what’s my beef? or pork?!

Sometimes when I contact a company about their service isn’t always about getting restitution, although, admittedly, it often is.  Sometimes my goal is a bit more altruistic – I just want the company I’m contacting to know that their service didn’t quite fit my expectations. 

And sometimes their reactions don’t fit my expectations. 

This is currently were I’m at; honestly I was so befuddled by the response that I didn’t know how to react.

A friend and I decided we would eat out for Christmas dinner and choose a small chic boutique hotel 

downtown.  It’s one of these places that people like me can’t afford to stay at but can afford high tea or a dinner once in awhile.  Reservations were made and expectations high. 

I should also comment that when I shared this plan amount my peers several people commented that this hotel had a very well known vegan chef.  I’ll also comment now that I don’t eat pork, beef or as I call them ‘four footed’ animals.  My choice comes down to one very simple thing – I don’t feel well after I eat them and not eating them is pretty easy.

The next part of the story is very much as I remember it – that is to say I certainly couldn’t swear to the fact in a court of law, but we’re discussing perception here, so bear with me.  The menu was prix fixe and I chose the ‘Christmas dinner with all the fixings’ as the entrée.  My appetizer was lovely, perhaps the star of that option, and the turkey was lovely too until I cut into what looked like a small meatball.  Not thinking anything of it, and not eating it either I continued on with my meal.  However several hours later and in some distress I thought back and realized that it was a bit of sausage, as in sausage stuffing. 

I decided to contact the catering manager at the hotel and explain that while the service was great I was disappointed that the inclusion of what I believe to be pork or some other red meat was not included on the menu.  Living in the city I have become accustomed to restaurants not mixing meats on their menus in order to accommodate diets like mine.

What I got back was an acknowledgement that yes there was sausage in my meal and that ‘pork was not red meat.’

Game.  Set.  Point completely missed.

So what does a girl do?  I considered sending the response along with a note that my point was missed to the General Manager but ultimately decided that it just wasn’t worth the energy to bother.  Why?  Because honestly I visit this location every 5 years or so and should we opt to go out for Christmas dinner again this year, there are plenty of boutique places to try.

Sometimes it’s just not worth it.  Sometimes your point gets missed.  This time it was both.

that guy and emergency soup

Sometimes your retail experience has nothing to do with the store, the staff, their policies or anything other than another patron. 

 

Earlier this week a coworker - who graciously gives me rides home with her and, even better, sometimes takes me to the grocery store on that trip - and I were doing such an errand.  Like all mass merchandisers during the after-work hour the place was busy and so were the lines.  And that’s where we met ‘that guy’.  A suburbanite.  Vaguely European.  Was once what he considered attractive, with, now, slightly too long and slightly too greasy hair, a wardrobe make primarily of fabric ending in ‘lon’ and whatever replaced tear-away pants, and the worst of it – a cell phone stuck to his ear in the on position. 

While he did offer my 10 year-or-so younger acquaintance a jump in the line, he wasn’t willing to do so for both of us.

 

I also have to admit I was totally fascinated by what was in his buggy.  Namely about 204 assorted sized diapers, enough formula mix to feed an orphanage, two tins of beans and several freeze dried meals.   So now I’m both amused and curious.  Other than the fact that he lost control of a box of about 128 diapers at one point which careened our way – is careened the correct word to describe a large, lightweight box covered in pictures of baby asses in motion?  But I digress.  He managed to get all these goods up on the belt one handed and check out and never once stop his phone conversation!  

Now I haven’t had a husband for awhile and I do notice that with the cell phone revolution all husbands, on their own, at the  market are doing their wives shopping by proxy, but they are usually trusted to pay the bill on their own.

And what does this have to do with emergency soup?  Nothing.  I keep a can of so called emergency soup in my cupboards for those nights when life has taken up too much your day and your evening and by the time you get home and are ready to collapse and have zero interest in making or even ordering food, I break out the ‘emergency soup’ which is almost exclusively Campbell Cream of Mushroom or Tomato.  And tonight is one of those nights.

we are never getting together

In my head I’m humming Taylor Swift’s ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ while I write this.

I hate telemarketers… I say hate because abhor doesn’t not cover it.  In fact I pay $8 a month to avoid speaking to them, which, the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

So in my real life I do inside sales, which is to say a large part of my job is to talk on the phone.  The other large part of it is to convince people to part with large sums of money - although not their own - but perhaps of their own budget.  So this should make me empathetic to the plight of the average telemarketer, but I’m not. 

