British Expatriate Network

I was thinking about resurgence of the long standing debate about customer in the Completely Different thread, and that led to thoughts on the books Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and its later UK counterpart Hard work by Polly Toynbee.

So my position on the first is customer service is poor everywhere and expats generally feel that it was better where they came from because they have that break with reality that only time and distance can provide.

And the reason I believe customer service is bad everywhere is twofold. One, companies and governments have deliberately set up interfaces in such a way that paying for goods and services is very easy whilst raising questions about or procuring working goods and services is boring and tedious at best and punitive and Kafkaesque at worst. To implement these interfaces they employ people at minimum wage and have them take the brunt of customer rage.

Unlike Ehrenreich and Toynbee most minimum wage workers have little choice to quit and move on. In fact they are usually working two jobs to support families instead of conducting an experiment that they can skip out on for nice intermissions.

To top it all off, financial institutions market credit to these people as aggressively as they do to anybody else. So in addition to the squeeze from a poor job market they can expect bankruptcies and debt collectors.

So… Why should customer service staff be nice to you? They generally work long hours for a wage that puts them below the poverty line. Where’s their incentive to be happy and nice?
One of the criticisms of Ehrenreich’s book was that she had no work ethic. (quitting in the middle of a waitressing shift, etc.) Is work good in and of itself? I certainly don’t think so. If you’ve found a job that you love and it completes you, that’s great, but what are the chances that it’s cold calling selling long distance plans?

My last thought is that I almost prefer a surly uninterested shop assistant or waiter. The overly helpful perky ones make me nervous. I always feel they’re about to try to drag me off to join their cult at any minute.

Mass production has made a wide variety of goods available for the masses. However most of the products sold in the market place are not required for the basic needs of life.

In order to give their families a normal, life rich and poor are indoctrinated by the media into believing that we need these products. Very few of these items are nessesary to sustain life. The poor however are driven to find that extra cash through working in one or two jobs to try to pay for them, or they resort to illegal ways to get them. Shoplifting is a way of life for many.

Alarming Facts About Shoplifting
Shoplifters steal over $20 billion worth of goods from retailers each year.

Shoplifting is America’s #1 property crime.

1 in 11 people shoplift. (There are approximately 23 million shoplifters in the US. )

25% of these shoplifters are children. (That’s 5,750,000 children who are facing a
life of crime.)

55% of adult shoplifters say they started shoplifting in their teens.

86% of kids say they know other kids who shoplift. 66% say they hang out with those kids

47% of high school students have shoplifted within the past year.

Shoplifting often leads to more serious juvenile crime.

Shoplifting spans all economic and cultural conditions.

The vast majority of shoplifters are individuals who shoplift not because of financial pressures, but because of social, peer and personal pressure.
The costs related to shoplifting are absorbed by the honest consumer who pays higher prices to cover the loss of merchandise, loss prevention measures, etc.


There has always been this divide between the haves and have nots. The Industrial Revolution accelerated this divide.

I remember when all of the items were behind the counters and the only way you got to look at them was to ask an assistant, also behind the counter. There were exceptions to this in small local shops where some stuff would be in barrels, in front of the counter but still in sight of the salesperson. later, some shops decided to cut down on the number of assistants, and put stuff out in the open.

Because they were able to sell at a lower price, other stores had to follow suit. This resulted in there being less jobs. The next step was to reduce profit margin; but to do that, you had to sell more to stay even. "Style" was promoted.

At the same time, they got psychologits involved in the selling. Advertising went from simply presenting the objects for sale to those who needed them, to finding ways to create a psychological need for them. As a result, we have people throwing away a perfectly good pair of Reebocks because the new Nike sneaker is more "cool"

So now we have a problem with shop lifting, we made the goods accessible, reduced the number of employed people and created a need that is all in the mind. Should we be surprised? Psych advertising is seen by those who have money and those that don't.

