This is a tale of customer service woe.
I frequent a local gas station/food dispensary in the
area where I live (I don’t want to name names, but the first part is a word
that means “Get” and the second part is a word that means “Go”. And early this
week I had an unfortunate experience with one.
To be frank—this is unusual. I’ve been going to this
chain for years and have had hardly any problems, aside from delicious
sandwiches that are way too expensive. Although we’ve recently tried to eat a
late-night meal there once and ended up having to have both of our orders fixed
(they forgot my French fries and they forgot my wife’s chicken salad) but I was
more than willing to chalk that up to the fact that one poor woman was
preparing what I estimated to be six thousand orders in twenty minutes. It
happens.
On Tuesday of this past week, my wife and I went to a
concert. We are way too old for concerts, but we did it anyway and it was
fun—but it was also hot and sweaty and gross and crowded and the room was probably
25% oxycontin. So when we left—had we been able to make it to the bar, which is
a questionable endeavor, we really didn’t want to pay eight bucks for a bottle
of water—I was incredibly thirsty.
Fast forward a few miles down the road and we stop at the
gas station slash food dispensary. All I wanted was a drink. Specifically a
fountain drink, because I find those to be more refreshing. It’s a simple task,
but one that ended up deviling me for a very desperate five minutes.
First, I went to grab a large cup. Nope! They were
completely out of large cups. Oh well, I figured, it happens, I’ll settle for a
medium. So I look at the Diet Pepsi—my drink of choice—and see that it is out
of order. Oh no! But, luckily, they had two
such buttons, and the other one seemed to work fine. So I filled my medium cup
up and went to grab a straw—no straws! The only straws they had were the kind
intended for slushies, with an awkward little fake spoon at one end that
increases the difficulty of using it as an actual straw. Well, I thought, this
isn’t great, but I am that. Thirsty.
I’ll power through.
I took a quick sip and—of course!—it was bitter and flat.
They forgot the special secret fountain pop syrup.
Now, the logical part of me would have dumped it and got
another fountain drink and settled for, say, Diet Dr. Pepper or something
similar. But at this point, the relatively simple task of getting a
drink—stretched out to a Kaizan-level three steps—failed in some fashion in
each of those steps. It was maddening. It was dump-the-soda-and-storm-out
maddening, although my wife wisely told me to go get a regular bottled drink
because she didn’t want to hear me bitch about being thirsty the rest of the
way home. Even at this point, the clerk double-charged me and I had to have it
corrected. At this point I figured if I hung around any longer I’d get hit with
a plague of locusts or a pirate would hand me the black spot or something, so I
just didn’t complain and left.
I mean, I get it—it was the day after Labor Day, and it
was late at night; the C Team was on their way home and they had to drag in the
Z Team and pump them full of amphetamines. But it barely registered the minimal
amount of standards of a retail transaction.
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