The Beginning

So I've finally decided to jump on the blogging bandwagon. My initial thought was "Hey, I'll just rant about my life in general," but that seemed too self-serving. So I'm now on a crusade - against the idiots in the world who claim to be "customer service oriented" or that my "customer satisfaction" is their first priority. Really? Are you sure? 'Cause I'm not digging my past few experiences.

Now, admittedly, I do work in communications. Specifically, public relations, with a little bit (okay, a lot) of marketing stuff thrown in there (and no, they're NOT the same thing, but that's for a future posting). In a nutshell, I spend a great deal of time bringing harmony and understanding to the relationships between the company I work for and its audiences. So yeah, I'm a little sensitive to the attitude of the person behind the counter, on the other end of the phone, behind the booth at the trade show, and so on. But is it really all that hard to make a person feel like their patronage means something to your business?

So here's what started this whole thing. While out running errands for work today, I stopped to grab a salad that I could take back to the office from a deli I frequent. Notice I said "frequent." That means that they've seen me more than once.

Issue number one: I enter, take my place in line and proceed to place my order with a person who is clearly not happy to be there. Of course, she seems plenty happy to be there when the guy in front of me places his order. Personally, I don't think I look all that scary, but hey, I've been wrong before.

Issue number two: Next, I give my order slip to the guy who owns the place so that he can take my money. He looks at the slip (which has my name on it) gives me my total and then calls me Dan. My name is not Dan. It's Danielle, and I can assure you that I don't look like a man.

Issue number three: Then I move to the "to-go" waiting area for my box 'o goodness, where I wait for what seems like a really long time for a salad. It's finally ready. The guy at the counter calls my name (Danielle this time) sets the box on the counter, turns and walks away. As an afterthought, he says, as he's walking away, "Thanks Dan!"

Issue number four: I've ordered this particular salad before with great results. Fresh, crunchy lettuce. Ripe tomatoes. Fresh crumbled feta. AWESOME dressing. Lo-and-behold, when I opened my box today, what I encountered was not the salad that I had so enjoyed on previous occasions. No, what I got today looked like it had been scraped out of the left-over bin. A couple of olives, yellowed feta, some wimpy cucumber slices, no dressing, and, the worst of all - brown, slimy lettuce.

Anyone who's known me for any period of time will tell you that I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to a couple of things:

1. Grown women with really high-pitched voices. You know, the ones who sound like they've been sucking on a helium balloon for a week straight.
2. My house must be clean and orderly. Make fun if you want, but I have been known to clean up the kitchen while I still had guests in the house.
3. My food.

Those who know me also know that I will eat just about anything, as long as it's not raw fish, anything that's been near raw fish, or anything that looks like raw fish, is okay by me. So the olives and cucumber I could overlook. And I could pick out the weird pieces of feta. Oh, and I had some dressing here in the work fridge, so that could have worked out. But I draw the line at the lettuce. Quite frankly, it makes my stomach turn.

I realize that eating establishments can't afford to just toss every piece of lettuce with a little bit of brown on the edges, but come on. There's a clear distinction between edible and not edible, and there was no way I was eating that.

So here I sit, hungry and irritated because I know that based on the sum of all the parts from today's visit to the deli, a phone call to complain wouldn't do a whole lot. So my decided course of action? To not go there again. Ever.