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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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

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

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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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad
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MC, HOST, SEATTLE, HOSTING, CORPORATE, EVENTS, NPO, GEOFF, LOTT, PUGET SOUND

Top 10 Reasons You're Not Working

1. It's like 8:45 at night. Where are you working, Necrocomicon's Comics & Cards?
2. You're reading this while dorkatrons steal Magic: The Gathering sets.
3. F*cking short-sighted manager, man. Dude couldn't see how you work better when you're, like, "lifted."
4. Because you told some old bag that you didn't sell ice, but if she bought some water and hit the walk-in for 3 hours, she could Do It Herse'f.
5. HAVE YOU NOT USED AN iPAD YET? HOLY CRAP.
6. That super hot guy in application design just walked by and you think he smelled your toot and even though you know you shouldn't have eaten all that broccoli it's ALIVE and now you're freaking out and can't work, you just CA'... NOT.
7. Not Facebook, nope, that's not it so don't even check the other Firefox tab.
8. Watchin' Geoff Lott tear it up on Y'allTube. Dude's got mad MC skillz. No.. SQEELZ
9. Getting the last of your papers in order for support of your thesis, "Geoff Lott's Comedy As Metaphor Of Seattle's Frustration With Lack Of Courtesies To Hosts At Restaurants."
10. It's this economy, man. Got that taco truck converted to the first-ever Sushi-grade Chicken van and pfft, everyone got tight on you.

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Take Me Home