Well, since I will be growing cherry tomatoes and peppers in the soil…
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I’ll contrast the recent thread about customer service with my experience going to Machu Piccu in Peru.
Lima is an “interesting” city, fly to Cuzco, which is about an hour away in a bowl in the mountains, then travel in some vans until you get to a train that takes you to Aguas Caliente, next to Machu Piccu.
The young employees on the train and around Machu Piccu really take their jobs seriously, there’s a clear pride in representing Peru. Those jobs are a big deal to them, they’re very helpful and professional, actively look to see if anyone has questions or would like to buy something. No “checked out” looks.
If Machu Piccu was in the US, there might be some press button recordings at different viewpoints and a self-check gift shop with a guard.
We’ve lost sight of a number of things in our chase to the bottom dollar. Jobs and employees are interchangeable.
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Deteriorating public civility.
Y’all should visit Taiwan. People in general are warm and considerate. Love visiting.
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Just don’t spend time with their National Assembly when the Legislative Yuan is in session. That’s where the civility ends.
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It’s a good thing I’m just there to eat.
And, better to have a fighting assembly than a legislature full of sycophants. Haha
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Used to fly into Taipei and Kaohsiung where I saw a family of 5 on a single moped. Not a huge fan of the weather there.
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Agreed. Too humid. Love the subway system there – so clean and passengers are generally so respectful and considerate. People line up and almost no loud talkers.
When I do visit, it’s usually around the winter months.
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We took the kids to the “Brickfest” Lego convention at the Salt Palace today. Just a horribly, horribly coordinated event. There were thousands of people waiting to get in, and they had THREE people scanning tickets. Three. We had already purchased tickets online and still had to stand in line for nearly two hours just to get in.
That’s not my real pet peeve though. It’s more that people are such selfish, entitled jerks.
They have several activities at this convention where you are supposed to come in, get a template, build a quick 10-15 minute Lego pattern, then move on and let the next group in.
There are people who have basically just parked themselves at these tables. One group has been here for over 45 minutes now. The parents let their kids build one thing, then take it apart, then build another, then take it apart, over and over again. All completely oblivious to the line getting longer and longer.
As we finally got to the front of the line with our kids (and were near their table) I VERY loudly said to my kids “Now we’re just going to build our one template and move on. Because it would be really super rude to sit here and build multiple things while everyone else waits in line for a turn, wouldn’t it?”
Yes, I’m that sort of petty.
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Rude, oblivious people suck. It seems like there’s more of them nowadays.
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I have to say I really hate those people who expect me to know every detail of every program, course, professor, etc at the U simply because I work for the university. I don’t expect the workers at Home Depot to know where every single item is in their store. Especially when I can look stuff up on their website. 
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I think that’s a fair point, except, the thread seems to support a concern for people in an active possition of “knowledge” that seemingly have no interest in “learning.”
Learning is a essential and valid aproach to life. Learning often involves great effort over great time to possess valid authority of thought; or the appreciation of non-knowledge - which is just as valid, and should not provoke shame. Awarenes of incomplete knowledge is not only honest, it is also illuminating. The inverse of the Dunning Kreuger Effect, which seemingly predomonates today.
Dunning–Kruger Effect - The Decision Lab.
It’s great you already know what to look for online, but not everyone does. Better perhaps to have a store employee who is also an active learner. One who recognizes what they don’t know everything (or need to either) but, looks up an item with you, or even better, finds the person in the store who might know the products/area of skill. The in house “expert” as it were… (because they know each other’s area of expertise). This instead effects possitive outcomes differently than not really knowing and certainly, not caring to know or assist.
That’s the beauty of understanding how little any one person knows about what’s in a large, multi-disciplinary store like Lowe’s or Home Depot. But that’s also where people work and spend 1/2 of their waking time on Earth…
What I seem to see more and more is truly ignorant people in low paying customer service jobs, with minimal intilectual curiosity and zero personal customer service skills who often over react to any indication of they’re of lack of knowledge.
“You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.”
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Perhaps the onus should be on the customer to ‘learn’ as you say. All the the things you suggest that the customer service person should be doing could just as well be done by the customer. I hate dealing with the entitled ■■■■■■■■ (Boomers are especially egregious) who just can’t be bothered to do anything for themselves and expect the person answering the phone to know everything and do all the legwork for them merely because they are “the customer” and they decided to ask.
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I should also add that Home Depot’s business model is based on serving those who know what they are doing. If you need help finding the right material or tool for your project because you don’t know what you need then Lowe’s is the place for you. Lowe’s business model is for those who need assistance.
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The Orange Promise awards are given by the CEO to recognize efforts that go above and beyond to deliver value and convenience for Home Depot customers .
Unless they don’t know what they’re doing.
Orange Promise…LOL. haha
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I promise the best healthcare plan in the history of the world.
I promise an infrastructure plan, the likes that nobody has ever seen.
I promise the biggest most beautiful wall anyone has ever seen, and it won’t cost us a dime.
" there’s milk, bread, fruit and vegetables , I call them groceries and the prices will come down very rapidly"
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Bad drivers. That’s all I have to say. Holy cow there are some bad drivers out there, usually with the American Flag license plate.
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I have made this same observation several times as well.
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Really? I normally see crap drivers with NJ plates.
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I see them with a Tesla logo on their cars.
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