Customer service just not what it used to be... and we're to blame!

I headed home last Friday, looking forward to a quiet evening and a weekend on the links. Before I got all the way there, I decided to veer off path and pick up some provisions at the local Price Chopper. A half-dozen or so items found their way into my basket as I wandered through the store. Satisfied I had everything I wanted, I headed over to the front end checkout stands.

When I made it to the end of the aisle, I saw almost thirty people waiting in line - at two cashes!

That's right - there were two cashiers dealing with the hoards of people stopping by to pick up dinner on their way home from work. Based on my experience working in a grocery store in the early 1990's, this is "prime time" for weekdays. If there is a time on a quiet Monday or Tuesday where there should be a few more staff on hand, it typically is some time between 4pm and 7pm. It's even more critical on a Friday, especially if it's a Friday that comes before a long weekend.

I waited about fifteen minutes to make it to the front of the line and was slowly becoming irritated about how slow the so-called express line was moving. Just before my turn came, the lady in front of me decided to say something and told the cashier how ridiculous it was that they only had two people checking people out at that time of the day. Obviously oblivious to what was going on, the cashier stated that they always have three cashiers working at any time and they add additional help only when lines get to a certain length. I couldn't help but point out that there were only two cashiers and the "certain length" had at least doubled in the time I had stood there waiting.

Undaunted, the cashier told the woman there was nothing she could do about it and started scanning my items. No thanks for the outgoing customer and no hello for me... no apologies were to be had for the inconvenience of being held up due to some unforeseen circumstance.

Now I know, someone might be tempted to point out to me that I was shopping at Price Chopper, the lower price or "discount" brand of Sobeys store. That someone might try to tell me that I decided to sacrifice service for better prices. They might be right to a point - my Dempsters 100% whole wheat bread sells there for $1.89 instead of $2.39 at the 100,000+ square foot store down the road - but even if I were to expect a somewhat lower quality of service at the "discount" store, in this case, Price Chopper's wasn't living up to its lower standards! And nobody seemed to care!

This wasn't the first time I came across sub-standard service at this particular store. On three separate occasions early this year I checked out the expiration dates on a squeezable Heilmann's mayonnaise bottle. The first time I actually wanted to buy some and had to dig through the bottles on the shelf to find one that hadn't yet expired. Knowing that using expired mayonnaise is akin to playing Russian roulette, I wandered around for five or ten minutes to find an employee. Once I found what appeared to be a grocery clerk, I pointed out the problem and was promptly told that this was a known problem (!) that they had been trying to address for some time. I was assured that a manager would be notified and that they would most likely get this cleared up sooner than later.

The next two times I visited the store I checked the same aisle out. Both times I had found expired jars of mayonnaise! On the third visit I ended up speaking to the same person I had talked to the second time around, and this time she shared tales of exasperation. She was painfully aware of the problem but didn't want to say too much about it on too many occasions to management for fear of being labelled as a complainer. I offered to tear a strip of the guy for her, but of course, he wasn't around. No management ever seems to be around at that store.

My point? Waiting in line at a cash is one thing. Knowingly selling merchandise beyond its expiration date is a public health issue. I suppose I could have called the City of Ottawa to see if they have a mayonnaise police squad, but I gave up, hoping that anybody looking to pick up perishable food would have enough common sense to check out the dates on the packaging.

I've done my part.

In an era where profit seems to trump client satisfaction and the bottom line outweighs any perceived need to "go the extra mile" for someone, I can't help but look at some people I know who worked in retail forty or fifty years ago. This was a time where working for Ogilvy's or Simpsons-Sears was seen as a having a reputable job. People back then took pride in their work and retailers guaranteed satisfaction, often going that extra mile to make sure that customer would come back again and again.

That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Companies like BCE or Rogers contract customer service call centre work to some foreign country like India, sacrificing quality of service in order to make a few more dollars at the end of the year. That we sometimes cannot understand what these people on the other end of the line are saying seems to be irrelevant... as long as the shareholders are happy with the quarterly results, right?

Companies like Imperial Oil or Petro Canada all love to claim they're not gouging people at the pumps while recording record profits. Who cares if customers are happy if the shareholders see yet another record earnings report?!

Companies like TD Canada Trust and BMO (didn't we once call them Bank of Montreal?) hike fees indiscriminately and expect people to believe that with skyrocketing costs service will improve... sure, banks are getting "prettier" recently, but who cares if a charitable organization has seen its fees go up ten-fold... provided that profits are at record levels, securing the board members' positions because again, happy shareholders keep the heat of the senior administrators. Besides, where else can the public put its money?!

"Screw everybody" seems to be the motto that has replaced "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back". Why? Shareholders drive companies now, not customers... Why? Because we've let them. What to do about that, I have no idea. I'll keep talking to store managers about poisonous mayonnaise and griping to supervisors when it takes me 62 minutes to get my new PVR activated by some guy in India.

Will it make any difference? Probably not. We've become such a complacent society... but that's a post for another day.