Business to business solicitation is one thing.  Bugging me at home, during the precious time of a day that I’m not at work or asleep, is another thing.  Especially since I’ve signed up for the Do Not Call list for this exact reason.  And routinely do not answer your calls.  And now I’m upset again.

I’m not the only one.  Marketplace ran a segment on this subject recently.  In answer to the pleas of ‘leave me alone’ in this segment, it turns out that some companies use cheaper off shore companies to solicit for them and they fail to abide by the Do Not Call list.  In fact they are a large part of the problem.  Since we can’t complain to the mostly useless Better Business Bureau, we’re stuck with the ring, ring, ring every night.

Recently I purchased a mattress at Sears, as part of the transaction I agree to be phoned the day before and shortly prior to the delivery.  Sears called twice, both times from a blocked number.  The delivery service called just before they arrived, their business name and number showed up on my call display.  A prize to who can guess which call I took in person.  But it begged the question of why Sears, a huge North American general retailer, did not identify themselves when calling a customer, particularly when consent was given.

In my mind it comes down to this one simple issue.  Clearly this works, companies would not continue to spend advertising and marketing dollars on methods that don’t work, so who goes for it?  And why?

I strongly believe in voting with your dollars, and so now I’m in a pickle about a company that I just received decent service from, in large part because of a blocked number.

As an aside, as I was writing this evening, The Carrie Diaries was on, which, set in the 80’s, had a scene dealing with white lies using telemarketers as an example of when it might be OK to tell as LWL.  It reminded me of the days before call display.  How DID we manage?!

So since I only know the chorus to this pop song, I will end with a little ditty to all telemarketers who persist.  After calling me 20 or more times take the hint… we are never, ever, ever, getting together.

boxing day not spar-ing day

American’s have Black Friday and Canadians have Boxing Day.  The day everyone escapes the forced confinement, of 1 single day with family and flees to the mall to shop for bargains… after spending furiously just a few days before for Christmas.  Not that I’m judging.

For those who work retail, it’s the day before the day you have a breakdown from working too many long hours, too many days in a row to make enough money to get a decent sized commission cheque in January.

As a kid I never experience Boxing Day as the family budget was beyond stretched by Christmas to participate.  As a working teen most of my jobs, mercifully, chose to avoid the sales and it wasn’t until I started working as a young adult that I discovered Boxing Day.  From that first experience I came to a very firm decision to save several of my very hard earned vacation days to be able to avoid these days.  And it was a high cost.

Now that I work in an office I sometimes get a thought in my head that I might want to venture out for a few post holiday deals, and then I get to the mall, turn around and leave.

Full disclosure – mostly because I really wanted to write ‘full disclosure’ – I still get retail related panic attacks when the mall is full and I know I have to do my holiday shopping.

And further disclosure, it really sticks in my craw that I don’t get to participate in the great deals.  But losing limb, life and possibly even sanity for discounts really seems over the top and so I stay home.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love shopping.  I’m fond of the mall, and department stores – I like that ‘everything-under-one-roof’ concept.  And I love a sale. In fact I miss the days when as a store clerk I could peruse the sales racks before the store opened and, with the benefit of befriending my fellow colleagues, could stash a few choices behind the counter for later retrieval   So this year I braved it.  And made it to one store and then went home and had a stiff drink.

What I hate, is the people.  More specifically the mentality of people when they gather in a large group - seemingly to stand collectively in my way while I try to walk between stores.

My yield?  3 pairs of Second Yoga jeans - which really should be tried on by all.  The cost?  A few more liver cells as I enjoyed that stiff drink.

And some confidence restored.  So much so that I might brave the discount bra event at my favourite ‘secret’ place tomorrow.

what does a girl have to do? the pack-my-bag pet peeve

Everyone who knows me knows this drives me batty. There is an unusually large amount of data on a particular social media outlet dedicated to this particular pet peeve.

Here’s how it is:

     “Dear Every Retailer,

     Please do not construe my willingness to carry a reusable bag as my
     acquiescence to pack my own goods.

     Yours truly,

     Me.

     P.S. As an added bonus, could my stuffs please come home undamaged and
     still consumable.”

