I have just had about enough of being treated like a second-class citizen,simply because Ihappen to be that put-upon member of society a customer. The more I go into shops and hotels,banks and post offices,railway stations,airports and the like,the more I’m convinced that things are being run solely to suit the firm,the system,or the union. There seems to be an insidious new motto for so-called “service”organizations Staff before Service.
How often,for example,have you queued for what seems like hours at the Post Office or the supermarket because there were’t enough seaff on duty to man all the service grilles or checkout counters? Surely in these days of high unemployment it must be possible to recruit cashiers and counter staff. Yet supermarkets,hinting darkly at higher prices,claim that unshrouding all their cash registers at any one time would increase overhesds. And the Post Office says we cannot expect all their service grilles to be occupied “at times when demand is low”.
It’s the same with hotels. Because waiters and kitchen staff muse finish when it suits them,dining rooms close eatlier or menu choice is curtained. As for us guests(and how the meaning of that word has been whittled away), we just have to put up with it. There’s also the nonsense of so many friendly hotel night porters having been phased out in the interests of“efficiency”(i.e.profits) and replaced by coin guzzling machines which dispense everything from lager to laxatives. Not to mention the creeping menace of the tea making kit in your room: a kettle weith an assortment of teabags, plastic milk cartons and lump sugar. Who wants to wake up to a raw teabag? I don’t, especially when I am paying for “service”.
Can it be halted, this erosion of service,this growing attitude that the customer is always a nuisance? I ferbently hope so because it’s happening. Sadly, in all walks of life.
Our only hope is to hammer, home our indignation whenever and wherever we can and, if all else fails, resurrect that other, older slogan and Take Our Custom Elsewhere.