I’m sure you’ve experienced it too: the near impossibility of finding good, efficient service these days . . . anywhere. The concept barely even seems to exist any longer.

What brought this to mind recently was an issue I’ve been having lately with muffins. Well, actually the issue is with the market. No, that’s not quite true either; it’s with Instacart, the service that’s supposed to do your shopping for you. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes it falls short. And that’s because it’s all done by people. And people are fallible. And so often, they just don’t seem to try.

Let me give you a little background. I have mobility issues that make it very difficult for me to do a lot of walking, or to reach things on high shelves. So grocery shopping is not a good option for me. But by placing my weekly order online, my market — which contracts with Instacart to do the actual selection of the items — has my groceries selected, bagged, and ready for pickup at the predetermined time. Great, right? Well . . . mostly.

Now, I love corn muffins. I eat smaller meals — snacks, really — during the day, and one of those snacks is usually a corn muffin and some fruit. My market’s bakery muffins are really good, so I order two packages each week (four muffins per pack). But lately, for reasons I cannot fathom, the people at Instacart seem unable to understand that I really want eight muffins at a time, and I’ve only been getting four. And it only happens with the damned muffins! I can order multiples of other things, and it’s no problem. It’s just the freakin’ muffins!!!!!

Now, they’ve only charged me for the one pack, but that’s not the point. The point is, they’re short-changing me on my blasted muffins. So when I get their follow-up email asking me how they did this week, I tell them I’m missing a pack of muffins. But there’s no online option to explain that they didn’t over-charge me, so I get a reply that they have credited my account for the price of a pack of friggin’ muffins. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!! You don’t owe me any money. It’s a service issue. Your employees can’t follow instructions. I just want my stinkin’ muffins, please!

Anyway, you get my point about the muffins. But it’s not just that — it’s everywhere. Have you tried to find a full-service gas station lately? You know, the kind that used to check under the hood, add air to your tires, and wash your windshield? They may be around, but if so, they’re few and far between.

And the last time I went shopping in a department store, it took me ten minutes to locate a sales clerk to take my money; they all seemed to have gone on a break at the same time. I suppose if I’d tried to shoplift something, they’d have come out of the woodwork, but I thought better of that.

And what about telephone customer service reps? I won’t even go into the frustration of trying to work through the voice mail to reach an actual human being. But if you’re lucky enough to finally hear a non-mechanical voice, that’s when the real fun begins. Because this person — for some reason, usually a male — is obviously speaking to you from a faraway land, where English is a second or third language, and where this outsourced customer service rep has no idea of the needs or expectations of the average American customer. And he’s reading from a script, with strict instructions that any unscripted questions are to be answered in one way, and one way only: “Yes, I’m very sorry about that.” Sometimes they’ll ad lib and say, “Yes, I do apologize for that.” I always wonder if that’s a firing offense.

These folks from the other side of the globe do have one advantage over many of our American service reps, however: they’re much more polite. Probably because, although they’re working for minimum wage, they’re just happy to have jobs. So be nice. If you think you’re frustrated, imagine how they feel when they look at their paychecks at the end of a week during which their only human contact has been with some self-entitled American screaming at them, “But that’s not what I asked you!”

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So how do we light a fire under the thousands of people working in what are supposed to be service industries? Maybe by paying them a living wage? Offering other incentives, more pleasant surroundings, and — here’s a novel idea — a little respect? It might at least be a start in the right direction. It could work in the U.S. as well.

And I, for one, would love to hear them be able to give me actual answers to my questions . . . answers other than “I do apologize for that.”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/3/23