| rev:text
| - One star for this Safeway and my cumulative experiences here, and negative 37 stars for myself for being dumb and lazy enough to come back here tonight just because it is convenient.
I had to pick up a few things for a potluck at work tomorrow and could also multi-task and hit the redbox and ATM. Great. A few months ago I had purchased a modest amount of groceries, spent 80 bucks, had to wait in the lone checkout line for 25 minutes, and vowed to never return. I should have stuck with that. This store is nice, clean, and has bagel dogs (thank you for the heads up, Manny) but it's way overpriced and extremely understaffed. The checkout line has always been painfully slow.
As we stand in the express lane something goes wrong with the payment machine. It locks up and says CLOSED. Our fearless cashier, Charles, calls someone over and says, "It's locked up again. I saw so and so fix it a couple times today, but I don't remember what he did".
OK. Stop right here. It's been having issues all day and you're still using it? Why don't you dust off one of the 15 other registers that never get used and fire that baby up?
That would be silly. What was I thinking?
Just a side note, the woman in front of us who was waiting to pay had ice cream and the woman behind us had ice cream. Isn't that always the way?
Destini came over to help the intrepid Charles with the machine. They continued to discuss how the machine kept having issues and tried to remember how to fix it. Gripping. Not one word to the customers waiting to pay and get on with their lives.
Can you just feel the ice cream melting?
Well, we decided to try our luck at the register beside us, along with the gal with the ice cream behind us and got in line over there. Charles calls us back over and says it is fixed. He heard me say to my husband "it always takes forever here". Without missing a beat as he is scanning our items, Charles says, "Patience is a virtue."
Now, Charlie, I really admire you having the hair on your peaches to say that comment, albeit to the scanner. Next time have the cajones to look the customer in the eye and I'll really respect you. I said to him, "So is being efficient." They absolutely don't care. There was no effort to try to expedite customers and get them on their way. Destini mumbled a "sorry folks" as we left.
Good customer service costs nothing. It's about slapping a smile on your face and saying "How are you tonight? Can I help you find anything?", the scarce "Thank you!", and it's about being mindful of a customer's time. And it's certainly not about popping off with a comment about patience when things go wrong. It was 100 degrees today and it's 5:30. Do you really think people want to stand around and wait for you to fix a machine that has been having issues all day? I guess in a unionized cocoon you don't have to worry about such things. I would really love to see where Charlie is in 10 years. Now that would be interesting.
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