THE ONLY THING CONSISTENT ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE IS IT'S INCONSISTENCY

Going out and doing business anywhere, you need to always have your "shields" up. Pardon the "Star Trek" reference. If you go into any retail business and your guard is down, buyer beware, you will somehow - someway get screwed. I can guarantee that. Sad but true.

There is always something wrong with the service, employees, the product, the store, the restaurant, the food, the waitress, the clerk - something and/or someone. Customer service - any customer service - is rare these days. In fact when you get it, you're amazed, astonished, need to Tweet or Facebook about it and walk around with a smile on your face, usually temporary until you go to your next stop.

Have you had just one day when everything was in stock, on sale, just what you wanted, the clerk or salesperson knew the answers to all your questions, everything functioned properly, it was just the right size, just the flavor you wanted, the dish came and looked just like the picture on the menu or when you checked out everything went though just like the commercial promised? Did someone help you so amazingly that you were sorry you had to leave to deal with someone else elsewhere?

When I walk out the front door of my home, I make sure I have my consumer armor on. I have to mentally and emotionally deal with what is surely about to be the stupidist moments of my day. For when I leave my home and get into my car and drive to the grocery or hardware store, bank, barber or beauty shop, restaurant or anywhere else that services the public, if I don't every second think about what I'm doing, the mallot of dreadful customer service will most assuredly hit me right over the head. I then feel completely stupid, but I remember I should have expected it.

Why just today, right before I wrote this blog piece, it happened. I was not only NOT surprised, shields up - armor on. I was ready for it and, agin, expecting it. I went into Home Depot to replace a quart can of custom paint for one of my bathrooms. Simple enough, right? I brought it up to the paint counter and interfaced with one of the "paint" people. Of course, they were out of quart cans for that brand of paint. How the heck can such a large store run out of small paint cans. Maybe they should run down the road and find an Ace Hardware and buy some.

Part of customer service in 2013 is that most everything is "out" just about everywhere. What used to be the model - the North American logistics system (recall "JIT" - just in time inventory management) everyone around the world looked up to - is gone. Inventory control is as dead an art as doing math on an abacus.

My mother used to tell me when I was growing up - you should see "vats" it like in Russia - sometimes she would substitute Africa or even China. I didn't have a clue what she was talking about until I actually went to those places and saw for myself the empty spaces on the shelves. Just like a WalMart or Lowe's now in this country.

The paint person and I made a "deal" where she would give me a gallon of the paint I wanted for the quart price. That was $11.98 which I thought was already too high, but then I was not about to wait until the Fortune 500 mega-box so-called discounted hardware billion dollar warehouse chain store managed to get some more quart cans in from wherever it comes from. She wrote a large note on the top of the can for the cashier instructing him to charge me the quart, not the gallon, price. Already I knew there was trouble ahead, because the typical 18-24 year old employee can neither read properly or think beyond what keyboard choices are available to them. Thank goodness, most transaction are done with plastic not requiring the Dead Sea Scrolls practice of "making" change.

Remember, I am self-trained to expect the expected stupidity when proceeding to the next step. Again, shields up! Straighten up my armor. I purposely kept my mouth shut. I get the usual mumbo jumbo jive from the cashier about did I find everything OK? Yeah, yeah. "That will be $34.95", he says. $34.95??? That my friends is one expensive quart can of biege bathroom paint. Some "discount" store. I'm hysterical inside my head. I ask, "Why so expensive?" I could have been really mean and say "Can't you read?".  But then, as I said, this is the norm not the exception - bad customer service.

The poor cashier looked positively confused. His brain wiring was clearly overheating. All this customer service inspired technology at his fingertips and he's been - actually the system has been - foiled by a hand written note from the paint person. She single handedly has brought down millions of dollars of advertising and marketing about how great Home Depot is - their prices, availability and the ease of going in one of their stores and going out with a smile - and saving money. It's all smoke and mirrors folks - bottom line, pure B.S.

I ask the young man, who reminded me of the "Raj" character on the CBS show "Big Bang Theory", d-i-d  y- o-u  r-e-a-d  t-h-e  n-o-t-e? Now comes the part of the transaction where he must try and refocus his 1984 George Orwellian store brainwashing (training) away from the BARCODE to the actual note. He then, and this is like a wood chipper that is fed a steel pipe, has to (OMG) make a decision as to how to void out the higher price and substitute the newer lower one. Oh the horror of it all AND people are waiting in line.

