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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Poor customer service example of the day

And the winner is: Longs Drugs in the Town & Country shopping center at Embarcadero and El Camino Real in Palo Alto. I popped in to pick up a couple of cold drinks while Jen was using the facilities--diet Coke for me and a Lipton green tea for Jen--and when I got up to the checkout line there was one (1) lane open and several people in line. Across the aisle at the photo counter, another employee and a manager were chatting with a customer. It didn't appear to be about where to find maxi-pads or anything like that, just random non-Longs-related conversation. Meanwhile the one (1) checkout line is getting longer and longer, and of course the cashier seems to be the extra slow one.

Finally the people at the photo counter conclude their chat and the other employee came over to open another lane. By this time I had reached the register and would have been next, but the second guy picked up my two bottles and walked over to the other register. He rang up the diet Coke but had trouble with the green tea, saying "uh, this wasn't supposed to be sold as a single."

"It was in the cooler case with a lot of others," I said.

He just stood there for a minute with a blank look, starting talking to the first cashier about something totally unrelated, and then punched in an override or something to ring up the tea, finally allowing me to pay and leave.

In reality the whole episode, from entering the store to paying and leaving, probably took no more than ten minutes. However, it was at least seven minutes more than it should have been.

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|| Andrew, 2:05 PM || ||

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