smart vs. stupid customer service

I have always maintained that the difference between smart customer service people and stupid ones is as obvious as night and day. And you won't get what you need until you find a smart one, the stupid ones just will never do.

Over the past week it has been a great trial to have a number of photos laminated for a certain project at work. Let me demonstrate my aforementioned thesis with the following case studies from this last week. (I'm sorry the gory details are so lengthy. I hope it is entertaining nonetheless. It's a gong show.)

STUPID: I call a UPS store asking if they can laminate such-and-such. The guy sounds ESL, and I have a nagging suspicion that he doesn't quite understand what I need, but he insists he can do it before closing at 6 if I can get there by 5. I arrive at 5:10. Three people (apparently related) turn their blank faces away from the TV and towards me. "Hello!" I venture. Blank stares. Nobody gets up off their seats. I try again: "Hello!" One of them looks at the stuff I'm carrying, figures out I'm the girl from the phone call, and greets me by saying, "You're too late." I explain that I don't mind leaving the job overnight, and THEN he gets up off his arse and walks behind the counter to help. Except then it turns out that he doesn't have the correct equipment to do what I wanted as per our telephone conversation. My nagging suspicion is proven correct.

STUPID: I go to Superstore to have a photo blown up to 11"x14". I inquire if they can do that. The lady says they can. I ask when it will be ready. She says in a few weeks. I say, "You mean a few days?" She says no, a few weeks. They have to send the job to Ontario to have it done there. I leave the store.

STUPID: I take my laminating to Staples. Some guy takes my stuff and says he can have it laminated by 3pm. I can't be there at 3pm, so my boss goes and gets it for me. She reported the following conversation:
My boss: "You've laminated some of these photos so that they're overlapping."
Staples boy: "Is that a problem?"
"Yes, I can't use them if they're stuck together."
"Oh....Do you want me to fix it?"
"Yes!"
"Okay....Right now?"
"Well I'm certainly not coming back here again, so if you'd like to do it later and have it couriered to my office by the end of the day, be my guest."
"Oh. I guess I'll do it now."

STUPID: I go to the mall to see if I can find someone who will blow up my photo to 11"x14". I find a store that is a cross between a 1-hour photo place and Blacks, so the entire store is about photos. I ask the lady if they can make a photo that size. She says yes. I pull out my flash drive. She says they can't do that. I ask her to clarify, there must be a mistake. But no, they do not have a USB port anywhere in the store, but if I can write down the exact file name and give her my entire flash drive to send away somewhere, they can have it in a few days. This is obviously not a 21st century photo shop, and I need to use my flash drive for other things on a daily basis, so I leave.

STUPID: Those laminated photos I mentioned earlier were given to me on Friday. I had glanced at them at the time, but it was not until I took the paper cutter to them today (Monday) that I realized that one third of them were missing. When I called Staples and described what I was missing, the phone girl went to look for them. Sure enough, she found my envelope of missing photos just sitting on top of the laminator. The idiot from Friday must have gotten distracted and just sold my boss half of the job without remembering that he hadn't finished the rest of it.

SMART: (Cue angel choir.) I enter London Drugs with my flash drive. I ask the girl behind the counter about my 11"x14" photo. She says, "Sure!" and guides me to a computer where my order is taken in about 45 seconds.
"When do you need this done by?"
"Oh, anytime in the next few days is good."
"Well, I could have it ready in an hour if you want."
(I get a little choked up.)
"I can't be back here in an hour, but I could be back in three hours."
"Okay, I'll write down that you need in in 2 hours, so you'll be sure to get it."

SMART: (Angel choir reprise.) I arrive at Staples to collect my missing photos. The girl from the phone not only has laminated them all, but has trimmed them perfectly and has them ready in a neat stack. (I had been expecting the big plastic sheet full of laminated photos like we got on Friday.) I ask her to also laminate my newly procured 11"x14" photo, and she does so -- and trims it! -- within a minute. We head to the cash register, where I explain that my boss had already paid enough for the photos we got on Friday (I was not intending to pay for photos that had been forgotten). The girl sincerely says, "Oh, of course!" as if she had never dreamed of asking me to pay for them. No fuss whatsoever. We ring up the single photo I just had laminated, I thank her profusely for her helpfulness, and I leave satisfied. This may sound ridiculous, but I quietly prayed a blessing on her for being such a saint.

an adventurous, interesting, and educational week

Whirlwind Toronto Trip
My trip to Toronto was lovely, except maybe for the work part. And the jet lag. Nothing like having to start work at 6:00AM according to your biological clock! On Tuesday when I arrived we went straight out to Waterloo for a family dinner at my brother and sister-in-law's home to celebrate our parents' thirtieth anniversary. Everyone was there except Aaron, but we had a good time anyway.

After a full day of workshops on Wednesday, I spent the evening with my friend Fatima. We had lots of good, long conversation about relationships, family, and faith. And also a bit of medicine. Did you know that sometimes when two people spend a lot of time together and one of them is psychotic, the other can start to believe the psychoses as well? Fatima had encountered a case where a mother and a daughter both believed that every time the daughter opened her mouth to speak, worms came out of it. So you have to separate them to see which one you need to treat and which one is actually okay on their own. Fascinating!

