Now I Just Say “Thank You”

I used to let bad service experiences ruin my mood, piss me off, destroy my day, and dig into my very soul.

Now I just say “Thank You.”

You’d think I would have learned from my original experience with Purex that ranting and raving isn’t the way to get a better response from a company — you simply “share” the story with a couple thousand of your best friends.

Recently I had two “wonderful” customer service experiences in the same day.

The first was at a local Dunkin’ Donuts. I live close to a Tim Horton’s, a Dunkin Donuts, a Starbucks, and a Caribou Coffee. I didn’t purposely pick my residence based on easy access to the best caffeinated beverages, it just worked out that way.  Anyway, the girlfriend and I decide to get coffee one morning and she mentioned a craving for a breakfast bite of some sort. Offered the option between Tim’s or Dunkin, she chose the latter.  Dunkin is just one more intersection away, so we drove a little further and hit the drive-thru.  I gave my order into the speaker (a coffee and a couple donuts) and then she ordered her coffee and started to order an additional donut or two when the voice on the other end (in an obvious annoyance) cut her off mid-sentence and demanded to know “HOW MANY TOTAL DONUTS DO YOU WANT??”

Apparently as Dunkin newbies (I tend toward any of the other three coffee choices listed above) we broke some sort of cardinal rule of ordering and it ruined his method of order-taking. I cannot express to you just how offensive he sounded. It was amazing. My companion finished her order in a stunned voice and we pulled around to the window. He told her the total and when he reached out to take the money I literally SHOUTED at him: “HEY! Customer service tip — be nicer to your customers!”  My outburst had the same effect on him as it had on us, and I think he hid from us for the rest of the time it took for someone else to hand our order out the window.

The second experience came during dinner later that same day.  This time at a Frisch’s Big Boy.

We’d enjoyed dinner together and we opted to be bad and get dessert (yeah, yeah… donuts and dessert in one day? Whatever.) As the server is removing the dinner plates, he spies the used fork on the plate and says “oh, hang on to the fork for your dessert.” As my friend pauses at his command, then reaches to take the fork back, I look at the server and ask “Can’t you just bring us clean forks for the desserts?”

I mean… COME ON.
It’s a freaking restaurant with a Prius-sized dishwashing machine in the kitchen!  I think you can bring us a new freaking fork so that her hot fudge sundae cake doesn’t taste like that crappy portobello burger you just served her (which was so bad she only ate one-quarter of it. I recommend avoiding this menu item.)

Which brings me to my new practice of just smiling and saying “thank you” instead of getting angry.
If they asked why, I’m going to tell them that I speak to audiences of all sizes all over the USA and have a fairly well-read blog and a decent size audience of social media followers and I’m looking forward to using this experience as an object lesson in bad customer service. In every single presentation.

I’m thinking there are PLENTY of stories to collect and share!