Would You Buy a Sub Sandwich from This Kid?
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If you have spent any time in a fast food drive-thru or on the phone with [name the big company] customer service, you have certainly asked yourself, “When did propriety, good manners and common decency perish from the earth?”
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I have spent precious minutes on the phone with a customer support person who was obviously based in a foreign country and for whom the English language was little more than a weekend hobby.
Right here in Gwinnett, it seems that a prerequisite for working a drive-thru is the ability to speak with marbles in your mouth. I have waited in line while more than one clerk has argued with another, texted to God-knows-who or answered a cell phone call.
What I saw today in Loganville may top it all. The kid pictured was standing beside eastbound Hwy. 78 about 1 pm. The banner that he held publicized a $5 sub sandwich deal from Blimpie, which is located in the shopping center.
I have to assume that the teenager is an employee; someone with a supervisor who should be concerned, on behalf of the business owner, with the store’s public reputation. I don’t expect this teen to understand how stupid he looks, but I was amazed at the thought that a store supervisor had no problem with paying this kid to be Blimpie’s public image on a Friday afternoon.
The argument that it is difficult to find quality help these days just won’t fly with me. With record-high unemployment, there are too many qualified folks looking for work. Even in fast food services, arguably at the lower end of the pay scale, employers like Chic-fil-A seem to have no problem finding summer workers who exhibit class and professionalism without fail.
This kid’s attire was barely suitable for a high school fundraiser car wash; what has gone so wrong in our society that anyone would consider this appropriate dress for a paying job?
What do you think? Am I off base? Do you have your own “customer service nightmare” story? Register (link to the right) and log in, then tell your tale in the comments section.
You are dead on with this article. Where is the common decency with this person.
I agree dead on!!! Customer service in all areas has gone down the tubes. Talking to a local phone company yesterday and it was like pulling teeth getting any information on an outage and trying to take care of an error on their part that they wanted to charge me for.
Nothing worse than having to go to a drive-thru and having to repeat your order 17 times.
To answer the opening question, propriety, good manners and common decency perished from the earth when we became complacent—or at the most, voicing our complaints out of range—with obscenity and vulgarity.
I agree with Mr. Griggs: it is up to supervisors to make sure the employees give the company a good image with anything from fast food to customer service. Although the teen’s dress (or lack thereof) isn’t surprising, it shouldn’t be expected, and I would hope that the supervisor wasn’t expecting it. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing.
We’d like to think that all supervisors have an all-seeing eye, but sometimes that simply isn’t the case. From what Mr. Griggs says, he did not actually find the supervisor to complain. A better supervisor would have known already what was going on, but even a mediocre one would want to know customer concerns. Even a mediocre supervisor would have reprimanded or fired the employee.
If propriety, good manners, and common decency have indeed perished from the earth—and this is still in question if Clic-fil-A has decent employees—it is because we did nothing to save them and insist on singing their elegies.
Following your suggestion, I contacted the management company for this franchise. I received a prompt response and was told that the manager had been contacted and had agreed to pay more attention to how her store was being represented in the public.
On Saturday, the kid was back on the street but, this time he had his shirt on. His two friends did not. All had their shorts practically down around their ankles.
I submitted a suggestion that they clean up their public image through the Blimpie web site.
Well, at least things are moving in the right direction: no clothing was removed, completely. Unfortunately, the net total of topless teenagers has increased. Thanks for your action.