Service? What Service?

Lately, business leaders in this country have been vocal in their concern over the steady decline in retail sales across Australia. According to a recent report the past twelve months has seen a thirty per cent drop in sales. There are two reasons for this, we are told. First is the explosion of on-line shopping. Almost anything the Australian consumer wants to buy can be bought cheaper from overseas. For instance, I recently bought a hardcover book which in an Australian bookstore would have cost me $39.95. Ordering it through UK company thebookdepository.com cost me $19.95 including free postage - and it came right to my door. The second reason, according to our business leaders, is that the Australian consumer is displaying unprecedented disloyalty to his/her true blue Aussie store owners. In other words, we’re letting down our mates. Of course, they don’t actually come right out and say this, but the accusation is there between every word, in every pause.

All this shows just how far removed from the general retail public our business leaders are. Because the real reason behind the thirty per cent drop in retail sales has nothing to do with ebay or Amazon, or even the disloyalty of the average Australian. These are merely a symptom of a disease spreading exponentially across the sunburnt plains of our fair country. You see, our business owners have been infected by a malaise which sees them caring more for profits and less for the people entering their stores. They’ve forgotten that old equation - happy shoppers = healthy profits.

This was brought home to me just last week as I stood at a cafe waiting to be served while the barista talked on the phone to her friend. I stood, I waited, I walked away. Right into another cafe across the mall. And I vowed never to return to the cafe where I’d been so profoundly ignored.

But a real case in point - and this is happening with greater frequency - is what happened in a Subway only a few weeks ago.

First, let me set the scene. I was hungry. I was driving between the two campuses of the college where I work. I pulled into a shopping centre and made directly for Subway. That was my first mistake. The second was I didn’t walk out. Though this time it was because the incident I am about to describe, though indicative of the general decline in the arts of customer service, was just too extraordinary to ignore. You see, this Subway was not manned by people whose job it is to please the customer’s every whim; it was manned by a group of young people who made me wonder which school they’d attended and to feel sorry for the students who were still enrolled there.

In front of me were two men, both in their late twenties/early thirties. The first was being served by an incongruously-named sandwich artist who kept asking in her dull-as-a-board voice what he would like on his six-inch. Behind the glass a male and female were leaning casually against the counter talking about their weekend plans.

Suddenly, the lounging girl seemed to wake up. She lurched towards the man in front of me and asked whether he was waiting to be served. A little surprised by this, the man nodded and said, “Well, yes.”

“Oh,” the girl said, including the three of us in her gaze. “I thought you were all together.” 

To which the man jabbed a thumb at the customer at the head of the line and replied, “We walked in at the same time.” He jerked his thumb at me. “He didn’t.”

The girl was unfazed by this. She glared at the young male sandwich artist and indicated he should start earning his money. Then she picked up a cloth and began industriously buffing the glass covering the salad trough. It took the man in front of me to say, “What about him?” Meaning me. And the girl said “Oh” again and then asked me, “Are you waiting to be served?”

Meanwhile, the young male Subway employee asked in his surfer chic voice what the man in front - and he called him “man” - would like. The man gave his order and was met with the response, “What?” Twice more the order was repeated and eventually the surfer dude, his face such a blank canvas it would have made Picasso tremble with expectation, turned to the girl beside him and asked, “What’s a --?”

The man repeated his order a third time and was told by the girl, “We don’t have that.”

The man’s eyebrows pinged halfway up his forehead. He turned, pointed at a prominently displayed sign, indicated the words “Try our new sandwich” emblazoned in scorching red letters across a photograph of one of the most gorgeous sandwiches I’d ever seen.

The girl laughed in what she supposed, I assume, was her cutest most cutting tone. She smirked devilishly, batted her eyes. “That’s a promotion. Only selected stores carry it.” The condescension positively dripped off her.

By this time the man was getting flustered. “Then why advertise it here?” 

The girl shrugged, the smirk rigid on her face.

“Alright,” the man said testily. “I’ll have a meatball sandwich.”

Except Surfer Dude just looked blank again. Eventually The Smirking Girl gave him an inelegant shove and stepped into the breach.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “He’s new.”

That’s not what I would have called him.

“Meatball sandwich?” she asked, now the epitome of industry and motivation.

The man nodded and smiled hopefully.

“Is that vegetarian or do you want meat?”

At first the man was dumfounded, but then he started to laugh and began studying every square inch of the store. When he saw me looking at him he explained, “I’m looking for the hidden camera.”

When it was my turn I ordered a Veggie Delight and - you guessed it - was asked whether I wanted any vegetables on that.

What I want to know is this. Who employed those people? And what the hell were they thinking? Business leaders take note. Next time I want a Subway, I’m going on-line. It may take three weeks to get to me, but at least I won’t have all the fuss.