COLUMN: Cache Valley home to bad customer service
How much does the average northern Utahn have to be paid per hour in order to give a hoot about how he or she treats paying customers on the other side of the counter? Why is it that when I go into a store, a restaurant, a USU office, or even when I’m out driving around town, more and more I’m beginning to feel like Cache Valley isn’t home to a lot of nice people? This is quite likely the final column I’ll ever write for The Utah Statesman, and I’m going to use this opportunity the way I’ve used past opportunities such as this – I’m going to complain about people who tick me off – and, in the process, upset anyone who possesses any of the characteristics I’m about to discuss.
Essentially, there is a throng of individuals around here who stand behind counters, jockeying cash registers, answering phones and supposedly providing customer service to the paying patrons who, with their business, keep these surly people employed in the first place. Where I come from back East, near Philadelphia, many people would argue we are abrasive, confrontational and overly direct; however, the irony is every time I go back to Pennsylvania to visit family, I am reminded of what courtesy, kindness and brotherly love feels like.
Regardless of whether a convenience store employee back East makes minimum wage or $15 an hour, he or she stands there for at least eight hours a day with a smile and a nod, more than happy to please each and every customer who walks through the door. Here in beautiful Cache Valley – I’m serious, I really do love the natural, non-human surroundings in Utah – I actually get caught off guard when a cashier even looks at me, let alone begrudgingly makes the effort to say something. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been given the impression that I’m ruining a person’s day by forcing them to punch a few icons on the touchscreen cash register and recite a total cost, take my money and make change. I know it’s a pain in the butt to have to work so hard, but you can quit playing with your iPhone for 15 seconds to do your job.
In the early ’80s, there was a popular catch phrase that accompanied a yellow smiley face – “Have a nice day!” Nowadays, the saying probably goes something like this: “Go jump in a fire!”
It’s 100 percent clear to me that store employees in this area are completely incapable of recognizing the connection between my money and their jobs. I remind you all that you don’t have to take these jobs, per se, and if you don’t want to swallow your obnoxiously overgrown self-pride and deluded sense of entitlement for eight hours, then perhaps you should look for some other minimum-wage job that doesn’t require you to talk to people. In the meantime, I’m afraid I’ll have to rain on your parade and inform you that contrary to indigenous ideology, customer service does in fact require you to serve customers.
I recently wrote about this in my award-winning restaurant review. I went to a restaurant I had never been to and ordered food, expecting it to be delivered to my table so I could eat it inside the restaurant – this is actually what I do every time I go to a restaurant, and I’ve never had a problem in the past. Instead, my food was assumptively wrapped in a takeout bag, and when I expressed confusion, the woman behind the counter proceeded to argue with me. Rather than reciprocating the discourtesy, I took my food, drove home and ate it semi-cold.
What is it around here that gives people the idea it’s OK to argue with paying customers? What makes this scenario even more ridiculous is the fact that someone wrote a response to my review and criticized me for expecting my “every whim” to be catered to. She said I should’ve been sympathetic rather than judgmental. This is exactly the kind of attitude that perpetuates this culture of incivility and rudeness.
How dare I have the gall to so whimsically expect to eat the food I paid for inside the restaurant I bought it in? How can I be so selfish and uncompassionate? Maybe next time I should just start writing reviews about restaurants with drive-thrus. At least that way I’d be exposed to fewer opportunities to be offended. In the six years I’ve lived in Utah, I’ve become more and more bitter, which is unfortunate, because I used to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy.
On that note, I’ll segue into the second half of this customer-care conundrum; and this is certainly a tough issue to address. How can one expect to receive civility from people in administrative positions? I’m talking, of course, about people such as they who work at the department of motor vehicles, driver license division, various offices in the Taggart Student Center and in places all over town where paying-customer status might be somewhat ambiguous.
Even though the taxes, tuition and student fees I pay contribute to a variety of salaries, it doesn’t usually feel as though I’m being treated like a human being – let alone a paying customer. More often than not, I’m made to feel like an animal with an incredibly low IQ; and anytime I’ve ever protested this sort of treatment, rather than an apology, I get a debate.
Unfortunately, I’ll miss the hiking and other outdoor beauty that make Cache Valley such a great place, but when I graduate in a year or so, I am happy to say I won’t miss the callous lack of kindness that eats away at this place like a cancer. Good riddance.
– D. Whitney Smith is copy editor for The Utah Statesman and plans to spend part of his summer in Senegal to do national reporting. Comments on this column may be sent to statesmanoffice@aggiemail.usu.edu