Thank Me, Come Again

by C.L. Halvorson

My number one pet peeve is lack of customer service.  Boy was I born in the wrong decade.  Oh, it started out great.  Life threw little tastes of merchants that believed they should make certain their customers returned to trade again. 

I never saw our parents pump their own gasoline until the 1980s.  Every week we’d pull the family car into the local Phillips 66, running over the black hose that made that delightful “ding, ding” to announce our arrival.  This would be quickly followed by two eager beavers running out to our vehicle.  The first would diligently begin checking the air pressure in our tires, while the other approached the driver’s window.

“What’ll it be, sir?” the attendant would ask cheerily.

“Fill ‘er up!” Daddy would reply.

Not only would they “fill ‘er up” but they would wash the windows, check under the hood and let us know if the oil or anything else needed our attention.  They’d make sure our tires had the proper amount of air to keep us and other motorists safe. 

When they were done my sisters and I each would gratefully receive a piece of bubble gum.  And sometimes, yes sometimes, they offered Mama and Daddy free dishes and glassware.  All of our dinnerware came from the Phillips 66.  All this service and freebies besides for the low, low price of only thirty-nine cents per gallon!

Today, my husband and I pay nearly three dollars per gallon for gasoline.  We have to pump it ourselves.  Some merchants still supply the buckets that hang off a post with water and a squeegee to clean your own windshield.  With a little luck the squeegee is still there and no one’s dumped their coffee in the water. 

If we want to check our tire pressure, we have to drive around to the side of the building and spend another fifty cents to use the air machine.  No one checks our oil and other fluids.  That’s done every three thousand miles at the Jiffy Lube.  Our pickup truck could be a ticking time bomb at 2,985 miles but we’d never know it.  There are no dish give-a-ways. 

And now, they don’t even want to personally take your money!  The clerks are way to busy to perform such a meaningless task anyway.  What with making out with their boyfriends and talking to their friends on the phone, how could we expect them to make time to collect our money?  Stations encourage consumers to pay with their credit card at the pump.  Of course, the pump is always out of receipt paper so we drive off hoping they don’t mistake us for a thief and send a posse after us.

Grocery stores are the absolute worst offenders these days.  I remember a time when you could actually have a small grocery order delivered to your house!  I realize that the city is much bigger today and it makes home delivery impossible.  Especially with soaring gas prices.  Anyway the delivery boys are too busy running from the posse since the pump was out of receipt paper again.

Home delivery being a thing of the past, I would settle for them taking them as far as say, my car.  I don’t know for certain when carrying your own groceries to your vehicle started, but I blame WalMart.  Since WalMart opened their Supercenters the grocery industry has gone to pot. 

I have lived most of my life in Texas, but for five years I lived in New York.  My first trip to a New York grocery store was a culture shock.  Oh, the actual selecting of my items went well enough.  The shock came at the checkout.  The clerk didn’t say one word to me until she finished ringing everything up then she said merely, “$184.12”.  Now, in fairness, this happens in Texas too, but manners are a discussion for another time.

I wrote the young lady a check noting the absence of a bag person.  I figured it being the middle of the day in the middle of the week the checkers bagged the groceries themselves.  But she just stood there while I made out my check, leaving my purchases on the counter.  I handed her my payment and waited.  She still made no move to bag my items.  She just looked at me impatiently.

“Umm,” I began.  “Do they bag themselves?” I’m a master at witty phrases like that.

“Huh?” came her befuddled reply.

“My groceries.  Aren’t you going to bag them?”

“Why should I bag them?  They’re not my groceries.”

My jaw dropped.

“You mean I bag my own groceries?” I asked awestruck.

“Of course.”

A line was forming behind me and I didn’t want to look like the ignorant red neck most New Yorkers believe southerners to be, so I bagged my own groceries hurriedly and left the store.  In the entire five years we lived there we only had our groceries bagged by an employee once. 

It seems the bag boy – yes, they actually employee bag persons, what they do all day I haven’t a clue – was in love with the checkout girl.  So in an effort to be near her he actually—wait for it – bagged groceries!  Unfortunately for me, when I went back two weeks later the bag boy had found a new object for his affection and I was back to bagging my own again.

Now, I could live with no home delivery, bagging my own groceries and carrying them to the car myself.  But some genius has invented what will surely be the downfall of Western civilization.  I am speaking, of course, of the Self Checkout.  The Self Checkout is surely the first sign of the Apocalypse.

So we bag our own, carry them to our car ourselves and now they want us to ring up the order ourselves!   Of course, they do not trust lowly consumers to run everything they have in their buggy over the scanner.  Therefore, they appoint an employee to reign on a dais to watch over us mere mortals like a god from ancient myth.  Waiting to smite us with thunderbolts should we forget we have the jumbo economy size toilet paper on the rack under the basket.

But the Goddess of Groceries is not there to take your money.  Oh no!  This monstrous machine takes credit cards and checks along with paper money and coins.  We have become employees of the supermarket and we don’t even get the Employee Discount.  Next I expect they will have us round up all the shopping carts that are in the parking lot.