I live in Atlanta and am very used to getting meager customer service at best. Although I have seen some increase in customer service across the board now that the economy sucks and people actually have to care a little bit about their jobs, today I had what may have been one of the more annoying run-ins yet.
I was looking for a particular type of Dutch cheese that I sampled in Iceland. It’s excellent: an aged Gouda of a certain type that this one guy went on and on about and gave us some samples of when we visited Reykjavik. We ended up buying a chunk and loved the hell out of it.
So I was at the cheese counter of a normally very well-run and staffed yuppie grocery chain and asked if the store carried the cheese. A terse “nope” was all I got from Cheese Asshole. His cohort behind the counter sensed the irritation and said, “we have parrano, which is from Holland.”
“I have some of that. It’s similar, but I’m set on the other.”
Cheese Asshole chimed in, “we don’t carry stuff like that, it’s full of nitrates, artificial ingredients and all sorts of bad stuff.” He gave a snooty “pffft,” as if I was insane for asking.
I told him that his answer shocked me because I’d eaten it in hyper-organic-conscious Iceland, but left with no cheese.
A quick Google search when I got home revealed the true ingredients: cow’s milk, salt and rennet.
So basically, this guy had never heard of the cheese I was asking for and was making shit up or deliberately being a dickhead and trying to make me feel stupid for even asking.
This is nothing critical or anything; it’s not going to make me cry or lose sleep, but it’s a new low. Rather than the usual total lack of effort on the part of the customer-facing staff, this was an actual effort on his part to provide intentionally false information and willfully bad service.
What’s next? Are teachers going to start intentionally teaching children wrong information. Or better yet, is it going via the Steve Martin comedy routing route in which parents are going to forever speak incorrectly in front of their children, resulting in the following first grade request:
“May I mammooo dogface in the banana patch?”
6 responses so far ↓
1 Elliott // Nov 7, 2003 at 8:01 pm
I sometimes get really riled up by customer service issues. I especially have had my temper flare at telephone service people.
The one thing that really works for me, in a customer service situation, is to escalate, as they say in corporate-speak. Ask to talk to the manager. Nothing takes the wind out of an asshat’s sails like calmly communicating, to them and to their boss, that they could not help you, and that you would still like help.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s right. Is your manager here? Can I talk to your manager?”
The above is generally a trump-card that will nullify cheese-boy’s game. Of course, you are upping the ante. If the manager can’t or won’t help you, you probably should not patronize that business anymore.
Sometimes, this gambit is ill-advised. Once, when I was eighteen, my friend and I had just dropped another friend of ours off in the Bronx. It was a hotter-than-hell day, and my friend wanted a soda. We were at a red light at 135th street, and he asked me to “go into that store and get us some sodas”. Inside the store were two middle-aged gentlemen, and store shelving, with nothing on it. I asked if they had a soda. They said no, dismissively. I did not ask to talk to the manager.
2 Greg Greene // Nov 11, 2003 at 11:07 am
Please don’t tell me that was Whole Foods. Whether it was or wasn’t, though, I miss Harris Teeter. Now there was a grocery store.
3 Scotty the Body // Nov 11, 2003 at 2:55 pm
Well, since you asked with please, I won’t tell you that it was Whole Foods on Ponce.
4 Tikihead // Nov 12, 2003 at 6:22 am
Let’s get that guy!
5 Rachel // Nov 14, 2003 at 10:12 am
need name of cheese…....
6 Aart // May 28, 2005 at 1:06 pm
the name of the cheese coould have been “Old Amsterdam”, a brand of “old” (aged for 10 or more months) cheese, but not the only one. There are also farmers cheeses, made of unpasteurized milk, and with stronger taste than the cheeses made in dairy factories….
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