Walmart is just carrying this further. I would love to know how much the total wage bill is affected in an area where a Walmart opens up versus the change in the cost of living. If we imagine an area, and total up the take-home pay of all the residents and assume they spend that money each week. Then imagine that a Walmart moves in. After a year, recalculate the total take-home pay and see if it buys as much, figuring that some things, such as health care will now have to come out of take home pay where before, it may not have done. for sure, Walmart won't be paying out as much as the businesses they drove away, and they won't employ as many people as were employed in the those lost businesses. More competion for jobs - lower wages, lower wages, less buying power - less buying power, less jobs - less jobs, more competition for jobs - more competition for jobs, lower wages - The middle class disappears and we become a third world country.

Once a year or so I call my UK bank (Lloyds TSB) with some query. I pull the old business card out my file and get directed to some customer service center. My query will usually be about something off the beaten track, foreign money transfers etc, i can remember my account no., but not my sort code, or any sort of password I may have been given several years ago.
Firstly the phone is answered by a real live person :shock: in a couple of rings, who sounds awake and interested in helping, we maneuver through establishing my identity and they are usually very helpful and efficient. I end the call feeling happy that I learned the information I was seeking.

American Bank, not so much. They are usually efficient enough, obviously I have to negotiate the automated system first, but I am often left not trusting the information they have given, having on several occasions been given bad info.

So I contest that I am viewing this rose tinted hindsight 8)

Too right. I can still call my bank in Leeds and talk to real live, helpful people that seem comfortable dealing with foreign transactions.

I can't even get that sort of service walking into my local credit union in town. In fact, they go out of their way sometimes to be obstructive and it seems like "jobs for the (old) girls" sometimes.

I've been trying for three months to get Lloyds to change our address. I find them to be a right shower.

Here in WNY there is a supermarket chain called Tops. Anyone who grew up here has had a job as a cashier at Tops. Tops hires mostly teenagers and older women. The pay is minimum wage, and the benefits are virtually non existant. Like most smaller supermarkets Tops tries to give each employer a certain amount of hours so as not to give them health care coverage, pension plans, or any perks. Based on this knowledge alone I never expect anyone working at Tops to give a flying feck whether I'm happy or not. Hell I'm still not used to someone else packing my carrier bags.

However, here in WNY we also have a supermarket chain called Wegmans. Apart from being more upmarket than Tops - meaning the fresh produce isn't lice ridden rotting garbage - Wegmans consistently falls right at the top of the "best place to work in America" list. The reason is that Wegmans does hire people for full time, does give them benefits including health care coverage and pension, and doesn't treat its staff like cattle. I do expect these people to at least be civil if not friendly.

In my experience the customer service here isn't better, it's just different. A good example is that there is no such thing as the papershop here. There is a Wilson Farms -a minimart type thing - but it is a soul-deprived hole of a place. Wherever I have lived before the cashier knows my name, what I want before I ask, and wants to know what I'm up to. I put it down to more social mingling in the UK - pubs equal different age groups and societal groups all mixing together. In other words, a sense of community which creates a different type of customer service.

Wal-Mart are an absolute disgrace but are so close to those in power that they not only get away with their practises but also get to dictate the way that the United States is moving.

I've compared Wal-Mart to Costco and Costco appear to follow a similar approach in buying cheap (from the far east), piling it high but somehow don't believe in dumping all over their employees while doing so, all in the name of making a few billion more bucks for the owners/shareholders.

Costco = spirit level - Wal-Mart = lots of chives.

This is a pretty interesting subject. When gas prices were high a few weeks back there was a cardboard sign written with a sharpie at the desk at a local gas station. It read "Please do not abuse our attendants for high gas prices. It is not their fault" Though I'm sure consumers want to blow off steam to somebody, the person that is making $7 per hour behind the till is probably not the problem. I saw this on the news.

One of the worst aspects of customer service is the automated menu that never allows the customer to get to a real person, and if you actually do, the person is in a foreign country and has very little real knowledge of your enquiry.

I don't think our town actually has a Walmart. It's not a place I'm willing to frequent.

I tried to arrange an electronic funds transfer between the UK and my bank in the US, which was Wells Fargo, not a small organisation. The UK bank presented all the information that it required (and as I used to work for Bank Of America in the UK I know this informattion is consistent in international banking) but Wells Fargo just could not understand the premise. I spoke to an account manager but to no avail, we just had tyo give up.

But basically I agree with the premise, customer service on the whole is designed to fail.