gustavratzenhofer wrote: Now you have high-school kids, because they're the only ones willing to work for six dollars an hour and you ask them for a wing nut and they look at you as if you just asked them what is the meaning of the universe.
We have ONE hardware store that will actually help if I ask them... or even if I don't ask them... Ace Hardware. Usually the high school kids stand around and talk about the opposite sex until I ask them for a wing nut. Then they actually walk with me and find the wing nut. Not that it's always the Right wing nut, but at least they try.
Do y'all have Ace Hardware stores up north?
We also actually had a good shopping experience at Lowe's, which was quite surprising. I thought it was because the store was new and so were the employees. New employees are almost always more patient than the old timers, in my opinion.
I've had astonishingly bad customer service in some stores, though I can't remember them offhand. Luckily, we have no Kinko's around here!
These days, approaching old-ladyhood, I'll mouth off at bad customer service instantaneously.
Oh, Wal-Mart, that was it. We were about to go through the self-checkout and some female employee snapped at us, and I snapped right back without so much as thinking before I opened my mouth, and she Actually Apologized! It was positively shocking.
Our all-time worst customer service was at a local (and locally owned) restaurant that is now (thank goodness) closed. It was our 2nd wedding anniversary and we foolishly chose this place with no word-of-mouth advice... bad idea!
We got our salads and they had little rusty, melting bits in them. Clearly the lettuce had gone south several days before. I spoke to the waitress (being quite a bit more aggressive than Fuzzband), and, receiving no satisfaction, asked to see the manager. The waitress sort of shook her head in despair and fetched the restaurant owner.
Restaurant owner comes over, examines the lettuce, and says, "It's OK, it comes like that."
I said, "Would you eat that?"
She said, "No,
but it won't hurt you none."
I replied with something like, "That's your standard, not whether you food is good or edible, but that it won't actually make you sick?"
She sort of shrugged her shoulders and walked off.
This was, gosh, 6-7 years ago.
Even today the phrase "It won't hurt you none" sort of rings in my head when I get bad service.