Sunday, December 2, 2007

It's All About the Attitude

During this season of the year, I am glad I don't work in a store. People get frantic during shopping, and take their frustrations out on the store employees, who then are equally insufferable. Happily, Molly and I had the opposite experience today.

We were shopping for a mixer for Molly, who has found some dormant DNA which compels her to cook. We had decided on a certain mixer, and took one from the shelf underneath. After checking out and finding that the mixer was over $50 more than what we were expecting to pay, we went to Customer Service to attempt to rectify the situation.

We talked with the CS Rep, who looked it up, then sent Molly over to the mixer aisle. The Rep also paged several times for assistance to meet Molly. Finally, after several minutes of waiting for help, then an aisle meeting discussing the labeling/display pricing/shelf model arrangement, we found that the mixer we thought we bought was not available, and the one we did buy was a higher price. We decided to return the mixer, and shop for the lower priced one at a later date.

The important part of this story is that nobody got upset or angry. No loud voices were used, no sounds of exasperation were heard, and no body language indicating impatience or anger were displayed. In the end, the problem was resolved, and nobody was offended.

It just goes to show that the right attitude makes all the difference. We could have arrived at the same conclusion by fussing and accusing and yelling, but we didn't. It was just a mixer. It's nice to know that we don't have to be remembered as the screaming mean grinches who pitched a fit in customer service. After all, it is Happy Holidays!

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