🚀 go-pugleaf

z <z@y.x.invalid> writes:

> I did consider asking to see the video, since they brought
> it up in support of their contention, but the potential 
> downside was that maybe they would make me stand around
> for another 2 hours just to tell me they couldn't let me
> see it for security reasons.

I think the problem was exacerbated by the fact that you were
far too passive and compliant.  As a customer, I don't react
well to being told to wait.  A store will do things at *my*
convenience, not their's -- or there won't be a cock in camp.
This isn't self-centeredness on my part, but an acknowledgement
that I and other customers are the very reason for the place's
existence.

And it's particularly bad form for store employees to tell a
customer to wait when the issue at hand is a mistake of the
store's own making.  Social skills are in decline everywhere,
it seems, but many employees of retail stores are especially
dim in that regard.

At the first sign of trouble, I'd have demanded to see the
manager, and done so firmly but not belligerently.  Anger
should be kept in reserve as an escalation point, not indulged
in right off the bat.  I am, after all, a gentleman.

However, if the store manager wasn't standing tall front and
center within a reasonable interval, or if he arrived promptly 
but kept up the foot-dragging begun by his subordinates, I'd
have initiated a loud, angry, ugly scene right there in the 
store, with the manager or some other employee right at the
center of it.  That would've provided the moral equivalent 
of a red-hot fire poker up the institution's metaphorical
bunghole, motivation-wise.  Commercial institutions will trip
all over themselves in their haste to quell ugly crises on
their premises.


> The wait was as annoying as anything else.  I initially offered
> to leave the scrip and my telephone but they declined.

They'd have undoubtedly "lost" the scrip anyway, if not your
telephone number as well.


> My overall thinking is that a certain part of living involves
> dealing gracefully with bad luck...or karma, whatever...

On the other hand, a certain part of living involves being
assertive enough to stand up for onself, even if it involves
the occasional confrontation.  I certainly don't mean to imply
that one should be an asshole and bully retail employees as
a matter of course.  But I find that many people are completely
unprepared to deal effectively with incompetence, rudeness, or
what have you when they're overtaken by such things.



Geoff

-- 
"Geoff, you must be some kind of Conservative Fascist Nazi Bastard.
 You are no longer welcome on my computer.  <PLONK>" 
 [peanutjake@usa.com, celebrating (intellectual) diversity]