Over the past week or so, I've had a couple of odd customer service experiences in which I felt that I'd been over-serviced. Since the opposite is usually the case, one would think this would be a welcome change, but instead the experiences left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. The first was at Tom Thumb. I had just finished checking out with two carts worth of groceries when the bagger took it upon himself to give me carry out service. I wasn't presented with an option. He just began pushing one cart while dragging the other along behind him. When I tried to help by pushing one of the carts I was quickly and sternly dismissed. Now thoroughly flustered and a little annoyed, I led the man to my car, where I tried to help load the bags into the trunk. Before I could get ahold of the first bag, however, I was once again sternly dismissed, so instead I stood aside and awkwardly stared at my shoes while my car was loaded. Once he was done, I offered a half-hearted thanks and moved on.
The other incident was more recent and occurred at the dry cleaners. I've been using the same cleaners for nearly two years, and in that time I have always followed the same routine - I park, grab my clothes, and walk into the store to drop them off. But the last two times I've gone, everything's been different. A man now races to my car before I can even open my door to steal my clothes from me, and when I check out he walks my clothes to the car and hangs them up in the back seat. That by itself doesn't seem all that strange, but today it was raining, and when the man went to my car to hang up my clothes he ordered me to stay inside the store to wait for him. When he returned, he grabbed an umbrella and walked me to my car. Oh, and the walk was all of ten feet. I felt very uncomfortable. In both of these instances I felt like shouting, "I can do it myself!!" like a cranky toddler. Oh, well.
-T
