simplerich

In my previous blog I had a post where I said I’d lost my voice. I didn’t know what it was like until now though. I just thought I had lost my voice. Right now I’m adrift about what to do with this thing.

My previous blog was lost in a database accident. Partly carelessness, and partly I’m not sure why. There are still files on dreamhost I can’t delete for some reason so I suspect it really was broken before I got to it.

So, someone once said that a writer who doesn’t write can’t call himself a writer. So, I’m writing. It won’t be as on target as it was before. I’ve got to re-establish both the writing and the blogging habit. Please suffer through this with me as I do. I appreciate your patience and understanding. It was a bigger blow than I thought it would be to lose my blog.

I’m a big fan of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series of books. The most recent one, The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4) came out yesterday and I *ahem* managed to wind up at one of my locations that was within a few blocks of Borders so I picked up a copy and read half last night and half today. It was as good as the first three were and it made me want to go find him and beg the next chapter off the author. If you’ve any interest in Greek Mythology, adventure stories, or any of the Harry Potter books this series is a great one. With summer coming up and kids getting out of school I recommend the whole series as a great summer read. There’s talk of a movie being made. But for now… I just want the next book to come out.

Last weekend I was a statistic and went to see the movie Ironman. I really liked it. It’s getting rave reviews and I was one of the ravers with one caveat. If it’d had ten minutes less establishing shots of him building the armor and one additional fight I’d have liked it much much more. It had some violence in it. It’s a comic book super-hero movie, how could it not? But in the way of comics of yesterday the violence was pretty much off screen. Explosions happened, but no body parts flew, the smoke and fire hid the ppl. There was a flame thrower scene, but everybody ran around on fire and it didn’t really show them. The FEEL of a classic comic was very much captured. I certainly recommend it for a matinee. The next movie I’m looking forward to is Speed Racer, and then, of course, the new Indiana Jones movie. I had a 9th grader at a friend’s house indicate Harrison Ford in the trailer and ask me if I’d ever seen him in a movie before because he was pretty good. *sigh* Kids today! Darned whippersnappers!

I was talking to the director of the Chamber of Commerce today and we were talking about employee turn-over for some reason. It wasn’t intentional, but, in the way conversations sometimes wander it came up. He said he’d been fortunate in that he had low turnover and was glad about it as he didn’t like disappointing people.

I agreed it was sad to have to let someone go because they were providing poor service but that I tried to focus on the good I was doing for future customers rather than the situation I was putting the employee in that wasn’t willing to work with me at providing outstanding customer service.

He looked at me for a minute and said, “I meant disappointing the employee.”

I laughed at our misunderstanding. The funniest part to me was how concerned he was about the feelings of an employee that had to be let go. I’m not quick to fire at all, but by the time I get to that point I don’t tear myself up about it. By the time I get to that point with an employee I really have done my part to keeping the relationship alive. I know it’s uncomfortable to let someone go you’ve grown close to, but when the job is something like the Chamber of Commerce for a smallish town the only person to consider is the customer. The whole organization depends on the Chamber giving good customer service to their customers, the townsfolk and businesses.

As silly as it sounds the expression on his face said to me he’d not thought of the impact the bad customer was having on his customers… namely me as a local business person. Maybe I misread the expression. Surely he didn’t get where he was by ignoring the customer. It brings me up though… what part of my business am I looking at from the wrong point of view? What boat am I missing? Who would I call to ask to help me find my blind spots? I ask customers, employees, bosses, potential customers, customers who are leaving without buying. But what’m I missing? How do we evaluate our blind spots?

Earth-day is over so we can go back to our normal wasteful ways guilt free. I’m sure we all thought about replacing a light bulb with a Compact Flourescent that will last much longer and uses less electricity. That’s good. We thought about it.

It turns out that two of my pictures of a coal burning plant is being used in a news article about coal burning plants being used again in Italy. So that’s pretty cool. I assure you, in spite of Italy’s going to coal that doesn’t mean I hate the environment. Only recycled electrons will be used to display the digital image I took so feel free to click away.

Today I went to go shop the competition and realized that I was wearing one of my work shirts with our big ole corporate logo and name smeared across my heart. Well it’s almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit out there. A jacket would have been obvious. Looks like it’s time to go get a new polo at Gordmans! I swerved into the store, not braking because I wanted to conserve momentum and coast into a parking spot with a minimum of gas usage. That’s right people… I fancy myself an extreme hyper-miler. (Not really) . The shirt is in the picture above. It’s the ONLY item I bought and the lady handed me a bag with the shirt in it and a 19" receipt. I left the bag on the counter.

I’m a big user of those green re-usable cloth shopping bags like those at bagsontherun.com. I use them all the time at Hy-vee and carry one in my car for when I shop on the road. For single items in stores I don’t get a sack. I have two hands. I can carry things, so I pulled the shirt out of the bag and slid it across the counter to her. "I don’t need it. Thank you though."

Nineteen inches of receipt paper for one shirt. They’ve been to a branding seminar though, or someone has because they got their name on their at least twice in big print. Folks. There’s no reason for this sort of waste, and there’s GOT to be a way to address it. Remember in the 70s when we were all going to be paperless and overweight because computers and robots did all the work for us? Remember in the 80s when there was talk of a 35 hour work week? What happened? We’re using as much or more paper than ever. We know more than ever what we’re doing to ourselves and our environment and while it’s true we’re all too fat and sedentary we’re working more than ever before. C’mon! Why’s the fat part the only part that’s right? I want my hover car!!!

