge around her neck that doesn’t legally back her use of a pepper spray/taser/attack dog/firearm/mustache… well, she’s just killing time until time kills her.

And it shows. For somebody who’s main responsibility is “stand at this register, push the buttons on this screen, and take money from people trying to pay for their spinach & oat-bran omelet,” it’s rare to see her there for an entire quarter hour. There’s a table to wipe in an unbusy café-seating area. Did anybody count Splenda today? What’s the respiration rate of the imported strawberries on the parfait bar, do we have a baseline on decomp? Inez’ll be on that stuff like mud on flaps, slaps on chaps, mustaches on your kicked asses.

God is good. God forbid that I HAVE TO WORK at Inez’s age. I hope to work at that age only out of desire to be out of the house and supplement my royalties from my forthcoming cookbook, “Eating Indoors; Eating Healthy When You’re Shit-Freaked About A Crumbling Society.” Pretty much every time I want to get through a line, I avoid Inez’s line. Sometimes there’s no other way, she’s the only one running reg at that point and there’s no “honor system” for dropping a dollar in a bucket for a cuppa.

Case in pants: This morning I was one of three people in the café selection area, among imported pastries (Safeway, I think), yogurt buffet, and coffee bar. Ah, that’s where I wanted to get to. I went half-caf, half-Bold. One of the carafes was making like a VP and empty inside, so I went to the backup carafe for the Bold, a freshly-brewed silo of hot, dark, capillary-tightening coffee. Gimme. Well, Inez saw me go to the backup carafe as I walked away from topping off my cup. Another person headed for Inez’s register as Inez FOCUSED INTENTLY ON THE EMPTY CARAFE CRISIS OF BUILDING 4, and, passing myself and yet another person (3 now)… walked at a very relaxed pace to the coffee area 20 feet from her register.

Inez strolled into action and took the empty carafe off its foundation, replacing it with the fresh one. Then she grabbed the two full, used coffee filters and the empty carafe and headed off to the back-stage area of the café. She turned her head in time to see three of us waiting at her register for her. Realizing that people were waiting, she did the right thing immediately, by saying “I’ll be right back.” Maybe she thought we were all salaried. HA HAAA! I’m not good enough to draw a salary. Just a gross payment by an external contracting company from which I must pay taxes. So I waited, on the clock, for Inez to be right back.

I watched as she returned with a fresh carafe and two fresh filters for the coffee-making, which was welcomed by the loud exhale of the woman waiting to pay for her three bacon, two egg, one toast breakfast, and another fellow with a hard-boiled egg, cottage cheese, and a donut. And me. With my one dollar of coffee. Now in line for 3 minutes. Another person awaited a breakfast burrito.

Inez’s triumphant refresh of the coffee brewing and serving station and shuffling return to her register earned her a purse-lipped smile, a sigh, and this, from me; “What happened with the coffee?”

Inez: “Oh, it was out.”

Me: “All of it?”

Inez: “No, the one in the middle.”

Me: (playing dumb) “But the other one had coffee in it and there was a back-up carafe ready to go?”

Inez: (sighing) “Uh, yes. I had to get stuff for the other coffee to make it.”

Me: (pause) “That’s lucky. Oh, okay. I didn’t know you had to make more coffee right away. I thought you were just ignoring us. Here ya go.”

Gave her my dollar and left Café Ambivalence and their English-as-first-mumbling employees (Latinos to the kitchen!) to sigh their way into a layoff.

I thought I’d just go to the automated coffee vendor, but it’s so inattentive and cold. And more importantly, there’s nothing to complain about there. I expect crap, and it never falls short. By my calculations, Inez’s coffee move cost the company about $25 in pay to waiting employees. Each carafe holds $30 worth of coffee if they bottom it out. So I waited on Inez to make her facility another $5 until she waited on me.

Jeez, what a waste of resources, huh?

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MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT, NPO

Mock Nerdle Tech

Somewhere in my DNA are a number of genes that are coded to produce moments of comedy. These moments aren’t always in the presence of others. I can’t really choose when it happens, usually. I feel it happen somewhere in my lymphatic system and then the connection completes and zap… comedy. Hoo-ray. It’s like trying to keep magnets apart. You can do it, but nature is making it happen in ways you are in no way emotionally ready to comprehend. And when these moments happen, I am at my most blissful, while somebody around me is usually suffering for it. In other words, if somebody gots theyself a goat, hoo-dawggy, I’m-a wanna git that goat! I did not choose Comedy. I chose football. But Comedy chose Me, and I have fewer shoulder aches from comedy, and almost never have to do windsprints for it.

And this kind of humor doesn’t always go well with the sensitivities, not to mention tight-ass’edness, of what I’ve come to see as “other people.” For example…

1) The FreeRange Tofurky Incident (involving a woman who was covered in cat hair-covered fleece)

2) The “Ice, No, but We Sell The Ingredients” Sale (retort to a woman who resembled a potato)

3) The “Is My Wife In Here?” Bartending Moment (wittiest comeback of my life followed that question)

4) Suggesting “Bring Your Child To Work” Day at Planned Parenthood (FIRED!)

