@Lost, Found and Fired
I've learned a lot over my 20 years of running a retail business. My customers have taught me how to be a good customer. And thanks to some of the most cranky of Berkeley's demanding consumers, I've also got a good handle on how to alienate retail clerks and, surprise, get minimal service. Today I encountered to queen of all hostile outraged customers, who, by the end of an action packed hour, had gotten herself fired. She is no longer welcome to do business with me and my company.
Louise G. called in the morning to complain. Ok, that happens. She said we had been recommended to her but that, "I knew you guys were going to screw up". The problem was we had not returned her camera media cards to her with her order. This is a truely bad thing; something we take quite seriously. "Oh no, that's bad" I told Louise. "Oh no, that's bad." she mocked back at me, "If you think it's so bad then why did you lose them in the first place?" she screamed into my ear. Nice.
In the process of making custom photographs for photographers, the film or media is removed from the order bag as a matter of course. Every order in a lab is separated and then put back together. It's what we do. And our work-flow includes lots of ways to keep from getting things lost or mixed up. We respect Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will. And occasionally, things go wrong and we lose something. Usually temporarily. When something turns up missing at Photolab, we all drop what we are doing and the whole staff searches. We do this regardless of whether we think the loss was caused by us or not. My policy is that I don't care who lost the item; we just take responsibility and start looking on our end, in the lab. I have found that if you start blaming it is much harder to find lost things.
I described to Louise G. how we had packed her order and where the media cards were placed in her order bag. She said that was the most stupid packing method she had ever heard of (we packed it up in the same way we received it from her). She flew into another tirade because I had implied that she had lost her own stuff. I reassured her that we would find her media. You had better, she reminded me, you had just better.
People seem to forget, when searching for something, that they are not looking for something that no longer exists. The object of their search IS SOMEWHERE. It is sitting there, right now. We just have to find the place where it is.
So Louise G shouted, hissed and generally berated me and my terrible, irresponsible company for nearly one hour, phoning me repeatedly. It was getting extremely hard to stay calm enough to actually do my job. Meanwhile the entire staff was checking the trash cans, floors, the sidewalk, everywhere possible.
Now, you probably have guessed what happened after an hour. Louise G found her missing media cards, right in her studio, packed as I had described. "Oh, heh, we found them," she told me. I was speechless. Just couldn't think of anything at all to say to this poorly-trained pitbull of a customer. I don't really think Louise G was going to pull an apology out of her nasty little hat, but I will never know. "Well then, good bye" was all I could muster before hanging up.
Ok, so I didn't actually fire her to her face. Darn. I should have said "You're going to need to find yourself another lab as well" but I didn't think of that until just now. I can tell you this, because I have worked with the public, that Louise G will be back. I've seen it before. Just like nothing happened. When she does, almost nothing will persude me to take her custom. Except maybe a note from her doctor promising her medication has been adjusted and this will not happen again. I'll have to think about it.
