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| Category: Conflict Resolution |
Date published: April 28, 2005 |
 Has it ever happened to you, or are you one who stuff's the anger and injustices done to you until you develop cancer or high blood pressure?
Now me, I tend to speak up...but only to a point, and then the passive side of me takes over. Or should I say the passive/aggressive side of me. I vent the grievance, if nothing is resolved, I vow to boycott. I do this for a while, but after that, after I've cut off my nose to spite my face, I give in. Not so my son, he first attempts to resolve a problem through communication, when that has failed, he vents his frustration... Lastly, he BLOWS! Neither way, not my way or his is the right way... but what in the world is? Few people care anymore. We are only numbers, you and I.
I'll give you a few examples of how I've handled things...and pretty pitifully at that.
We've all experienced the frustration of ordering from a fast food place, only to reach home and find that half our order is missing, or not as we ordered. I'm no exception.
Fast food place #1: I place a large breakfast order, drive three miles home, learn that half of my items are missing. I return with the food, which is now cold, and the receipt. A counter person waits on me, turns out she's also the manager. She's helping to fill the many orders from the drive-through window. I voice my grievance. She has no reaction, except to look at me as though I'm trying to pull something. I wait patiently. She continues to fill the orders from the drive-through window. I begin tapping my foot, and inside I'm steaming. After all, I was one who'd been at that same drive-through window a half hour ago. Finally, the woman hands me my missing items. No apology, no apple pie or French fries thrown in for my trouble...zero, zilch. I take my food and leave with a bad taste is in my mouth, and I vow to never return. Oh, but those french fries are sooo good. I'm back.
Bingo! I'm burned again. Same fast food chain, different location. Once again, I'm shorted my order, but once again I don't discover it until I'm home and begin to hand out the items to my family. By now you're probably thinking, "Why doesn't she check the bag before leaving?" Many times I do, but it's not always easy when you're in a hurry, have many cars behind you, or your order has been correct for three times in a row and you've grown careless. And so I called to let them know of my missing items. "You'll have to return to the same location where you purchased the food," I was told. IT WAS WAY ACROSS TOWN!!! The gas would have cost more than the items shorted, so I lose, but I promise myself I'll NEVER go back there...not to ANY of them. Yeah, right.
Fast food place #2(different than the two above): A short time following the other incidents, I ordered 14 of the same item, all supreme. I returned home and found I was shorted the additional ingredients that made them supreme, but I was charged for them. I called and a nice woman answered the phone. After explaining the error, she tells me to return with the receipt and she'll duplicate the entire order free of charge. I was surprised at her extreme generosity and told her that wasn't necessary, that I only expected to be reinbursed the difference. She says, "I understand, but for your inconvenience, I'll replace the entire order." I tell her I can't return today. She takes my name and phone number and tells me to come in when I'm able. I hang up the phone, and I promise myself to make an effort to patronize the place as often as I can in the future. The warm fuzzy feeling I had for that place soon changed. I had failed to get the worker's name, and when I returned, receipt in hand, I was treated like a thief without a gun. Three workers, two phone calls, and two managers later, I'm walking out with my order replaced, but I'm not feeling good about it. I had told them, like I did to the woman over the phone, that I only expected to be reimbursed the difference between the cost of the items ordered and the ones I received. They had, after much rangling, replaced the order anyway.
Fast food place #3: No drive-through window this time, I was eating inside with a friend on this particular day. I ordered a baked potato with sour cream and chives, plus a soda. I paid the gal behind the register. When I was given the food, they told me they were out of sour cream. I asked for a small amount of melted cheese to be substituted for the missing item. I was told it would cost me extra. I couldn't believe it. They accepted full payment from me, was shorting me, but they wouldn't make a substitution? I told them how I felt, that it seemed unfair. If I'd been told they were out of sour cream when I placed the order, I could have made the decision whether I still wanted it or not. That would have been fair...no request for a substitution would have been necessary. I asked for a manager. He told me the same thing; melted cheese would be extra. Once again, I voiced my feelings. He looked at me like I had two heads. I grabbed up my tray with the dry potato, and as I walked to find a seat, I grumbled to my friend. Like the many times before, I vowed to never step into that place again. Yeah, right.