But today was really a fantastic moment in my history of jerky humor.

At the vending machine at my new job, a guy’s purchase had hung-up on the way out of the rack. 6.5oz of $1 TrailMix held-back by the foil corner of the neighboring Oats & Honey granola bar. I suggested he either rock the machine, forearm-shiver the machine, or buy a cheaper item above or next to it, so as to “encourage” the release.

Me: Rock it a little. Like a baby.
Him: You can’t, it’s strapped to the wall.
Me: Bummer. Buy the granola bar, it’ll be cheaper than…
Him: … there we go… aw CRAP.

He bought ANOTHER $1 TrailMix, the one behind the first purchase. So the first one fell, while the one behind it HUNG UP ON THE GRANOLA BAR CORNER… Something about the definition of insanity.

So now he’s $2 in, and I say “Can you nudge it a little?”

Me: Can you nudge it a little?
Him: Why? It’s not gonna fall, it's stuck there Jeez. Well, somebody will get a free one I guess. (sulks away)

He turns the corner to leave and I shake my head, count to 5-IrishWhiskey, then blurt out “Oh awesome! FREE TRAIL MIX!”

He comes back around the corner with eyes wide, just as I start laughing and I say “Just kidding.” He wasn’t amused. I almost peed the inside of my pants with enough pee that it would show to the outside of my pants that very likely I had peed them through from the inside to the outside.

I don’t work or meet with this guy. But if I ever do, not matter what he tells other people about me, he’s the guy who paid $2 for crappy TrailMix, and didn’t have the balls to shoulder a 600-lb machine for what’s rightfully his.

All your TrailMix are ours.

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Customer Disservice - DirecTV Again

Like the title says, DirecTV has again proven itself to hold the highest standards of minimal effort in handling customer issues. Please get rid of DirecTV if you have it, or at least don't ever get it at your love bunker.

First it was the issue where a guy with almost an entire month of a court-mandated trade school course in Screwdriver Management put the dish practically in my neighbor's shower. Then, to have it moved, I would have to pay $50 (AMERICAN) because I "approved" the install by not supervising the installer's "work." Then I made the horrific mistake of - from what was implied in my call to their customer "care" office - not leg-sweeping and triangle-choking said installer to show my displeasure. So, hey, that was all my fault I guess.

Tonight we tried to order the Sandra Bullock-led movie for which she won an Oscar, "The Blind Side." DirecTV has a limited catalog of PayPerViews at any given time. TONS of movies that will show you the pink parts of people from bad families, but as for decent films? Yeah. No.

Like other times, I tried to order the movie on-line with a few button-pushes. Nothing. Tried it at another timeslot, and again, SQUAT. Went on-line to order and still got an e-quivalent of being slapped in the face with a turd-covered hand. Still NOTHING. So I had to call to tell 'em I NO LONGER WANT TO WATCH SANDRA BULLOCK PUT ON THE SOUTHERN ACCENT AND EMOTE, AND MY BILL WAS ALREADY CHARGED AND THE CAPITAL LETTERS ARE WHAT MY BRAIN IS FEELING WHEN I HAD TO CALL...

1) The bill was charged before the movie was active.
2) The phone number to talk whomever was gonna want to quit after I called was hard to find.
3) The system "was updating key records and was unavailable until tomorrow morning"

So to get the charges reversed... it was up to ME to call back. They couldn't write anything down, make a log of ways to HELP THE CUSTOMERS AND AGAIN MY BRAIN FEELS HOT.

So I told Megan at DirecTV... "Okay Megan, I'll reschedule my life because your supervisors haven't come up with a way to make a list of work items you can handle when the system comes back on-line as a courtesy to the people paying the bills there. Sound good? Oookaaaay byyy-eeeeeeeCLICK."

I know it's not Megan's fault. But unless Megan gets a verbal fart-slapping every once in a while, she'll never get her ass to mechanic's school and run her own diesel engine-rebuild shop the way she told her high school couns'lors.

DirecTV is NOT the bag of farts. It is the half-bag of Oreos & a half-pound of buttered broccoli-fueled farts themselves.

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Customer Disservice - Verizon Edition

Soooo... I got hooked up with Verizon for home phone, innernat, and a TV package through DirecTV which was a whole different bag of lazy. For some reason - likely a major miss on the part of the web-design team at Verizon - they aren't updating their billing system when they receive my money. In effect, their record that I see - "my bill" - shows I'm 2 months behind on payments, while my records and those of my bank show the payments having been processed every month.

WHILE I DON'T EVEN HAVE A FULL TIME JOB, in case any of you are lenders. I make payments, monkey face. We do money right!