First it was Loblaws with their ‘we're-going-to-save-the-world-from-itself-by-charging-for-bags-keeping-all-the-cash-and-hiring-only-surly-cashiers-who-will-try-and-wait-out-a-customer.’ I might be projecting on some of that.

Yes I have a particular opinion about this service feature. Even more so when my goods are partly packed and then pushed off to the side like smelly old socks. No word of a lie, this has happened on several occasions, as well as a cashier, reaching around my goods to get a bag for the next customer. If I were a cartoon, you would see steam coming out my ears and possibly every character available above the numbers on a keyboard coming out my eyes.

And yet, I have always discussed this only with the store manager, or directly with the head office of that store. In response I get a very carefully worded reply about the situation and how it was not their intent for me to have a bad experience and thank you for bringing it to their attention. Which of always reminds me of those apps that let you type ‘thx buttwad’ and instead out comes a lovely, polite, wordy autotext that reads along the lines of ‘thank you for your time and attention, kind sir plus many more words’.

I know, I know. The unions don’t have to hold on the industry like they used to and the average cashier no longer makes more than a full time, Harvard educated, middle manager, and so they have no vested interest in making my shopping experience a happy one. But I don’t care.

And I have a solution. Well two. One is practical. The other one isn’t but it sure would prove a point.

Practical, actually achievable solution number 1 – where you have the wire bag holder that used to hold 2 sets of plastic bags before you decided to make life tough on all of us, take one of those and reconfigure it to hold the various reusable bags instead. This way your cashiers can set up the bags and ‘drop’ the goods into them the way they did with plastic. Easy, mostly cheap and there’s already room to do this.

And while we’re at it can someone design a lightweight, small reusable bag that fits easily in my purse, because I don’t have a car to carry around all my reusable bags in. And I like to shop on the way home from work.

Completely impractical solution number 2 – make your cashiers do their own shopping, pack their own bags, carry them home on the transit and see how well everything fares. Once they get thrill of cookies crushed by a jar of pickles and triangular bread, their packing skills will, well, prowess.

And finally can someone start an online shopping/delivery option using a supplier I want?! I’m looking at you Loblaws. We’ll come back to this particular retailer and our long term somewhat tumultuous, emotionally laden relationship that I’m not ready to give up on and really, really want to work.

And while you may think I’m being a little over the top just wait. Come January we’re all in this boat due to the grandstanding of our favourite city council against our ‘favourite’ news leading mayor.

Since I wrote this the city council backed off of this particular decision allowing us all to consume plastic yet again. Yes, it's nice to be all eco-earthy, but let's face it, it's just not reasonable to offer nothing to your customers. The LCBO did it and we're all politely trying to lug our glass bottled purchases home and although I have no real statistics on this, I'd wager breakage, in and around, the front of the store is up... way up.

it is you

I’m on the verge of breaking up with another retailer. Things were going swimmingly and then, slowly, they weren’t. That intrinsic ‘something’ just wasn’t anymore. The days of retail satiety were over. It’s hard to describe exactly but it was no longer doing it for me. And now I’m humming a pop song wondering if ‘do you want to break up?’

Let me back up and perhaps explain. It is a tendency of mine, in mixed spaces, to dig right into a discussion without any sort of introduction.

I am one of those people of expects a certain amount of service in my consumer experience. I want you, the retailer, to take the time to appreciate my patronage. And when I feel I’m being shortchanged I am bothered. I am loyal. I do actually say something well of places I’ve had positive experiences, but I do also kiss and tell when it’s bad. I’ve done my time, standing 8 ½ hours – exactly – in heels no less, dishing out my so called advice, bagging your goods and taking your cash. And I did it for years; and for a pittance. I have walked your walk. That makes me both an ideal and idealistic consumer.

A member of Generation X I already feel underserved by the world at large, so when I spend my hard earned dollars, I want there to be an exchange of goods. I am insulted by poorly planned loyalty programs, oddly construed interpretations of consumer analytics and policies that do not allow for a little common sense from time to time. I am aware of many of the issues that plague you as an industry but, as a consumer, that’s not my problem.

I appreciate the simplest of things, coupons for items I do indeed buy, special offers for loyal customers, and packed bags. I prefer a limited set of options but I’d like them all convenient to me. See what I mean about ideal and idealist at the same time. My pet peeves will become apparent quickly.

And yes, like most, I’m in a bit of a Mexican standoff with Rogers. Why do you ask?!