I'm hanging up now. Do what you want with that information.

I find myself wondering what has happened to customer service.  The "service" is seriously lacking in some of these interactions.  Today has been a long day of generally poor service for me.  It seems that everywhere I went sales people were a little too stupid or self absorbed to do their jobs.

Stop number one was at the pet store.  I was purchasing a new carrier for our newest friend "Dave" (picture below) so he could take his first trip to the Vet today.

I had a "15% off cat supplies" coupon.  After the order was rung up, I politely pointed out to the clerk that the coupon was only applied to the cat toy I purchased and only $1.05 and not a full 15% off the purchase.  She mumbled something about not being good at math and that she'd already rung the coupon and an implied "oh well."  I then asked if she could just have the manager manually take off the discount and I was shocked to find out that she WAS the manager.  After assembling the entire store staff they managed to correctly, or perhaps incorrectly (but it was at least 15%), give me the discount.  20 minutes I won't get back.

Stop number number two was at Borders.  I know they're basically heading for bankruptcy, and I can see why.  A bunch of employees walking around browsing books, one apparently on break, drinking coffee and one making coffee - not especially good coffee either.

And when I got home, a call to my credit card company.  The main reason was I accidentally submitted two online payments and needed one of them removed.  That was resolved quickly.  However, I also thought I should point out that the reason I even had to manually make said online payment was because the autopay I set up for the 22nd of the month never actually paid.  She told me "it did pay on December 22".  I said, but it's January 25th.  I said, I'm fine, but another customer might not be.  I know I wouldn't have been if I were on vacation and checking that the payment had gone through today.  I pointed out to the rep (I don't say customer service rep because she was bordering on rude by this point and lacking all intent to serve) that there might be someone in the company who would like to know that the system failed and did not make a scheduled payment.  She said I was the only one that happened to - of course, because she's talked to EVERYONE, right?!  So, I told her, "I'm hanging up now.  Do what you want with that information."