When the Staples Dell commercial first aired there were layoffs happening across Canada at Dell.  As it turns out it didn’t take someone long to point that fact out to Staples who quickly edited the commercial to state “Hey everyone, all your cars have been towed.” (not verbatim)  It’s just one of those little things that to some are blatant and to others inconsequential but still happened.

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When my girlfriend and I first walked into the store we stopped to look at ladies Colombia rain jackets. While we were reading the info on the tag the first employee comes up and asks if there is something wrong with the jacket followed by a few other unnecessary comments and questions. If anything had in fact been wrong and I felt concerned I would have approached someone. Apparently you’re not allowed to read information on tags in SportChek. While we were still browsing jackets another employee approaches us looking for a sale and asks if there’s anything they can help us with. Well gosh darn it, there really isn’t, thanks!

We make our way over to the mens sneaker section where I see they do have the NB Zip and it’s nicely overpriced. Oh, could you imagine we were approached by yet another over zealous SportChek employee with their wonderment in aiding me. By this time I’m quite annoyed but want to take a look to see if they still have bike gloves. I only just made it to the glove rack where I was immediately hounded by yet another SportChek employee who I took the time to be rude with. I left SportChek quite pissed off and annoyed at their bothersome employees, I also made a point of not buying anything either.

I don’t venture into SportChek too often as they’re the sporting equivalent of Future Shop, everything is over priced and unless it’s on sale you’re getting nicely ripped off. Now I have another reason to never go there again. I prefer Sport Mart which is a proudly Canadian sports store and their employees are nowhere near as annoying!

Update – March 29th/2008: To avoid generalization so as not to offend too many people I’ll make something more clear.  Originally making the title of this post “SportChek employees annoy me, but so far only regarding the experience I had today and for the record not all SportChek employees annoy me as it would have been impossible for me to meet or come into contact with all of them.” would have been a little too long.  So yeah, those particular SportChek employees did annoy me that day and no I wasn’t rude to them or swore or yelled or gave them dirty looks.  I just answered them honestly that there was in fact absolutely nothing they could do for me.

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This all began around a month ago when I decided to switch from Rogers Digital home phone to Rogers Internet home phone.  It sounds simple enough but set off quite an unfortunate series of events.  I had blogged previously about the whole ordeal of getting the Rogers Internet phone hooked up and you can read about that if you like.

So after a week or so I had to call Rogers back to let them know I was moving on Sept 1st and that I would be transferring all of my existing service to the new address.  Well they completely messed that up and now no one at Rogers knows how to fix it.  As far as they’re concerned my old Rogers Digital home phone service is still going and I’m getting billed for it.  It seems they didn’t cancel it and no one at Rogers knows how to cancel it and credit me for the bills they’re sending me for a service I don’t technically have.  In addition to that they also though it would be a good idea to set up a new digital home phone service for me at my new address.  Obviously I didn’t request for that to happen as I now have Rogers Internet home phone.

I do know one thing though, after just spending an hour on the phone with Rogers speaking with 3 different people and getting nowhere, they’re not getting a penny from me until after I move and they get their shit straightened out.  I’m guessing it’ll take another 2 to 3 hours on the phone with Rogers after I’ve moved to have them fix everything.  It’s unbelievable how crappy service is in Ontario, just plain shitty.

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Living in a city you are availed more choices by default when it comes to who you do business with. When it came to my phone, internet, mobile and cable I had one company providing all those services to me. It was great for me, everything on one bill, easy to keep track of and pay. While it may have been a good thing for me it was a bad thing for the company providing me all the service (Bell). Why? Because once they had pissed me off bad enough I didn’t just switch one service I switched all of them. It doesn’t sound like that big a deal right? I’m just one person, so if they’re losing out on the $160 a month, who cares! But when you start adding that up over the year and multiplying that by all the other disgruntled people just like me then it starts making a difference.

The whole thing came about because my home phone line service would drop and I ended up without a home phone for almost two weeks straight. Give me a break I live in the middle of the capital city of Canada and you can’t fix my freakin’ phone in less than 24hrs! What the heck is the matter with you, I don’t live out on a farm hours away from civilization. Needless to say I got fed up and switched all my services. Oh and the reason why my phone line kept dropping was just because of a three foot stretch of bare line that may have cost fifty cents to replace and now they’ve lost thousands from just little ole me!

So bad customer service costs money, it costs huge money, more than people think. As a general rule I think customer service in Canada sucks, when’s the last time you called somewhere and had to sit on hold for 45 minutes only to get through to someone and get transferred to the wrong department where you get transferred again only to wait on hold and finally disconnected two hours later. Come on people, the telephone and routing switches weren’t built yesterday! Customer service is about providing Customer experience and not a bad experience at that.

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Corporations like to make money, it’s the only reason they exist, everything else results out of the insatiable lust for money. Not only do they like to make money, they want it all. Every little nickel and dime they can get their filthy hands on, and the ones they can’t. Too much will never be enough, all this is nicely displayed in the rhetoric that spews forth out from the mouths of executives and through email to our inboxes. It’s unknown to me how many individuals take the propaganda at face value without bothering to translate it into plain English, often the rhetoric is so vague it’s difficult to garner any substantial meaning at all. Some pay no mind and ignore it choosing not to have a say in their workplace and therefore accepting their fate. Others rant, discuss and wonder why everyone wouldn’t be willing to protest, work to rule or take some other form of constructive action to better the situation.

A corporation that notifies it’s employees at the beginning of the year that salaries have been frozen, there will be no raises, incentives (bonuses) are restructured to the point of nullification, among other delightful announcements and in turn then releases the numbers for the previous year in which total revenue is disclosed, categorically described gains in revenue, new clients, client retention and so forth should be turned over the collective knee spanked and sent to bed without dinner. Throughout all this, much is endured by the employees, harsh reprimands followed by encouragement, a pat on the back followed by a slap to the face. It’s enough to keep you guessing, always on the brink, never knowing which way you’re headed, up or down.

With shareholders intent on multiplying their ever increasing bankroll, executives are hard at work whipping the subservient workforce into tip-top shape. The squeeze is on, it’s time to work harder and put even greater effort into a days work, increase productivity and be super efficient. This is regardless of the fact that you’ll be making less money than last year, regardless of the fact that you’re already overworked and understaffed, regardless of the fact that you pull in more hard cash a year than what you’re paid in five. In addition you are responsible to pay in full any error you may commit that result in a cost to the company. In all industries there is a cost to doing business, a number of corporations accept this, many do not and force that upon their employees. Bitterness ensues, the corporation now sits not in their plush high backed expensive leather chairs, no they now sit upon a time bomb biding it’s time for congruent integration into the enterprise.

Nor do shareholders or executives worry, all employees are expendable. This is confirmed through memos about internal restructuring, assignment of new responsibilities, and of course much thanks to those continuing on to other things. The nimiety of smooth euphemistic speech is suitable cause for nausea. All that matters is the bottom dollar, how it is achieved is of no consequence; save one small detail, minimum expenditure for maximum return. If fed-up employees quit, it is only seen as an opportunity to save money, they don’t seem to factor in the amount of money they’re losing hourly due to an empty desk, or the amount it will cost to hire and train someone new, even though they will be paid less. It would take months to get that new employee up to a level of efficiency worthy of the previous employee they now replace.

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