I’ve been soundly chastised for being a lazy shit in regards to wanting the pizza delivered rather than retrieving the pizza myself. I won’t argue this point and in fact agree with that sentiment — up to a point.
The city I live in is truly a bedroom community. It is a small valley ringed with hills. There are no commercial zones within the valley at all. The nearest strip mall, which hosts said pizza joint by the way, is outside the valley only a mile or so away as the crow flies but possibly double to triple that by road. You must also understand that this bedroom community I call home was well and truly farmland before the eeeevil developers came, in fact there are still some working farms close by. If I chose to, I can walk two blocks and say hello to some dairy cows.
The streets in this burg are all two lane, even the new ones built to support the development. It can take 15 to 20 minutes to get out the main drag, Sunnyside. Not all the time, mind you, and usually not when I’m driving, but the speed limits are all set for residential, and Oregonians have this incredibly annoying habit of actually honoring the speed limit that is lacking in those of who came from the concrete jungles of Orange County and Los Angeles. There are no four lane Culvers or Irvine Valley Drives around to efficiently shuttle people to and fro.
So, yeah, I wanted the pizza delivered. And yeah, I fully understood the situation from the pizza guy’s perspective. He didn’t want to get stiffed with a bad check. Further, I was prepared to let it all go when, rather than apologizing and maybe offering a buck off if I came it to get it myself (hey, it could happen) as incentive to get my custom, he puts his back up.
And THAT was my central point all along. Even if I’m being a dick in the situation, he should have stayed polite throughout and apologized profusely and not budged. I would have just let it go and done something else for dinner, maybe I would have even sucked it up and driven in to get the pizza. Alas, that didn’t happen and I get to relate a story that shows a little bit of the bad side of me to illustrate what I hope is a larger point regarding customers service.
Then again, maybe not.
I’m wondering if you fully grasped his point of view?
Personally I respect the manger for being honest with you rather then patronizing you. Sounds like he was keepin’ it real. Were you?
What does that mean, keeping it real?
I must not have explained the situation clearly enough and that’s my fault, but I look at the training I received working at Disneyland as a benchmark. Clearly that’s a high mark to achieve in customer service, but the simple fact of the matter is that when a person in a customer service position says “Well you have your boundaries and I have mine.” my response as a customer is two-fold: 1) mentally I think, “What the fuck does that mean?”, and 2) Who trained this yahoo, because I guarantee you that if he had said that to a guest at Disneyland, he would have been talked to by management.
Actually Roger I wasn’t chastizing you for being a lazy shit because you wanted the pizza delivered. When I was living near the Orange Circle (I know, it’s the PLAZA, not the Circle) I had a habit of ordering pizza for delivery from the Zito’s Pizza that was directly across the street and that I could see from my bedroom window. Paying extra to have someone walk a pizza across the street is lazy, wanting a pizza delivered to your house is not. My point was that you should have gotten your act together with your checks, license, etc. in a more timely manner. The pizza store manager was a dick about the whole thing and you had every right to rip him a new one over his attitude.
I’m facscinated by the fact that my original comment was deleted from this blog. I took you to task a bit, Roger. Was that too much for you?
Oops, my bad…this is a continuation. My prior comments still stand on the original posting. I should READ more carefully. Perhaps I should send a pizza by way of apology?
When you worked at Disneyland you had no other formal training, school, or job skills and it was a very good entry level service position for the area considering your age. In other words you had a real incentive to provide the higher level of customer service your employer demanded. I highly doubt that is the case for this pizza restaurant manager. Granted, the owner might see it differently and not want to lose a potential repeat customer but why should some night shift manager give a rip? Perhaps you should take this up with the restaurant owner and see if you can get a free pizza out of the deal? Assuming that you truly feel completely justified in your demand for special treatment on writing checks.
At this stage of my life I would rather talk plain and cut to the chase. Getting patronized and handled would just have infuriated me even more I think if it was me in your situation. But that is just me. I prefer polite honesty – keepin it real. A more reasonable person might have just accepted the store’s policy and driven down to get the pizza rather than try to lobby the store manager for an exception to their policy. You have a right to be annoyed but not indignant in my opinion.
One more thought after re-reading your account of the pizza order. It sounds like you *did* receive the customer service you expect from the intial employee on the phone. But that wasn’t good enough for you so you asked for the manager. If this was a busy time for the restaurant you were holding up the line essentially and since the check policy had already been politely explained to you now you’re impacting normal business operation by pushing the issue with the manager. Granted, this manager might have found a more creative way to deal with your stubborn ass on the phone but perhaps it just wasn’t worth his time and effort. As you say, and I paraphrase, some customers are never satisfied. If he was wrong than his business will surely suffer and you will be vindicated.
This is fun.
I had initialy decided to let it go while speaking with the order taker, then I thought (because, you know, my brain’s not a hat rack or anything) about that scenario about moving into the neighborhood and I wanted to see if the manager could do something about it. As history bears out, not so much.
Jim, while your point is well taken, how many people out there are that proactive with such stuff. I would argue that most people don’t think about changing their address on their driver’s license until something like this happens. Even then I bet it would not have satisfied this guy. In California, they tell you attach a note to the back of the card with your new address. Would that be good enough? In Oregon, it looks like they send you a sticker with your new address that you put over the address on the card. That probably would work.
Suffice it to say, I freely admit I took this way past any rational point because I was a bit miffed. I also have high expectations regarding customer service. Part of that comes from my experiences at Disneyland, part of it comes from watching the staff at the restaurants and businesses I frequent.
Paul, your comment regarding Disneyland only goes so far. Disneyland was not my first job, but it was the first job which actively spent time training me on how to deal with guests (customers) before I started doing what I was hired to do.
As for plain talk and cutting to the chase, as I get older, I find that I can do that with people I know well and with my relatives to a certain extent. But I find that with the majority of people, plain direct talk can sometimes be misconstrued as less than tackful and if you’re not careful, you end up turning the situation against you. I’ve found that the trick is to mix a bit of tact with a bit of plain talk, an art that I’m still learning, and wished that I paid more attention to in my youth.
Well that and the realization that dropping f-bombs may be personally satisfying but not so conducive to polite society.
In my mind “tactfulness” = “polite honesty” = “Keepin it real”
In life, if you act like an arrogant primadonna expect to get treated like a prick. That is essentially my point and it’s as “plain” as I can put it.
Just to have the last word on this issues. At no time did I act like a primadonna with the guy. I just asked a simple question very nicely.