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The amount is awful too, what is $23 a month buy? But people still insist folks are buying lobster and filet mignon on their food stamps.
I can't really complain. All during covid I was getting the full amount. It helped when I needed it.
And I'll admit, when steak (never filet mignon, though) was on sale and cheaper than hamburger, I did buy that. Nowdays I'm paying $2/lb more for hamburger than I did for petite sirloin when it was on sale then. The world is now squirrelly.
I just answered another question on another thread and it got me to thinking about this one here.
Maybe it's not entirely customer service that's going down the tubes. I mean, yes, it is getting worse, but maybe not for the reasons we think, like people are lazy or can't make change or things like that.
I used to work for Kinko's, which was once on Forbes top ten list of best places to work for.
Six years later it was down the tubes. At one point it was going to go public and then they were bought out by FedEx. Before that happened, the founder of the company sold his stock back and said he didn't like the direction the company was going in and was getting out. Morale fell like a stone. Now there really is no Kinko's.
I see that a lot with a lot of old, established businesses. They're a hundred or more years old and then boom! some new CEO comes in, changes everything, screws over the employees, alienates the customers, gets his million dollar payout and walks away as the business disintegrates. And this seems to be the new normal.
I don't like bad customer service, but in a way, I can sure understand it. When a parking spot in a garage makes more an hour than you do and you know your boss can fire you on a whim, when there's no room for advancement, when you have to lie to customers and sell them things you know they don't need just to keep your job, where is the motivation to be a better employee?
Even the companies that aren't old and established can be a pain to work for. Look at the cable companies and the phone companies. They hire their employees in cattle calls and rule them by metrics. If your metrics aren't high enough, you're out. You can't talk to your customers and get a bond going because you're only allowed so much time per call. Sometimes you have to accidentally hang up on them to keep your times under their limit. Morale is pretty much not there.
Working at a convenience store should be easy. But if you sell alcohol, you better not sell to anyone under 18. If someone uses a fake ID, you're the one who gets the $500 fine. You can't sell to anyone already drunk, either. You become the booze police and have to listen to people call you names and swear at you for $7.25 an hour.
You work the drive thru at McDonalds. You have only so many seconds to take their order and get their food out. If they stay at your window longer than they're supposed to, you get in trouble. When it's busy and the cars are backed up and the food is taking extra long to cook, everyone's in trouble.
If you work at Target in a clothing department, you get to clean the fitting rooms after customers have thrown clothes all around or even peed in them or spread poop over the walls.
Some gas stations that aren't pre-pay will take the cost of a drive out (leaving without paying) out of the clerk's pay. Some restaurants will do the same to a waiter or waitress if they serve people who dine and dash.
I'm not trying to excuse people here, but in the end, given how much abuse workers have to take both from the public and from their managers, I don't wonder why we get such bad service. The wonder is we get as good service as we do sometimes.
I had an old 457 account at my previous employer that I could no longer contribute to, so I decided to roll it into my current retirement plan. I would call and call and stay on hold until the line would hang up. It was super annoying. So I talked talked to the previous employer who provided me the paperwork and she helped me complete it. Well Mission Retirement sent a part of my funds to my current company and the other half directly to me. I had to chase them down again over the phone to get them to cancel and re-issue the check and at this time, the other company still has not received the rest of the funds.
Oh lord yes. The bolded happens to me all the time. Our health insurance provider being the exception, I've never been on hold with them for longer than 5mins.
My main gripe would be the attitude of people in customer service positions. We now live in southern UT where in general people, including those in customer service, seem less sullen but when we lived in Phoenix it was awful. Every fast food joint or convenient store employee had a rather depressed and ibtchy disposition.
I just spent 20 minutes spinning my wheels on a chat with Anthem. I was poking around the site looking for the estimated cost calculator (I had their insurance a few years ago, pre-covid and remembered it from then). They did have an area with some procedures and costs listed, but I couldn't figure out how to search for what I wanted. I thought this was a simple question. Instead I was strung along for 20+ minutes with a live agent who was going to send me... something (I still haven't gotten it). I think it was a fancy phrase for "Plan Benefits" which I've had for months. 20 minutes for them to finally say they don't have a link, and in the way they always say it and you know you're talking to someone from overseas, that they are sorry for the inconvenience and they did not want to disappoint me blah blah. Why couldn't they just say "we don't have a link to that" to begin with?! Do they get points for being attached to a customer longer? Are they bored?
Where I live in Charlotte NC customer service is above average. Not been treated poorly since we moved here 3 years ago.
Today I needed some wood so went to Home Depot and interacted with at least 5 employees and every one of them was helpful and pleasant. To top it off we went to our car to load the wood, knew in advance that getting the 48" width in would take some work and were struggling (husband thinking of going back in and having it cut down and I said nooooo) so up comes a young male employee, he said "I can get that in for you" and OMG he just did it. I said "You have done this before haven't you" and he said yes. He did not have to help us, he just did.
I've noticed a lot of younger people in the service sector seem to be angry about having to do their jobs .... I suspect this has something to do with the left beating it into their head's that "rich people are bad, they're taking advantage of you!"
Don't expect a 20% tip from me if you have an unwarranted attitude.
I just answered another question on another thread and it got me to thinking about this one here.
Maybe it's not entirely customer service that's going down the tubes. I mean, yes, it is getting worse, but maybe not for the reasons we think, like people are lazy or can't make change or things like that.
