A brief rant on customer service.

remember choose your own adventure books? here's one for you:

you're staff at a furnitrue store. it's a weekday evening, and there is no one around. you're off soon so your boyfriend is waiting to drive you home. a young couple walks into the store. if you...

approach them and offer your help, as is logical to do in the sales industry, go to page 2.

sit down on the couch with your boyfriend and ignore the couple, and then proceed to kiss him and skip off away from the couple to so something that is more than likely completely not work related, go to below.

for the record, there is no page 2. because if the girl who was at the store andrew and i were shopping at last night had anything to say about this, she would have picked the second option. and we're going to go with that for a moment.

let me say something about customer service.

[inhale deeply]

it's important. it's ESSENTIAL in business. you do not need to wait on someone hand and foot, you don't need to follow them everywhere, you don't need to be humbled by how much you have to "serve" someone. BUT you do have to do your job, which is to be helpful. most people are grateful for it. sucks when they aren't, but awesome when they are.

having worked for four years at a catering company and one and a half at zellers, i know what it's like to just want to go home and not be at work. but the fact is, that until you're done you're shift - you. are. at. work. and acting like that is repulsive to customers. if we had been planning on buying anything there that night, let me tell you that thought is now gone completely. we found a place where the guy was super helpful, personable, and gave just the right amount of space with attention. odds are good we'll pay 1/3 more if we go with stuff from there, but customer service counts for more than saving money to me, and probably a LOT of other people.

end rant.