The battle against jaded customer service
Jan. 13th, 2009 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaOur cheese area is way too small for the volume of cheese we sell. While this makes our financial statement look great, it contributes to the too-many-rats-in-the-cage feeling that our store gets when it’s crowded. The crowd around our sample table jams up the area like fallen trees on a country road. Shopping carts and people take up so much space when we’re really busy that getting from produce to cheee is like crossing the Bay Bridge at 5 PM. Sometimes we have to wait long periods of time to stock cheese we’ve cut and wrapped because the area simply can’t fit another person. I took a picture at Thanksgiving 1996 (just months after we moved into our new store) amazed at how busy the area in front of cheese was compared to our Mission St store. Now I see that view at some point almost every day.
When we cheeseworkers do get out to stock the cheese coolers on busy days it’s often one question after another from customers too quiet or shy to get our attention over the cheese counter. That’s cool. It’s one of the parts of my job I enjoy most, actually. The problem is that the customers get a little close sometimes.
Maybe it’s the desperation in the air these days but customers were more stressed than usual in this holiday season. It wasn’t that more customers than usual were rude, it’s that the ones who were rude were really rude.
I was answering a customer’s question at one point in late December when someone started hitting me on the back. I thought it was some friend or coworker, but no, it was another customer. I turned – surprised that I didn’t recognize the person and before I could say anything she said, “I have some cheese questions? Can you answer them?”* I told her “no” because it’s against the rules to touch a cheese worker without consent.
Even more obnoxious was a guy who came in – possibly a little fucked up already – looking for cheese for a party he was already late to. He kept picking up pieces of cheese, studying them, and then tossing them a few feet away in the cooler as if he couldn’t bear their sight. I was already coming around the counter when he saw me, “I need the right size piece of brie, can you help me?”
“Yes, but if you keep throwing cheese around the case I’m going to throw you out of the store.” I put a medium-sized Fromager D’affinois in his cart and used my I-dare-you-to-say-something look. He thanked me and walked away, coming back ten minutes later to apologize to my co-worker for “upsetting” me.
Then, just the other day someone came in and asked for the “Sky Q” cheese that he had read about on the internet. After I thought for a second I said, “Ski Queen”? I explained what it was but he said, “No, that’s not it. I know they carry it at the East Coast Whole Foods stores, you probably just haven’t heard of it yet.” Then he asked for ricotta. I tried to explain that if he was looking for whey-based cheeses, that it probably was Ski Queen Gjetost he was looking for. However, since I was contradicting the internet, he didn’t trust me and went with a sneer and empty hands.**
But I knew I was starting to overreact to the retail pressure when a customer came up –obviously dismayed—and asked for a “softer Parmesan” than the Parmigiano Reggiano. There are obvious answers to that question: Domestic Parmesan, Argentine Parmesan, Grana Padano etc. but I couldn’t let go of the premise inherent in her question – that she wished to deny one of the main traits that makes Parmesan Parmesan. In a moment of self-righteousness I wanted to stand in solidarity with the identity struggle of Parmigiano Reggiano. I whispered to a co-worker, “Do we have any drier water?” and neither of us could stop laughing until I finally left the cheese cutting area.
*If I were reading this entry I would try to figure out this behavior. I’d think maybe she had been waiting for help and had been ignored or something. You’ll have to trust me, I have a developed skill for this, she was not there when I started talking to the other customer. She just didn’t want to wait her turn.
**Which isn’t the worst thing. Norweigans aside, Gjetost isn’t for everyone.
When we cheeseworkers do get out to stock the cheese coolers on busy days it’s often one question after another from customers too quiet or shy to get our attention over the cheese counter. That’s cool. It’s one of the parts of my job I enjoy most, actually. The problem is that the customers get a little close sometimes.
Maybe it’s the desperation in the air these days but customers were more stressed than usual in this holiday season. It wasn’t that more customers than usual were rude, it’s that the ones who were rude were really rude.
I was answering a customer’s question at one point in late December when someone started hitting me on the back. I thought it was some friend or coworker, but no, it was another customer. I turned – surprised that I didn’t recognize the person and before I could say anything she said, “I have some cheese questions? Can you answer them?”* I told her “no” because it’s against the rules to touch a cheese worker without consent.
Even more obnoxious was a guy who came in – possibly a little fucked up already – looking for cheese for a party he was already late to. He kept picking up pieces of cheese, studying them, and then tossing them a few feet away in the cooler as if he couldn’t bear their sight. I was already coming around the counter when he saw me, “I need the right size piece of brie, can you help me?”
“Yes, but if you keep throwing cheese around the case I’m going to throw you out of the store.” I put a medium-sized Fromager D’affinois in his cart and used my I-dare-you-to-say-something look. He thanked me and walked away, coming back ten minutes later to apologize to my co-worker for “upsetting” me.
Then, just the other day someone came in and asked for the “Sky Q” cheese that he had read about on the internet. After I thought for a second I said, “Ski Queen”? I explained what it was but he said, “No, that’s not it. I know they carry it at the East Coast Whole Foods stores, you probably just haven’t heard of it yet.” Then he asked for ricotta. I tried to explain that if he was looking for whey-based cheeses, that it probably was Ski Queen Gjetost he was looking for. However, since I was contradicting the internet, he didn’t trust me and went with a sneer and empty hands.**
But I knew I was starting to overreact to the retail pressure when a customer came up –obviously dismayed—and asked for a “softer Parmesan” than the Parmigiano Reggiano. There are obvious answers to that question: Domestic Parmesan, Argentine Parmesan, Grana Padano etc. but I couldn’t let go of the premise inherent in her question – that she wished to deny one of the main traits that makes Parmesan Parmesan. In a moment of self-righteousness I wanted to stand in solidarity with the identity struggle of Parmigiano Reggiano. I whispered to a co-worker, “Do we have any drier water?” and neither of us could stop laughing until I finally left the cheese cutting area.
*If I were reading this entry I would try to figure out this behavior. I’d think maybe she had been waiting for help and had been ignored or something. You’ll have to trust me, I have a developed skill for this, she was not there when I started talking to the other customer. She just didn’t want to wait her turn.
**Which isn’t the worst thing. Norweigans aside, Gjetost isn’t for everyone.