I used to work for Kinko's, which was once on Forbes top ten list of best places to work for.
Six years later it was down the tubes. At one point it was going to go public and then they were bought out by FedEx. Before that happened, the founder of the company sold his stock back and said he didn't like the direction the company was going in and was getting out. Morale fell like a stone. Now there really is no Kinko's.
I see that a lot with a lot of old, established businesses. They're a hundred or more years old and then boom! some new CEO comes in, changes everything, screws over the employees, alienates the customers, gets his million dollar payout and walks away as the business disintegrates. And this seems to be the new normal.
I don't like bad customer service, but in a way, I can sure understand it. When a parking spot in a garage makes more an hour than you do and you know your boss can fire you on a whim, when there's no room for advancement, when you have to lie to customers and sell them things you know they don't need just to keep your job, where is the motivation to be a better employee?
Even the companies that aren't old and established can be a pain to work for. Look at the cable companies and the phone companies. They hire their employees in cattle calls and rule them by metrics. If your metrics aren't high enough, you're out. You can't talk to your customers and get a bond going because you're only allowed so much time per call. Sometimes you have to accidentally hang up on them to keep your times under their limit. Morale is pretty much not there.
Working at a convenience store should be easy. But if you sell alcohol, you better not sell to anyone under 18. If someone uses a fake ID, you're the one who gets the $500 fine. You can't sell to anyone already drunk, either. You become the booze police and have to listen to people call you names and swear at you for $7.25 an hour.
You work the drive thru at McDonalds. You have only so many seconds to take their order and get their food out. If they stay at your window longer than they're supposed to, you get in trouble. When it's busy and the cars are backed up and the food is taking extra long to cook, everyone's in trouble.
If you work at Target in a clothing department, you get to clean the fitting rooms after customers have thrown clothes all around or even peed in them or spread poop over the walls.
Some gas stations that aren't pre-pay will take the cost of a drive out (leaving without paying) out of the clerk's pay. Some restaurants will do the same to a waiter or waitress if they serve people who dine and dash.
I'm not trying to excuse people here, but in the end, given how much abuse workers have to take both from the public and from their managers, I don't wonder why we get such bad service. The wonder is we get as good service as we do sometimes.
It's always been like that in customer service. Heck, when I used to deliver for Dominos in the 80's people used to turn all the outside lights out so I couldn't find the house and they'd get the pizza free. People have been leaving their clothes strewn in dressing rooms 50 years ago, too. Bartenders and servers don't get fined if someone uses fake i.d., the bar does.
I do think there is greater burn out today due to corporate policies that push productivity at the expense of all else. But I don't see the bad customer service in person, in store employees, etc. It is just trying to reach someone, a person and not a bot, sitting on hold for 90 minutes while a cheerful voice chimes in every 3 minutes "Your call is very important to us" or having them just answer the phone at all. When I got an EZPass violation because my tag didn't read, I called multiple times a day over 2 weeks and no one ever answered. I had to take off work to drive 45 minutes to the customer service center for a 5 minute fix. That's the kind of thing.
If you work at Target in a clothing department, you get to clean the fitting rooms after customers have thrown clothes all around or even peed in them or spread poop over the walls.
This blows my mind. I assume my mom taught me how to put clothes back on the hangers in dressing rooms because I've always done that. And after working in retail, you may see me putting clothes back on hangers that have fallen on the ground (while I'm shopping). All hangers face the same way. etc
I thought EVERYONE did this because that's all I knew.
But I was working in a clothing shop in an expensive town, and a good customer walked in to check out the spring line. She chatted with us after, not finding anything she liked. I walked into the dressing room to put away the clothes she tried on and they were all.over.the.place. Hangers, clothes, everything. Clothes were inside out, like she peeled them off then flung them over her shoulder. It was like a bomb went off in there and I knew exactly who did it. I never looked at her the same after that. I tried to get her banned from the store lol
I use to have qualified candidates trying to get a job with my company at a reasonable rate of pay.
Since 2020 I lost employees who started receiving money from the government, and couldn't lure them back to work, at even pay above what the business could afford, and still make a profit.
Now when you do find that rare someone willing to work, they act entitled as if they have been with the company for years, and want things no rookie should expect.
Also, this young generation coming out of school doesn't seem to have been brought up to have proper manners, a good work ethic, or even basic customer service skills.
Many are so used to living through their phones and social media, they do not possess the social interaction experience needed to interact/appease customers.
I am not sure what the solution is, but suspect if the country falls on hard times, it might jolt people back into reality. Then again, as long as their phone and cable bills are paid, they can live in fantasy land by enabling parents and a government which pays them just to breath.
But I was working in a clothing shop in an expensive town, and a good customer walked in to check out the spring line. She chatted with us after, not finding anything she liked. I walked into the dressing room to put away the clothes she tried on and they were all.over.the.place. Hangers, clothes, everything. Clothes were inside out, like she peeled them off then flung them over her shoulder. It was like a bomb went off in there and I knew exactly who did it. I never looked at her the same after that. I tried to get her banned from the store lol
.
I'm a guy so trying on clothes is a snap for me anyway, but I do try to rehang everything. However a couple of times I've been told not to bother because they have to adjust and rehang everything anyway because the customers don't do it the way the company wants. Don't know if that's everywhere or just the men's stores I was in, but could be a possible explanation for why someone doesn't rehang.
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Do they get points for being attached to a customer longer? Are they bored?
