“HAVE A NICE DAY!”

Do you remember when Americans started saying that? Were they serious? Did they mean it? Was it necessary? Man, we thought they were crazy. Do I really need somebody to tell me to have a nice day? Well it’s about thirty years later now and the results are in! …. No, no, no and yes!!

Courtesy is actually what I yearn for.

America believes that when it comes to business you cannot be too courteous. They invented the phrase “the Customer is right!” and so, in the words of Stephen Sondheim… “I want to be in America!”

We all know that the service industry is growing in our country. Most of our families have at least one person involved in that business in one way or anther. We can no longer pretend that we are working in jobs that we hate, because this is actually bad service. And when you deliver bad service, you lose customers and when you lose customers you lose your job. This is the way of the world and America designed this consumer conveyor belt.

Recently on a weekend we were trying to work out what to cook for dinner. It had been a wonderful sunny Saturday and our taste buds were suggesting a certain something. To protect the proprietor I won’t name the dish we wished for, but I will say this. It was a weekend in Geelong at 4.30pm and I didn’t know if the shop would be open. So I found their number and called.

“Hi, just wondering what time you’re open ‘til?”

“We’re open until 6pm tonight.”

“Great! We’ll come and see you.”

“Great for you.”

“Pardon?”

“I said – “great for you”…”

Now, for those people sitting at the back of the room… this is not good service.

The person I was talking to was giving me information I needed, but they were inferring that while it may be great for me that they would be open until 6pm, it wasn’t at all great for them.

I didn’t know how to respond, because I didn’t know how I could help them. It was not within my power to give them the night off. I didn’t have the authority to give them a pay rise for working on Saturday. I hoped they were receiving some kind of penalty rate payment; if they were not I would be happy to speak to their employer on their behalf. But I would need to be given clarification. It was a small business, it was a family business. Was I actually speaking to the boss? And if I wasn’t, how would their boss react if they heard the conversation for themselves? I’d simply called to see if I could purchase something, but I was left in a dilemma, knowing that by going into that shop I was somehow causing that person’s day to be ruined. I was bewildered, my whole family discussed it, and by the end, we were too guilt-ridden to eat. At least, too guilt-ridden to eat the product to be found at this establishment. How else could this interaction be played out? Let’s see…

Option A)

“Hi, just wondering what time you’re open ‘til?”