The “No Service” Economy

By Hank Silverberg

For years we’ve been hearing that “Americans don’t make things anymore,” and we have switched over to a “service economy.” That is not totally true. There are still factories in the United States that make everything from nails to solar panels (both hit hard by the Trump tariffs, but that’s for another edition).

But it is true that much of our money is spent on health care, the internet, sports and entertainment. We spend a lot on things like doctors, brokers, ISP’s, tourism and streaming. The exception may be the electronics we buy, much of it built overseas.   

So, you would think that since we are in a service economy, that America would lead the world in customer service. Sorry, no. In fact, a new survey from LinkedIn shows customer service is among the scarcest qualities in workers in general, and especially in the DC region. (We are not including Congress here, which also provides very little customer service.) 

https://Ihnkd.in/gCxgFBg

This past week was a good example.

I’m a brick and mortar kind of shopper. When I buy a product I want to hold it, get the feel of it, and if necessary try it out or try it on. I rarely shop on the internet. I don’t have an Amazon account. Call me old school or old fashioned if you must, but hands on is the way I like it.

This week my trusted weed whacker, which had performed admirably for 20 years at three different homes, finally gave up the ghost. I got my money’s worth out of it, so when I needed to get a new one, I went to the same home improvement store as last time to look for the same brand. 

The 2018 version of the same gadget was easy to find on the shelf, and the price, $89.95, was not that much more than I paid 20 years ago. I am not naming brands or stores in this blog because I don’t want to pay a lawyer.   

(The new machine)

 I spent a few minutes reading the box because I noticed it had a different battery style. My old charger was now obsolete. So, that raised the question: Was there a charger in the box? There was all kinds of writing on the side but none of it told me if there was a charger inside, not in English, French, Spanish or…I don’t know what the fourth language was. 

Time to find a salesperson. There wasn't one in the garden tool section. The first one I found after going half way across the store, gave me a blank stare, stumbled and said, “Not my department, I‘ll find someone.”

After standing there for five minutes, I realized he had deserted me. The second employee I found was even less helpful. 

     "Try someone in garden tools." 

It was no use explaining there was no one there.  So, I made my way to the check out counter, hoping they could help me. There were no cashiers, just the self-service registers. There was, however, one person standing there to deal with the machines that only work right three out of five times. His solution was simple, something I was unwilling to do without a store employee. 

“Let’s open the box and check.”  There was a battery, the weed whacker and a charger. Problem solved.  Though I am not sure why they didn’t have that information on the box,  I had my new weed whacker after 45 minutes of “no service” shopping. 

I love email, and texting. They are very convenient and cost effective. But sometimes you need to use snail-mail and you need stamps, and we always seem to be out of stamps when I need one. So, it was with great trepidation that I spent part of last Monday at the United States Post Office.

I had to get that letter out in a timely manner. After all, “You may have already won,” was too hard to resist.

 Where I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia, you have three choices for a post office. The traditional big one downtown, the small annex in a strip mall on crowded Route One or the sliver of a store front at the "Town Center Mall." (Despite the name, it is nowhere near the center of town, or even near an actual town, and it’s right across the street from "Central Park," another big mall which is neither central, nor a park.)       

I had a few things I needed to buy, so I chose the mall. When I got to the door of the tiny post office at 12:30, there was one of those little clocks that said “Be back at” with the little hand on the 1 and the big hand on the 3. (For those of you from the internet generation that’s 1:15.)

 So, I went back across the mall to buy a few things. The walking, after all, was good for me. By the time I got back to the little post office it was 1:17 and there was a line with five people ahead of me. When I got to the postal clerk about 10 minutes later, I asked her “So why were you closed at 12:30 on a weekday?”

“I was at lunch,” she said, looking a bit incredulous that I asked as she handed me a book of stamps.  It was then I noticed she was the only person working at a busy post office in the middle of a business day.  I would write my congressman and complain, but like many of his colleagues in Washington, he has no clue what the real world is about. It isn’t worth the 50 cent stamp, even though I now have some.  

    After all this it was time for lunch. I know I am not supposed to eat so called “fast food,” but sometimes you just need it and I had walked all that distance inside the mall, which wore off some calories. The Golden Arches were beckoning me.

 My very first job was at a fast food joint when I was 16. No arches there, just a funny looking monarch. So, I have some empathy for the people behind the counter. The job can be boring and tedious.  I ordered one of those “meals.” 

The kid behind the counter, who looked to be about 20, punched in the order, which came out to $8.08.

      “Whoa,” I said, “that’s not what I paid a few weeks ago.”

       Without looking at me he mumbled, “They raised the price on the fries.” 

My money is tight these days, and I was feeling guilty about eating this stuff anyway, so I asked him to change the order to small fries instead of medium. 

A blank stare. He didn’t know how to change the order.

A co-worker came over to help and now my order went up to $8.86. Huh?  His body language got tight, the pitch of his voice went up.

    “Well, you changed your order,” he said.  

     “Why is it more when I downsized?” I said.

     “You ordered individual items,” he said with an even higher pitch and his arms folded. There was some more give and take, but when I finally got my order settled for $6.33 after several simple questions and some very terse responses, I gave the young man some advice.

     “Young man, you will find as you make you way in life and in business, that the customer is always right.”  

Maybe that was rude, but his reaction was something that would make a manager go through the roof, if there was a manger anywhere in the restaurant.  

      “Hey, this is a minimum wage job. I don’t need this stuff.” 

     “And your point is?” I said calmly. 

       I took my empty cup over to fill it at the soda machine.

So, why am I writing all this? Well, we may have a “service economy,” but customer service appears to be as dead as the so- called “rust belt.”  

I can tell you this. Had I treated a customer like that when I worked fast food or any other job I've had, I would have been fired before you could say “Would you like fries with that?”     

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