Lousy Service

Over our weekend, Scott and I experienced three examples of piss-poor customer service. Don't get me wrong... I don't always go out of my way to make people happy... but at least I generally do what's expected.

On Tuesday at J.C. Penney, I had such a bad experience that I was bracing myself to return all $75 worth of clothes I had just bought and never come back. We had the misfortune of having some woman with 2" hot pink nails waiting on us when we checked out. (her name is Deborah... watch out for her) I had originally picked up this really cute sweater that I thought was on the $10.19 clearance rack. It turns out it was on sale, but for $29.99. I decided it wasn't that cute, so I asked her to take it off the purchase. Well, she took off a $16 shirt instead. With much attitude. We didn't want to have to deal with Deborah again, so we went over to another register. Where we waited at least 3-5 minutes for the second cashier to finish her personal conversation with another girl before she realized we were waiting. At least she was competant and able to refund the difference.

Yesterday, we thought it would be fun to hit the Prime Time Cafe for lunch while we were in MGM would be a good thing. So I called Disney reservations and spoke to a super-friendly gal who sounded a little like she was reading off of a script. She checked for lunch, and told me there was nothing available. She also checked for dinner. Still nothing. So when we got to the park, we decided to check with the podium to see if they were really that booked. Well, there was no availability... because the restaurant is being refurbished!!! WTF?

And finally, we stopped at Publix to do some grocery shopping on the way home last night. (by the way, we're shopping at Publix now because they are so much more customer service oriented than wal mart. keep this in mind as we go on) We found some good stuff on the clearance rack at the front of the store, including a pack of the flea stuff that we prefer to use on our cats. As we were checking out, the cashier scanned the flea stuff and it came up with a "not for sale" error. She looked at me and told me that the computer said it wasn't for sale. I just shrugged and made the "I don't know" face. She put it to the side and continued checking the rest of the groceries. She made sure to tell me at least once more that there was some kind of error there, clearly hoping I'd say "nevermind...I don't want it that bad." But it was marked down to $2.50, which is about half off. I wasn't leaving without it. Besides, even the wal mart cashiers have a dump SKU that they can use when the barcode doesn't work. She ended up having to get the girl from customer service come over to process it for her.

These are three businesses where I have traditionally been treated very well. Who is hiring all of the friendly, competant people nowadays? When I go into wal mart after midnight, I expect the rude woman at the register to slam my eggs into a bag. I guess I just expect more from stores that aren't wal mart.