Now I'm usually a mild mannered laid back sort of guy. I'm patient and give people the benefit of the doubt.
This week I had an opportunity to complain vigorously.
Let me back up a bit. It's income tax time. I do my own income tax. I had gone through all tax slips and decided that I was ready to roll. Well the day's mail brought one more tax slip. Now the slip was a week late but more than that a very important figure was missing on the slip.
The micro manager phoned the company responsible for the slip. She hung up on the first person she tried to talk to. Well, I told her to hang up and she hung up gracefully like, "Thank you very much but we're not accomplishing anything!"
The next guy was awesome and told us the company had not put the figure on the slips for the last two years. He also told us to contact the local bank and they could print the statement and it would include the missing number.
Okay , all we have to do is phone the local branch. So first call we get an answering machine. .Well, try one of the extension numbers. Leave a message, Another extension number and still no answer. Leave a message. My third and last extension number and you guessed it. Leave a message. On top of this their message said they would get back to us within 24 hours. Now for some strange reason the Micro Manager thinks that if you phone back and leave another message there might be a reply. So she went through all the numbers again and left messages again.
So after this run around we're a little testy.
The next morning the manager phoned. To put it mildly, she was a jerk. She had no idea how to print out the statement we wanted. Further more she was perturbed that we were telling her what to do. She said she'd have to phone to find out what to do and would do it later and that next week she was on holidays so we wouldn't get an answer for a week. The Micro Manager pressed harder for the statement to be printed that day. The manager actually grew testy. There was no other way to do the process according to her.
Well the Micro Manager went down to the bank at 2:00 Pm as she had told the manager she'd be there and the statement better be ready.
As the MM was standing in the bank an employee asked her if she could help. The MM explained what she wanted. The employee said , I'll see what I can do. Five minutes later the statement was printed.
So what was the problem with the snooty bank manager. The manager could have solved the problem in less than half the time she spent talking to us. She only had to look for five minutes!
Customer service? First: Answer your damn phone. Second: learn some manners on how to deal with people.
I was a little bent out of shape after this incident.
