Over the holiday weekend my fun-loving family of five; myself, the husband and the three boys found ourselves out and about around the town. We ultimately were headed to a seconds Christmas at my mother-in-law's, but it's not an uncommon sight on a weekend for all 5 of us to go off and do errands together on a weekend to begin with. The boys are well behaved in public unless we are asking them to complete their 8th hour of scooting about while tired and hungry. And I even get a bit childish and surly at that point.
But I digress. So, on errand number two, for which we had a scheduled appointment, all hell broke loose. We're not even talking with the kids, either. After checking in, I was told we could have a seat, for several people were in front of us. When inquiring about our scheduled appointment, I was told the appointments were merely "guidelines". The girl behind the desk did not even bother to deny my statement that I basically made an appointment for no reason at all. She did offer to get the manager to discuss the matter further, and of course, I agreed, thinking we could then be seen according to our appointment and be done with the matter. How silly.
The manager took 30 minutes to come speak to me, and all the while, we still hadn't been to our appointment. When I finally spoke to the manager, she just acknowledged that her business was extraordinarily busy that day and that despite having made an appointment, we would just have to wait. I brought up the fact that we schedule appointments due to having children and the need to work within a reasonable timeframe to keep them happy and non-disruptive. She actually told both myself and my husband that we should learn to leave our children at home and not take them in public. WHOA, sister! Slow down! 1. They were not being disruptive by any stretch of the imagination as we were still on errand two and 2. It's not as if we were hanging out at Morton's or the Ritz-Carlton.
Needless to say, we were furious at the gall of a customer service manager to say such an unprovoked statement. We left without completing the errand, not to mention corporate got quite the phone call from my dear husband. But it's not the first time by far that customer service experiences have been lacking or even prejudicial against children.
I don't understand how the service industry has moved so far away, from well, service. How doing their job for the consumer and keeping them happy and willing to earn their return business has become such a beast of burden. It's bizarre to me. Has a move toward automated hotlines/assembly lines/outsourcing suddenly made everyone less culpable for their day to day interactions with actual live humans? Or do they think that there are not enough folks like myself and my husband who won't tolerate poor service and an inability to smile along with some critical thinking when dealing with the public?
As for the manager we dealt with; she would do well to remember a couple things at the end of her day: (1) She's probably a parent too. (2) She probably would never stand for someone to talk to her about her well behaved children like that. (3) More flies are caught with honey than vinegar.
Swell. Now we can all play nice in the sandbox.
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