Seriously Peeved

If there's one thing that gets my blood boiling, it's bad customer service. And if there's one thing that can get my blood back to its steady simmer, it's following that bad customer service up with amazing customer service. I had to deal with both of these things yesterday.

First, the back story. Aaron and I went grocery shopping early (like 8 am early) Sunday morning, because we wanted to beat the rush. We were home by 9:30, and went on with the rest of our day. Sunday night I realized that I hadn't unpacked 2 items from our shopping spree - a small bottle of soap, and a bottle of eye makeup remover, about $7 worth of merchandise. I asked Aaron if he had done anything with it, and he hadn't. He went out and checked the trunk of the car, but it wasn't there either. We had obviously left the store without a bag.

I hate when that happens, and it happens more often than I would like (about once every couple months thanks to the absolutely stellar baggers they have at this grocery store ).

To complicate matters, because why would I want to do anything the easy way, the receipt listing all of the items we purchased was, by that time, somewhere in the dumpster outside of our building. I refuse to dumpster dive, especially when I knew that at the top of that bag was some raw ground pork I had thrown away and there was no way in hell I was digging through that just for a stupid receipt. And, anyway, we still had the receipt showing us the amount to record in our checkbook. So I figured it was all good.

Yesterday morning I called the store and explained the situation: made it home without $7 worth of stuff, has happened before, but no receipt. The woman on the other end of the phone looked to see if the items had been brought back to the service desk. Of course, they hadn't been, so she said there was nothing she could do for me because I didn't have my itemized receipt. I said something about how, seriously $7! Has happened numerous times in the past! Want my stuff! $7! Repeatedly!

So, she put me through to a manager.

This manager responded to things in this manner: Sigh! You have to have a receipt. Sigh! Sigh! Well, since I'm (sigh!) feeling nice today, for some reason, if you come in before I leave today I'll give you your $7. SIGH!

She was fun. Also, she made me cry. Stupid PMS and dealing with annoying customer service.

So, I went in on my lunch break to deal with this. Oh, what a way to spend a lunch break. Anyway, I go in and the manager I talked to was on a lane and couldn't help me at the moment, but hey! Sergio! Other manager! Can you help this lady? (Seriously, his name was Sergio. I like saying that. Sergio.)

So Sergio, my knight on a white horse, came over and saved the day. You see, with the receipt I did have, you know, the one that records the lane, time, and amount of purchase, he could pull up my original receipt. Imagine that! Less than five minutes and I was out of the store with my stuff. And he was nice! No sighing! No making me feel like crap and like he was doing me a major favor.

On my way out of the store I had to have them check my items on my receipt (the copy that he magically was able to pull up on the computer program they have for that very purpose), so I caught Sergio right in front of the other manager to have him check my items. I gave the other (bitchy, sigh!) manager a smile as I walked by. I'm sure that really didn't make her day, but it sure made me feel better.

As I told Aaron later, either the other manager is dumb and doesn't understand how the computer system works (since she is one of the head managers, I'm thinking this is not the case), or she was being a bitch to me on purpose. I'm thinking it's case number 2. Which just makes me even more angry. Why be difficult when it was so easy to solve my problem?

Well, there's one thing I know for sure. I'm writing corporate to let them know how helpful Sergio was, and if I ever have a problem again I'm asking for him first thing. Because no way am I subjecting myself to the other kind of customer service again if I can help it.

Sigh!