Archives for August 2010

Why can’t everyone be like Mick?

At the risk of sounding like a caller on talk back radio (especially in light of the fact that I recently gabbed on about how young I am), I have to ask what on earth has happened to customer service.

Let me fill you in on the back story

As my reader would know I am renovating my house, well I am not renovating it per se – the builder is doing that, I am just doing the stressing.

Everything has been going along really well and apparently we should be delighted at the speed that the work is taking place – that and the fact that there have been no “surprises”.  Well no surprises until we were informed that the floorboards needed to be replaced.

Floorboards are expensive after the mark up that the resellers make and people who sell floorboards stand to make a lot of money from people who they sell to.  People like me and Mr Pencil who have to replace the floors before the builder and his ladder disappear into the huge black holes that keep appearing where the floors used to be.

So we took our bundles of cash (if a credit card is a bundle of cash) and we make for the timber flooring stores.

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Second shop we go to the man stands as we approach. I am briefly filled with joy.  We explain that we are looking for a limed American Oak, his response – “Oh do we supply that?”  Fantastic – he has NO idea.  He then spends 10 minutes telling us that he is very new on the job, doesn’t know the stock and is not sure of the difference between floating and fitted floors.  I briefly think of explaining it to him but my husband convinces me that his boss will give him that training – any month now.

Next we go to a shop with a huge showroom – well actually lots of little rooms all with different floors.  None of the lights have been switched on so you actually can’t see a thing.  The people working there clearly do not believe that they will ever attract a customer, it’s hard to get business when you avoid eye contact at all costs and then give a death stare if someone actually gets your attention.  We stumble around looking for the light switches so that we can see the product and we force someone to help us.  She knows as much about flooring as she knows about lighting – nothing.

Eventually we find a shop where someone is willing to engage with us.  We make a time for them to come to the house and quote on the job.  He walks in a shouts at me that I have terrible floors.  Er, I know this , that is why I am paying you lots and lots of money to give me new floors.  He shouts some more and shakes his head vigorously.  I ask him to just give me a recommendation and a quote – he says he refuses to do the job.  May I just say at this point that the floors are really not that bad.  Thin? Yes?  But so bad as to refuse a job? No.  I don’t think so.

Luckily Adonis, my builder (I call him Adonis – Mr Pencil calls him – actually let’s not go there), has a flooring man come out to see us.  Why he waited until we had pulled all our hair out before he shared this piece of wisdom I am not sure.  Anyway this man – we’ll call him Mick, because that is what his parents called him – walks into the house and says “Okay – let’s do limed oak, let’s do prefinished fitted boards and let’s get this job done on Saturday”.  I immediately get over Adonis and fall in love with Mick.  Fickle ? Yes But I have the coolest floorboards you can imagine and we gave this man the job without even getting a quote.

Why can’t everyone be like Mick?  How hard can it be to want to make your customers happy?

Do you notice the people around you?

On Saturday  night Mr Pencil and I had a rare night out alone, Little Pencil was sleeping at a friend and although we tried to gather some friends to join us – we left it till about 7:30pm and so everyone was already “otherwise engaged”.

It is really not that often that we get to go out just the two of us because Mr Pencil does ever so love a crowd, well not so much a crowd but a larger group to laugh at his jokes and share drinks with him and the truth is, as I often tell my friends, I am sure that people go out with us because of my Mr Pencil.  He is articulate, he is smart, he is entertaining and very funny.  And he is also very friendly.

But on Saturday night I had him all to myself and because we were so amazingly organised we walked the streets of Surry Hills after going to the restaurant we had planned to eat at an hour after they had closed their list,  Side note: what kind of restaurant closes their list at 8:30 and gets a person with shaved hair on one side and waist length hair on the other to tell you this nugget of information?

There we were, him the carnivore and me the vegetarian trying to find a place to feed us and a space to seat us.

We happened along a cute little Italian place that had space at the bar only.  Cool, we were happy to sit at the bar – it meant we are closer to the drinks.    And really we were pretty starving at this point so we would take whatever was given to us.

And there we are sitting at the bar when the two very beautiful girls sitting at the bar next to us started to engage Mr Pencil in polite discussion about his drink, his choice of dinner and his accent.  What is this about?  It is about my husband.  He doesn’t do the two person dinner.  Even if I try.
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They were gorgeous girls and they were interesting too.  And they loved South African accents and so we are both forced to chat to them. It was nothing like a pick up of old, they weren’t actually interested in taking us home to bed (although Mr Pencil may have written this blog post differently in his head) but they were interested in talking to Mr Pencil, er I mean us.

I love to meet new people, I love to hear interesting stories and learn to see things from a different perspective so I  was not to upset that these girls had joined us.  My biggest problem?  The one girl had the same very bad shaved hair on the one side and waist length hair on the other side style!  Try as I might I  could not bring it up with her although I really wanted to .  Mr Pencil?  He didn’t even notice.

Why is that that some people do the noticing while others are noticed?

I don’t think it’s always necessarily about the way you look because even though I think my husband is good to look at, I know that people are attracted to his intellect – he is smart.  And very entertaining.  He is interested in other people but he doesn’t really notice them.  I notice people but seldom get strangers talking to me (although I sometimes talk to them).

So looks aside – do you notice the people around you or do they notice you?

All grown up

I have waited for such a long time to feel all grown up but, at 40 something (something very low), I can safely say that I don’t feel any closer to being there.

With no offence at all to my mother, she was always old.  Not old in a bad way and not even old as in she was 90 when I was born, because obviously she wasn’t, but she was always old in a mature way, she acted like a grown up. I have kept expecting that to happen to me, for me to be grown up like my mother.  In fact I can’t believe that I have a child and I make a vague attempt at running a home and holding down some semblance of a job. I actually only feel about 16.  Sadly I probably look about 56.

I remember when I was a little girl and my mother had friends over – they always seemed to sit on chairs and speak about very sombre, serious and worldly stuff.  When my friends come over I sit on the floor and I talk absolute nonsense, mainly obsessing about what I should eat and then complaining that I eat too much.

I look at teens in their school uniforms sneaking a cigarette outside the service station and I genuinely believe that I am one of them (not that I am at school or that I am a smoker but that I might be a bit of a rebellious teenager).  But I have never been included and in fact none of these people have ever made eye contact with me.  My husband says it is because they see me as an old woman.  I think they can tell that I am just not a smoker.

I like the same music as my 13 year old nephew and I am convinced that my 19 year old niece sees me as her contemporary.  She just doesn’t want me to hang with her and her friends because I am family.  It can’t possibly be because I am old and staid and boring, because I am not.
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My favourite food would have to be plain butter cake with blue icing.  No grown ups like that do they? Do they?

And then the other night I went out and some genuinely young person looked right at me and without a flicker of hesitation, she  said to her friend “Why are there so many old people here tonight?”

I remain shattered.

Seems I may really be grown up after all.  Why is it that I never felt it happen?