I won't continue to go on and on about these places, but this I will say, if I was to keep my vow to stay away from the places that do me wrong, I'd have no place left to grab a sandwich, fix my car, or to shop. There's no customer service anymore.
Now, it's my son's turn, but I won't go into the many times he has blown his cool! I'll just say that his tolerance for such injustices is far below my own.
Most recently: He banks at a major banking chain and does all of his banking online, with the exception of a debit card. It is Saturday and he received an overdraft notice. Two small items is presented to his account, one for seven dollars, plus cents, and the other for a dollar, plus cents. The bank says he's overdrawn by $115.00 and is charged a $70.00 overdraft fee for the two checks that came in. My son is angry and doesn't understand how this could happen since he knew his account was in the positive. He has to wait until Monday to call and attempt to straighten it out. He calls the main branch. A woman answers and is patronizing and rude, blaming him for the overdraft. My son is frustrated and asks to talk to someone higher up. The same thing happens. He asks the woman to fax him something that shows exactly at what point was his account overdrawn. Because he was out of town, he called and asked for me to retrieve the fax and look it over. I do. The fax shows all of the figures in the daily balance to be in the positive. My son asks me to go down to bank with the fax and see if I can help straighten up the problem. I ask him if he has the copy of his online bank statement he ran off before he left with him, he says he has it with him. I drive the fifteen minutes to his bank with only the fax in hand.
They don't want to talk with me; I'm not a signer on the account. I tell them they can call my son and he will fax them permission to speak with me. They say they can't do that. The man relents and at least takes a look at the fax. The man pulls up my son's account on his computer. I might add here, that at no time did anyone take out a calculator to do the figuring. Not this guy, or the women from the main branch. If they had, they would have seen the problem like we did. I was asked if my son carries a register with him. I said no. He doesn't write any checks, except for online, and uses his debit card. The man proceeds to tell me that debits that haven't yet cleared the account won't be shown in the balance at the top, right-hand corner of his online statement. The amounts of such transactions are held, and therefore, only the amount in the upper, left-hand corner of his online statement will show his true balance. The man randomly points out an item on the fax and states that it was the cause of the overdraft. I leave the bank with nothing resolved.
I call my son. He is now more agitated than ever, and explains to me that he knows all about of that, and has enough money in his account to cover every single check and debit transaction that has taken place. He leads me, by phone, into the online banking of his computer. From there, I print out a statement of his account. I immediately check out the amount shown in the upper, left-hand corner. Even after the bank's $70.00 overdraft fee, the balance is still in the black.
I drive back to the bank and talk with the same person I did before. He listens, and then calls the main branch. They tell him that a charge of $128.00 was entered twice by a store. That double transaction isn't reflected anywhere on my son's statement, nor the fax that was sent. Miraculously, the double charge wasn't recorded, nor was the double charge reflected in his account balance, however, the overdraft fee was there Did the double charge ever happen in the first place? We don't know. Is the bank covering up for an error on their part? We don't know that either. What we do know is, if a bank is going to charge you an overdraft fee, there should be a paper trail as to what caused it. If the store put it through twice, it should show up. If it is corrected and the monies put back, that should show, too. The overdraft fee was credited to my son's account before I left the bank, but no apology was given. I left feeling less than satisfied.
With this lack of closure, my son continued to steam. When an establishment works with the public, and we are the ones who help place food on their tables, we should be given a little more respect than most of us are given. My son entered that bank today to further express his unhappiness with the service he was given. He received no satisfaction and became irate. As a result, the bank employee he spoke with threatened to phone the police to have him removed. My son is a hard working, honest, and conscientious person, he doesn't deliberately cheat others, and when a mistake is made, he makes it right, and he apologizes for the error. I tell him he can't change the world, to just take his business elsewhere. That statement frustrates and angers him even more. "That's why this world's a piece of s--t," he says angrily, "no one wants to speak up against these injustices."
How do you treat people? Do you add to the cones that build up within people? Take the time to care. Attempt to resolve a complaint that comes before you if you're in customer service. Be fair. If you don't, then don't be surprised when people begin to take their business elsewhere.
The Volcano within Us
http://www.holisticjunction.com/displayarticle.cfm?ID=2376
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