Thursday was another full day of workshops, followed by a hurried dinner at the airport and a flight home. There was a kid somewhere on my plane who enthusiastically yelled "Blastoff!!!" when we took off.

Rainy Rollercoaster Adventure
On Friday it was right back to work, and I didn't even go home after work because I went to "Fright Night" at Playland (the local fairground/midway) with our church youth group. I have a thing for rollercoasters, and as a volunteer sponsor my ticket was paid for, so how could I refuse this chance for free rollercoasters? Here's the catch: it was POURING rain. And it wasn't a warm evening! I managed to stay dry under my umbrella while in line, but the first rollercoaster ride was the wettest experience of my life. At one point we went underneath something that was pouring extra drainage water from a roof or something, and it smacked me in the face and filled up the little basin formed by my two legs and the seat. I stoically survived the second rollercoaster (there were only two) and one haunted house before excusing myself and fleeing home. I can't remember the last time I was soaked through to the skin over such a large percentage of my body.

Geek Alert! Beware!
And finally, I must share with you my latest internet addiction. Galaxy Zoo is an online project to classify thousands of galaxies. The fact is that humans can classify galaxies as elliptical, spiral, mergers or "other" much better than any computer program, so after reading a brief tutorial and completing a 15-question test, they let you log in and classify your little heart away.

It's really exciting, because in many cases you are the first human being to see or take note of these galaxies! A computerized telescope took all the photos and prepped them for classification. It's completely addictive because of the "random reinforcement", just like gambling. By far the majority of the galaxies you see are plain old elliptical galaxies, or even just distant smudges, like this: But every once in awhile you get little rewards like this: Or once in every few hundred times you get a wicked-awesome reward like this: That's right, that is two spiral galaxies beginning to collide! Amazing!

this fish did not die

I just finished working about 45 hours last week (and I took my stat on Monday, so that's saying something) and now I'm going to Toronto for an uber-packed work trip, and then I shall return on Friday just in time for one day of prep (and an evening youth event) before UrbanPromise's annual fundraiser on Saturday night. And then I have Monday and Tuesday to prep for a leadership training event I'm running on Wednesday.

Interpretation: I will not have a life for at least 10 more days. I apologize in advance for my lack of posts. See you on the other side...

Mafia rules Vancouver public transit

This morning on the bus, the man standing in front of my seat absentmindedly mimed what I assumed to be his golf grip and swing. It looked very precise and strong. I chuckled at him inwardly until I looked up and got a complete picture of what this guy looked like. He was wearing a black suit with a black shirt underneath. His black hair (widows peak, receeding hairline) was slicked back. His pockmarked face had an Italian appearance about it.

In short, he looked like the Mafia. And his little pantomime seemed that much creepier.

shrines

I have noticed before that as soon as I post something apologetic about my lack of posting, I suddenly am inspired to write more. As my mother always said, getting started is the hardest part.

Today I walked past the place where a man was murdered last week, near to one of the highschools I work with. An impromptu shrine of sorts had been set up, just like you might see at the site of a highway accident. I wanted to see what I could learn about the deceased. I figured by the two whoppers and the stolen burger joint menu that he really liked burgers. I also determined by more than a dozen (empty) bottles and one branded baseball cap that he REALLY liked Jack Daniels. There were also a good number of candles, flowers, and pub T-shirts.

In highschool, when my friend died in a kayaking mishap, I bought an apple fritter from Tim Hortons and left it on her doorstep.

It's an odd, unspoken and somewhat universal behaviour to create "shrines" and leave gifts for the dead, and I'm not sure I quite understand it.

blogging lull

I admit that I am not updating this blog as much as I feel I ought to be. Somehow I don't feel there is much that is blogworthy to post. Or perhaps it is only that I don't feel like writing the blogworthy things down. Or maybe I just haven't been feeling creative enough to write it well. So I will write it in a mediocre fashion instead (my apologies) because I am stubborn and will not let this blog go to the dogs. Honestly, it is the comments - both in-person and on this blog - from my loved ones afar that keep me going. This is for you! I love you guys and I will not leave you hanging!

So here's my mediocre blog post:

I did take note last week of a blogworthy child who was playing with a rubber lizard. He was charming until he started climbing all over the ATM that I was using, and his mother did nothing to stop him. I became unimpressed, and his former charm was eclipsed by brattiness and poor parenting.

Baby Caleb fell asleep on my shoulder on Sunday. Now my arms are sore.

Last week I went to a funeral for a relative my mother's age. Cancer got her too young, but she was a delightful person, and the stories that were told at the reception brought many laughs.

Work stuff is starting to get busy, but more in the paperwork sense and not so much in the programming sense. I guess a change is better than a break!

I am looking forward to thanksgiving with family and friends.

The end.

nerd alert

I will admit that many of my Sci-Fi/Comic points are due to the fact that my husband purchases and owns comics and also sci-fi TV, and that therefore these objects are to be found in my household...but I do not deny that I have read/watched pretty much all of it.

Much of my historical geekiness comes from the number of Biblical studies books that I own.

I lost out a bit on the dork factor because I am married and don't rely on the internet for my sex life.

But I would like to point out that I could answer without hesitation that iron is the heaviest element that a star can produce through fusion without going supernova. That science & math score is all mine! ALL MINE!

(Obviously they didn't ask enough questions about MMORPGs.)