Heart attack

Thursday, November 09, 2017

Even More Irritations of Life

Why do supermarkets have to keep moving their stock around their stores? I don't mean by putting it in trolleys and shifting it manually. I mean, when you, as a customer, get used to finding a particular product in the same place week after week, and then, for no accountable reason, they move it to entirely different aisle and shelf. This usually happens before Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, Mothering Sunday or any of the other 'festivals' or 'holidays' throughout the year. They seem to think it's fine to fill the shelves with stuff you can perfectly well do without, such as mince pies, Christmas puddings, crackers and so on, and whatever product you wanted is suddenly shifted to a remote corner without any warning.

Poor customer service is another irritation I can't stand. When I was at Milton Keynes hospital on Sunday I went to the branch of Costa they have in the newly refurbished entrance foyer (if that's the right term. I know hotels and theatres have foyers, so what is the entrance of a hospital called? Is there a correct word? Probably is, but I'm not sure what it is.) The queue was coming out of the door and into the corridor. I had to wait about 20 minutes before I could get served. A woman in front was fiddling with her mobile phone. What is it with people? Why is everyone so hooked on their mobile phones? Constantly peering at the little screens, looking at Facebook or Twitter, checking to see if someone has contacted them. Anyway, by the time I got to the till I had almost lost the will to live. I had taken a panini out of the display cabinet at the beginning of the queue and handed it to the girl at the till and paid for that as well as two drinks, I think they were lattes, but I forget now. Anyway, the girl I handed the panini to was going to heat it for me. Is that a microwave that heats the food or is it some other sort of oven? Whatever it was it did it's job efficiently and quickly. I had said I wanted to take the food away with me, but the girl put it on a plate. She had such a look on her face, it was as if I'd made some rude suggestion to her. More likely she didn't want to be working there, and particularly not on a Sunday. It wasn't so much the scowl on her face, but the fact that she hadn't listened to me when I'd said I wanted to take away the food I had ordered. THAT was the irritating part of this whole incident. She had such a look on her face, as I say, no doubt because she had drawn the short straw of having to work her shift on a Sunday. And who can blame her? Just didn't make for a very pleasant customer experience as far as I was concerned. Anyway, she made some sort of effort to place the two pieces of panini she had cut so nicely on a chopping board into a cleverly-designed cardboard container and handed it to me and I was able to walk back to the ward and devour the food and share the lattes with Carol. Just another of life's little irritations, when things should be better but aren't. Staff in such places can make all the difference to your experience, particularly at the checkout in the supermarket. If they scowl at you, as that young lady did in Costa, it can be a rather negative experience and put you off shopping there at a later date.

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