You get my point. What happened in this instance happens to you and me just about everywhere and everyday. It is unavoidable. Go to my last blog post about the USPS and there's another perfect example. Where does the fault lie? At the foundation our present education system deserves plenty of blame and higher up in the chain it is just poor management by managers and supervisors who are clueless about logistics and customer service and what business is really all about - us.

What to do about it? I'm afraid it's pretty much a lost cause. You must point your business to those places that do understand what customer service is and offer a superior product. Hopefully you won't have to pay much more for what you want. And, avoid those establishments that annoy you. In the case of a Home Depot or Applebee's or the USPS - the post office - you can go elsewhere to Lowe's, Chili's or Fedex, but chances are that the stupid stick of lousy inconsistent customer service has made it over there as well.

Personally just knowing - sadly - that customer service is dead in America - that the only thing consistent about customer service is it's inconsistency - about the only thing I can do is have some fun with it. Good luck with that.

POST OFFICE STUPIDITY

I just thrive on reporting stupidity, inefficiency and bureaucracy. The best aspect of using the post office is the "automated" ATM type mailing - postage self-service machines. These "kiosks" make the other aspect - the worst aspect - of using the post office avoidable. That being having to interface with the lazy morons who sit behind most of the "service" counters in most of the post offices around the country. For this piece, I focus in on the postal employees of the Clearwater, FL - Belcher Rd. - branch.

My wife, aside from her regular profession, makes custom cards - sort of Hallmark stuff on steroids. She has an entire room of our home "cordoned" off for this purpose alone. Well, there's also the sewing, rubber stamping, scrapbooking and quilting "operation" concurrently going on as well. Anyway, she had a small box of "cards" ready to be shipped off to Kansas for sorting to our troops serving on military bases overseas. I took it to the post office and found out that when the "service" counter inside the post office is open for business you (apparently) cannot use the self-service machine -  at least not with a small box.

There were three post service employees (civil service unionized workers) sitting there at roughly 1:30pm on a Saturday with a (as in "one") "customer" just leaving. I was greated with a friendly smile by an older (50+) heavy set female postal "worker" person. I handed her the box and said - "whatever the cheapest way is, please". She asked: "how about delivery by next Friday?" I replied: "OK". She asked me if there were any drugs, firearms - I don't recall the rest of the (FBI generated) intrusive list - and I replied in the negative.

There is a payment card "terminal" right there at the counter and I slid my wife's card and "it" said to enter a pin number. I asked: "how do I run this as credit". She said I would have to give her the card. I handed it to her, she read the name and asked me (now with a drivers license bureau clerk attitude) "who is this?". I told her and she said "you" cannot use "this" card "here" as a credit. "It" must be used as a debit. The price of postage, for the record, was $10 and change.

I very calmly asked for the box back. She ripped off the already applied label and postage and handed it to me. I turned, said nothing and walked out. Also, for the record, I use this card everywhere - at the grocery store, restaurants, Wal-Mart, gas stations - everywhere - never having a problem. I always put it through as a credit. Nobody ever asks me who is "this" when I use the card.

So, I tried once more to use the self-service machine 15 feet from the "service" counter, but it declined to process a small box. I decided to head over the nearby UPS (United Parcel Service) office, but decided that - just as matter of principle - to go to another local post office. The "service" counter there had closed an hour earlier and was not far away.

I put the box on the self-service scale - entered the zip code - answered a few simple questions - and pressed process. The machine said it would be $12 for delivery MONDAY! I would receive a convenient tracking number to follow it's progress. I slid my wife's credit card though the slot - it asked if I want to use it as a credit card - I replied in the affirmative. Out came the label and postage - then  a receipt. I put it on the box and shoved it in the appropriate door and off to Kansas it went. God bless our troops!

The postal employee, the space she occupies, the chair she sits on, the rubber mat she occasionally stands on, her salary, her benefits and her stupidity - all are a complete waste of money. She has NO purpose. She is a dinosaur. She has been replaced by a machine -  a far more efficient and faster alternative for the postal customer - but yet she (and thousands of others) still remain on "our" government's subsidized dole. That is clearly a mistake. It's pathetic. It is indicative of the bloated bureacracy that is the "United States" post office.

Can I take this "story" to someone at that post office branch for explanation? No way. That probably would be the "postmaster" but then it would be easier to talk to a member of Congress. Besides, you and I know it would be a complete waste of time.

* The YouTube video I'm sure is copyrighted by the USPS - United States Post Office

** The two folks that regularly deliver my mail are totally exempt from this story and any of my comments - they're probably the only two postal employees that possess any common sense and do an outstanding job. Thank for both for all your efforts. 

*** This is NOT an isolated incident - it is a culmination of YEARS of post office inefficiency.