Customer Disservice

Posted by: colormewrite on: October 20, 2010

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The bitter-sweet of Starbucks.

At what point in our computer age of “techlightenment” did we lose ourselves, our manners and our social skills to the cyber shorthand of distance and disservice?  Nowhere is this failure to relate as fellow human beings seen greater than in the degradation of customer service-respect has practically base jumped out the window.  Case in point (true story):

 

I approached the Starbucks counter, already exhausted from a late night of work beforehand and about to begin another long shift.  The green apron comforted me as I placed my order for a caffeine quick fix, “I’ll have a caramel mocha latte please.”  The Baristo stared icily at me, “We don’t have a caramel mocha latte.”  In my tired stupor, I tried to recount the number of times I’d gotten that very same drink at this very same kiosk, “I ordered one yesterday.”  He put one hand on his hip, “We have a mocha caramel latte, but not a caramel mocha latte.”  At this point, I had to take a deep breath and stared at the fellow spirit incarnate before me-resisting my impulse to lecture him on the importance of customer care, with my then over five years of retail management experience.  I smiled wryly, “That’s the same thing, with the same ingredients.”  He tilted his head, “Yes, but that’ not what it’s called.”  Now my smile was gone, “Seriously?”  No reply.  I acquiesced to attempt a partial high road-with a smartass tone of course, “Alright, may I please have a mocha caramel latte.”  He rolled his eyes, shrugged and went to make my drink.

The moral here, besides the obvious one of not to order a caramel mocha latte at Starbucks when confronted with a haughty, uninspired, bitter employee, is this:  We need to take the BS down a few notches and remember that all we really have at the end of the day is how we treat ourselves and those sharing the journey on this planet.  Maybe if we peel ourselves away from the cold shroud of cyber space long enough, we’ll remember the power of words and actions that lack the detached strokes of a keyboard-the reverberation is felt much more deeply (and karmically) without a backspace/delete button.