SO, I finally track down a number to call in to Verizon with so that I can discuss why THEY are behind on my payments and YES that makes sense, and here's what happens:

1. The underpaid person I speak with tells me she has to transfer me to somebody who "handles my area," which I assume is Kirkland and NOT my "fundle." (3min)
2. The next guy I talk to is also likely underpaid, but makes up for it by being nearly unintelligible while speaking. I tell him what's wrong and he says he has to transfer me to a Billing Specialist. Unlike a medical, military, or culinary specialist, Billing Specialists eat lunch at their desks and have a fondness for books with Fabio on the cover. (7min)
3. The Billing Specialist, in the tone of whose voice I could hear an earring and a number of silk shirts, tells me... everyone now!... he HAS TO TRANSFER ME TO SOMEBODY WHO HANDLES MY AREA. Kirkland must have a special corral of friendly, caucasian-sounding reps on the ready at Verizon.
4. The Real Billing Specialist tells me that she shows my payments have all gone through, but the website version of my bill doesn't reflect it. She admits a few weird things going on in updates to the billing and website infrastructure (my word, not hers). Then tells me they have my payments, and that I should speak to the Web team, then tries to transfer me. Hey, I'm not paying you AND doing UAT, assholes.

So now... Verizon IS aware of this problem. It's going on 2 months now. And it's not fixed. While reflecting that customers are behind on payments. Some customers may very well be paying and paying, waiting to see the balance get zeroed. BUT IT WON'T, and if Verizon is aware of this and not doing anything about it, HELLO LAWSUIT. It's 2 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars = Gross Negligence.

So there you go. Verizon isn't showing a lot of wherewithall in getting their shit together to make it easy to deal with them. Ideally, the best customer service is never having to contact customer service. So if you can avoid 'em, stay away from Verizon until they get a few dorks off their chairs and on to fixing the billing updates.

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On Getting Older

While I've been rising before 6:30 every morning since last Friday, OOOOH!, I have been getting to sleep later than I ought to. Not tonight, friend. I'll be off to bed by 9:30pm because my son has exactly NO SENSE of time, nor that he should sleep more than 107minutes at a stretch.

And before my carriage takes to slumber 'pon sheets of Voltron so brave, I will have excitedly brushed with a BRAND NEW TOOTH'S BRUSH! I can't tell you how excited I am about it, because I'm not that big of a nerd.

Colgate 360 Deep Clean!

But you can tell, huh? Excitement? Nerd? Tongue Brush? Yes, Yes, and You Bet Your Clean, Gluten-Free Ass.

OF COURSE a review will follow! Stay riveted...

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Customer Disservice Chronicles, No. 8

The Following Letter has been sent to Costco Wholesale Headquarters. News updates as warranted.

July 21, 2009

RE: Customer Service at
Costco Wholesale
13463 Washington Boulevard
Marina del Rey CA 90292


I visited the above-noted Costco store twice in the past week. In our first visit, my wife and I re-upped our membership dues, even though we shop less-frequently at Costco. But throughout the year, yes, the savings do come back to us, so it’s worth it! We’ve always had good experiences with Costco. Which is why today’s interaction with some employees threw me off a bit.

I arrived prior to 10a.m., which I thought was late for Costco to open, but I’m rarely shopping there at that hour so I don’t know the times well. As the doors lifted we were told this was the time only for “Executive Members.” There were perhaps 100 people there. I can’t imagine a large number of shoppers stayed away due to not being “Executive Members,” but instead were at work to earn money to spend at places like Costco. I didn’t check the hours on-line because I wasn’t near a computer, but also because 10a.m. seems like a reasonable hour to shop.

I was there to drop off a prescription for contacts. That’s all. I wasn’t allowed in either side, not the entrance nor the Member Services area near the exit. The only explanations were “Executive Members only!” and when I asked if I could drop the Rx off and pick it up later, the woman shook her head and said “Nope, sorry.” My time was shot, basically. I wasn’t going to wait an hour just to hand somebody a piece of paper. Was the Optical Department open? I will never know. I got a “Nope, sorry” and she turned to talk to somebody else. Should I come back another time? When is good for you? Are you looking for people who appreciate their jobs?

Perhaps I can have an explanation of why a Gold Star member has to wait until 11a.m? I’m hoping that the Executive Members are treated to special events inside, prior to 11a.m. Free coffee and a scone bar, everybody loves free food. Maybe a private concert by adult-contemporary legend Kenny Loggins, or perhaps a relaxing massage as they stroll the aisles in beautiful, Executive Membership Fee Paid-for Silence. No kids. No screaming. Nobody walking away from their cart which they’ve left blocking the middle of a main aisle while pondering the 3lb. bag of almonds (really a good deal, I have to admit) or make small-talk over a sample of a taquito (they have no intention of buying the taquitos).

Is this the utopian shopping experience I am missing?

I don’t really care. I just wanted to hand somebody my contact prescription and get it later, way out of my normal travel route. And what I left with was a “Nope, sorry.” Next time I want to be treated like my presence is pointless, I’ll do it someplace without a membership fee.

So I’m speaking for at least some of the Gold Star riff-raff when I say that I don’t mind paying my fee for the Savings I get from Costco, but perhaps some of the fee should be diverted to a class for “How to talk to Customers without coming off like you can’t be replAced”-types. Nobody’s perfect. But the effort counts.

Sincerely,

Geoff Lott