OK. The hover car thing, maybe over the top, unless it’s powered by a Mr. Fusion. But a nineteen inch long receipt is irresponsible of them. That thermal paper isn’t cheap. Seriously. So Instead of giving me a 4 inch receipt that would have had PLENTY of room for branding and to pimp their website for feedback they decided they needed to give me a scroll. Someone in the company isn’t being a good steward of their resources. They’re not taking care of the company funds by wasting paper, and they’re not taking care of the world… again… by wasting paper.

Earthday’s over finally, and I can get back to breathing in the smug as those around me who have them tour around in their Prius’ the two blocks to pick up their lattes and none of us really DO anything about things. Some of us are in positions where we can make decisions that impact things for real. If everybody who could make a little difference did it’d be one helluva difference. I’m looking at YOU Gordmans!

I switched recently from Verizon to another company. I loved Verizon. They brought a LOT to the table. Exemplary customer service, outstanding equipment, and wonderful coverage.

This new company brings to the table something else though… free incoming calls. Nights and weekends starting at 7pm instead of Verizon’s 9pm. It’s a big cost difference for me. Free incoming calls… from anybody/everybody. Want my number? I’ll send it to you. Call any time It’s FREE!!!

Sadly. That’s all theoretical. Well, it’s true. The thing is I can’t enjoy it.

They sold me a phone. They said it would do the GPS My Navigator turn-by-turn thing. It wouldn’t so I exchanged it for another phone. This one took two days to finally send or receive picture messages. It never did work for doing the my contacts back-up thing. NEVER. I couldn’t get it to. Tech support couldn’t get it to. Stores couldn’t get it to do it. I gave up. At this point I was hating the new phone. Every time I looked at it I was reminded of what I’d left for something I hated…

I went to the store today and asked them to give me my old phone back. I didn’t care any more. If I was going to hate something I at least wanted a cool phone. It took half an hour to switch me back to my old phone. The sales rep canceled my phone then tried to reactivate my original phone, still there in a box only to find it wasn’t working… someone had switched it. There were three phones back there. None worked. She couldn’t switch me to one of those phones now. She only had permission to switch me to a used phone. I was upset. I’d been changed to a phone that wouldn’t perform as advertised. I’d been sold a phone that wouldn’t do what it was supposed to be able to do. I was well within my 30 days period and they now couldn’t give me a different phone because the one they’d tried to give me was broken, meaning they weren’t standing behind their equipment.

Finally, exasperated I told the clerk to ring me up a new phone. Ring it up at full price and they could figure out a way to make it right. My lunch hour had been up by half an hour all wasted. I just wanted a phone. I wanted the phone I wanted. I wanted to leave it behind me and I wanted to get out of that store.

The clerk was frustrated as well. She was doing everything she could think of to get things done right for me. The store’s owners and managers were in a meeting and not taking calls so she was pulling every string she had. She offered me 100 dollars of her own money, from her purse, to fix things. I said if it were from the company I would take it. But not from her. It was incumbent upon her company to work as hard to keep me as I’d just worked to keep them. I just wanted the whole wretched thing to be over. I was their customer, and I’d been miserable every single minute of it. Would they fix it?

Here’s how it happened.

Me: Hi Mr. Cellphone plan salesman. Here are my requirements. A, B, and C. They’re all deal-breakers. My current company does them all very well and has great customer service. You, however, beat them on price. I’m not unhappy with them. But your prices are substantially cheaper. Can you do A, B, and C?

Him: Yes!!!

Me: I have a family plan, a rather LARGE family plan. Will you be able to do this relatively painlessly? We’ll each have differing uses and different phones.

Him: Happens all the time. Won’t be a problem.

Me: So, this phone here, the ONLY phone you carry that I like. Will it do A and B?

Him: Yes. It’s our newest.

Me: OK.

It didn’t do it. There was no GPS turn-by-turn navigating software available for that phone and they had no way of knowing when there would be. Ugh. Fine. Give me a phone I hate. Strike 1, and it was THE deal-breaker. Oh. Did I mention it was a 104 mile drive to exchange the phone? It was.

Next messaging wouldn’t work for me.

Today I tried to get their free contacts back-up software to work. I’ve tried all week since I got it and it just won’t work for me. Two customer service and tech support people on separate phone calls worked on it with me. Finally they told me to go to a store.

At the store some child did everything but roll her eyes as I explained what was going on and how I’d been directed to bring the phone to her. She did everything I’d done. I understand she has to do that, but she could have not ignored me like I had spinach in my teeth.

In the forty-five minutes I was there not once did she apologize. Not once did she say she was sorry or that the company was sorry. Not once. What she DID say was that in 3 days or so someone would call me and tell me what to do.

I told her I’d had the phone 5 days and with a thirty-day guarantee I knew what I’d do if it wasn’t working in three days. I wasn’t rude about it… but honestly! I asked if it was the phone, the plan, the migration or what that was causing every aspect of my experience cause me to get an upset stomach whenever I heard their company’s name on the radio. She shrugged and said she didn’t know. She was new.

Ugh. Verizon. I’m sorry I left. If these people don’t pull their collective heads out I’ll be back because I assure you… while it may be the way people talk around here… it’s not the way they do ANYTHING else. Worst phone experience EVER. And it just keeps happening.

In all honesty I don’t know if there is anything this company could do right now to make me a happy customer. Just writing this down and rethinking about it has given me knots in my stomach. I really just don’t know what I would do if I were in their shoes to try and make me happy. So far nobody’s offered to try and make me happy or comp me a free wallpaper or ringtone.  Would I recommend them? Not to anybody I liked.