On Service

I tried to find the antonym for the word service, i.e. the opposite of something we call service. I couldn’t find one. Maybe it’s ‘helplessness’ or ‘disappointment’. Whatever it is we should have a better word for it because non-service, the lack or total absence of service, is rampant everywhere.

How many hours do we spend on hold, listening to music we don’t like, to get an answer to a really simple question? We are told the agent is busy doing I-don’t-know-what. So I really should feel better he or she is assisting another caller or taking a coffee break? We are told our call is very important to them, which is a bald-faced lie. And of course, the menu has changed so you better listen well to all ten pages of it. How many times do we enter a store with a raft of checkout counters to find long lines waiting one of the precious few that are actually manned? There are countless examples we all run across every day everywhere.

Our time is of no importance to these organizations. Our patient waiting saves the company the cost of hiring enough people to be responsive to the customer, the patient or the client. And this technique for cost cutting (and therefore increased profits) kinda means we are working for the company, just not getting paid – – – because this cost savings does not filter down to the customer; prices continue to rise and company profits abound. Moreover, this practice has spilled over to government offices, airlines, healthcare institutions, professional offices and even private clubs. Why not? Non-service pays off.

When one buys a product or enrolls in some sort of plan, there is an implied after-sales responsibility to the customer to be available on some sort of reasonable basis.  That part of the bargain has been abridged.

The sad part of all this, it will never be improved as long as we continue, like sheep, to meekly accept this most unsatisfactory practice which seems to worsen every year. We seem to keep on paying more and accept getting less.

Of course, there are times when there are legitimate reasons for poor service. I guess that is understandable. But sometimes my darker side thinks Covid, for example, was a God-sent for some who use the pandemic to justify lack of customer attention and to ignore their concerns.

At some point an unacceptable system always breaks down. I am reminded of the story of a farmer who observed that oats and sawdust looked much alike. When the cost of oats rose he decided to save money by mixing a cup of sawdust with the oats he fed his donkey. The donkey seemed OK with this so the farmer began to slowly add the proportion of sawdust to the mix. And just when he had trained the donkey to eat nothing but sawdust, to the farmers utter disappointment, the donkey mysteriously died. I wonder who was the real ass.

• – – Just the view of a common man