We all know truly excellent customer service has gone the way of the dodo bird.

It’s hard to find good help.

Hell, it’s hard to find help, period. Finding someone knowledgeable, presentable, professional-- and who possesses adequate communication skills and is eager to help you is next to impossible.

Post-COVID, many retail and service outlets that used to be open until 9:00 p.m. are now only open until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m.

Too bad if you work long hours or have to fight heavy traffic. And yet, more and more allegedly service-oriented businesses are in your face about demanding tips for their employees, and increasingly large ones at that.

My personal pet peeve, however, is phone-related.

I am sick of calling an establishment and getting a recorded message stating something like: “We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls at this time and cannot answer your call at the moment. Expected waiting time to reach an operator is 187 minutes. We appreciate your patience. Your call is remarkably important to us, so we ask that you please hold or call back later. Thank you. Goodbye. Click.”

That’s complete B.S.!  And I know this because I have called the same number three times a day — every day — since Sept. 17, 2022.

The business cannot possibly have experienced “higher than normal traffic volume” for 965 consecutive days. The traffic volume is, by definition, the normal traffic volume. They just don’t want to tell me that, preferring to cover their behind and lie to me instead.

I would prefer the truth. Tell it to me straight. I would rather the business had a recorded message stating: “We can’t answer your call right now, because we only have one operator on duty, and she is 19-years-old and usually on the phone with her boyfriend. We don’t want to pay for another. Also, we are still using an analog answering machine we bought at Sears for fifty bucks in 1986. Deal with it! Click.”

Image: Pixabay, via Pexels // Pixabay License