Customer Service

 

For the last twenty years, before retirement, I worked for one homebuilder or another. A Realtor, my job was to meet and greet customers who came into our model homes. Answer questions, provide information, give a tour, build credibility…all that stuff.

Although I’ve always prided myself on being able to engage with people from many backgrounds making the experience all about them, not everyone wanted to hear it, or anything else.

As with any kind of customer service position, certain behaviors stand out. Some people seemed to think it was cute for their kids to run around screaming, using the beds as trampolines.

I used restraint in handling it.

Some ladies apparently thought the extra toilet paper they found in our bathroom cabinets was free for them to take home for their own bathrooms.

Again, I used restraint when I would see it sticking out of a handbag as they exited.

A family of very large people with six big kids who came in right after an AUCE breakfast at Shoney’s, lumbering through the house like a swarm of locust. They used every bathroom, brushing aside the “Do Not Use” signs I carefully placed on the top of each toilet seat. Only one bathroom is set up with tissue, soap and towels for public use.

I showed restraint.

A bath towel I found weeks later, still folded neatly over the tub rim, held large chunks of excrement on the inside. Nice.

One guy was checking out our refrigerator, a brand we showcased. But when I walked into the kitchen, he was standing inside the fridge, browsing the shelves, with both doors flanking him as he slowly chewed on one half of my tuna sub.

Much as I wanted to use the bowl of fake fruit sitting there next to the sink to make the back of his head look like a watermelon dropped in the driveway, I didn’t.

I used restraint and politely told him that it was my lunch and that we, as a builder, do not stock the refrigerators in our model homes with food for customers. Nor does my company buy lunch for any of us. I bought that sub myself at Publix on my way into work. Told him he was welcome to one of the 50 bottles of cold water though. They were the ones with a sign that said, “Help Yourself”, unlike my sub which had been hidden in the back of the produce drawer.

Frequently over the years, I’ve shown great restraint. Generally, customers were polite, and we all had a good time.

After so many years of pent-up restraint, a cathartic visit happened on one of my last days working in a model home, before Covid made retirement a necessity.

An older couple came in to browse. In their sixties, they lived up North and their 20-year-old daughter had recently moved out of the house. They speculated that maybe they would downsize and move to Florida.

The lady's attitude problem was instantly apparent. She had a face like she smelled poop in every room we toured. Nothing was good enough. She was used to much greater, finer things. Although I pointed out the wide variety of customized options to give her what she wanted, her bottom line was that our offerings simply wouldn’t do. Everything was distasteful, beneath her high standards.

They would have to sell their home up North; they weren’t able to afford two houses. She knew it probably wouldn’t sell for what they wanted though, because “people don’t appreciate quality”.

I finally got to the point of suggesting “perhaps we aren’t the builder for you.” as I did when there was no pleasing the customer. That “take-away” often got customers to back up and show real interest if there was any there in the first place.

Not with her.

After about an hour of her negativity I chimed in with: “Well, you say you never see your daughter but if you moved to Florida, she would probably be knocking on your door before you even got unpacked! Young people love the beaches, surfing, all that stuff!”

With that, the woman insisted that their daughter was an ingrate, didn’t care about them at all, and doubted that she would ever visit.

Her sour face permanently frozen into a sneer, she looked at me for a sign of agreement that her daughter was way off base, one of the younger generation who don’t respect and value their parents, as all kids should.

I knew ten minutes in that these people weren’t buyers anyway and that there was nothing in this world that would or could please that sour prune of a lady, not one of our houses, not her long-suffering husband and certainly not her estranged daughter.

Still staring at me for confirmation that her daughter must be a bad one, she again asked “Why wouldn’t any decent daughter come visit her mother?”

I couldn’t help myself in replying: “Perhaps it’s because you are such an abysmally unpleasant and negative person to be around?”

I didn’t add: Unsmiling, judgmental, and demeaning. You carry a cloud of negativity, and the look of smelling poop is permanently frozen into your face. You act like nothing is good enough for your millionaire ways, but dress in Walmart bargain specials and drive a car crushed on one side. If I were your daughter, I would have left long ago.

I used restraint. No need to overdo it.

The woman was stunned silent, her husband working hard to repress a smile, causing him to turn away so she wouldn’t see it.

I doubt that lady is smiling today, wherever she is, she is unhappy…but the memory of that particular day, makes me grin like the Cheshire cat.