Complain or ignore it? Borderline situations.

[KotOD]

As someone that has been in Technical Support with a bit of customer service mixed into his career, I'm normally not a complainer. I tend to chalk up bad service to inexperience or fatigue or something similar, which is where most poor service starts. I also know when a line is crossed someone higher up has to be informed of the happenings. I know what it's like to get pasted by a boss that just got pasted by a VP at a customer company. That has stayed with me. However, now, as a manager, I want to know when my employees are screwing up so that I can correct it before I get pasted by the VP of some customer company.

I've been running into situations lately that seem borderline to me and I was wondering if I took the right line. Answer one or all of them, but if you split your answers and complain about some and don't complain about others, would you mind giving a reason?

1. While waiting for the gas attendant to mosey over to fill my tank, I notice that he's smoking while filling the SUV in front of me.

2. In line at the grocery store the cashier was either really bad at using the scanner for certain items, or the scanner was malfunctioning. She would flash the bar code to the scanner five times. Only after five failures and a grimace would she key in the item code manually.

3. At the Atlanta airport, an Oriental woman with little to no English skills is having a hard-time understanding a TSA security guard instructing to remove her sweater vest. The person between her and I finally makes her understand by taking his hoodie off. As she passes through the metal detector and hoodie guy is ready to go, the security guard says "Stupid mother-[censored] dyke chink, learn English" loudly enough so that at least three of us and one other guard hear this very clearly.

4. In an extremely busy bar, two guys to my right are incorrectly given full Guiness drafts when they asked for Black & Tans. The bartender throws them down on the glasses shelf and 10-15 minutes later, while waiting on the servers, sends those two drafts out with a waitress to the restaurant.


There are plenty of others that come up in day to day situations, and they happen to everyone. I'm just wondering how people would normally react. Other borderline situations are welcome, I find my on the spot rationale in these situation varies greatly.

[Paul B.]

1. "Would you mind putting that cigarette out before you fill up my tank?"
2. Ask for a receipt.
3. Ignore, unless you are "Oriental" (lol) like me. I would say "don't make me pull a VATech on your ass"
4. if the bartender looks busy/stressed I wouldn't bother.

P.S. You suck at life if these are borderline.

[tuq]

Kot,

I think life is too short to wig out about any of the ones you put forth. However, I'm always amazed by hourly employees like the security guard who go home at the same time no matter what actually wigging out about something like that. It's not like she was keeping him from doing something else.

[emon87]

1. Is this actually dangerous? If so I complain. If not I don't

2. What is she supposed to do here? No complaint, but I might switch lines

3. If he had said something like, "wow I hate it when people can't understand English" I don't care at all. But those words are way over the line.

4. This is not a big deal at all, assuming they didn't taste the beers.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Is this actually dangerous?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's smoking three feet away from a hose full of flammable liquid, which hooks up to an underground tank with thousands of gallons of it. I would say that's fairly dangerous, even with the hose and tank containing everything.

[emon87]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1. Is this actually dangerous?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's smoking three feet away from a hose full of flammable liquid, which hooks up to an underground tank with thousands of gallons of it. I would say that's fairly dangerous, even with the hose and tank containing everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that's the thing... can you actually ignite the gas even if you tried? I'm almost positive it wouldn't shoot up the hose and into the tank.

I mean, I guess it's not the smartest thing to do just in case. But it seems like it's really not a big deal.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1. Is this actually dangerous?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's smoking three feet away from a hose full of flammable liquid, which hooks up to an underground tank with thousands of gallons of it. I would say that's fairly dangerous, even with the hose and tank containing everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that's the thing... can you actually ignite the gas even if you tried?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure--there are plenty of cases of gasoline getting lit with just static electricity.

[KotOD]

None of these situations got me worked up, and I don't get worked up when I complain. Like I said in the OP, I don't normally complain about anything unless it's bad.


My lines


[ QUOTE ]
1. While waiting for the gas attendant to mosey over to fill my tank, I notice that he's smoking while filling the SUV in front of me.

[/ QUOTE ]

This one probably merited saying something to the store manager, but I didn't complain, I just drove away. I didn't have the time to waste complaining about it. But jeebus holy is that unsafe! I'm pretty sure that heavy fumes would go up in flames to an open cigarette! I know I've seen fumes go up because of static discharge.


[ QUOTE ]
2. In line at the grocery store the cashier was either really bad at using the scanner for certain items, or the scanner was malfunctioning. She would flash the bar code to the scanner five times. Only after five failures and a grimace would she key in the item code manually.

[/ QUOTE ]

Changing lines wasn't an option because there were only two cashiers, and one had their cashier light blinking. I didn't say anything, I was pretty engrossed in the Weekly World News, but she was life-tilting the rest of the store.

[ QUOTE ]
3. At the Atlanta airport, an Oriental woman with little to no English skills is having a hard-time understanding a TSA security guard instructing to remove her sweater vest. The person between her and I finally makes her understand by taking his hoodie off. As she passes through the metal detector and hoodie guy is ready to go, the security guard says "Stupid mother-[censored] dyke chink, learn English" loudly enough so that at least three of us and one other guard hear this very clearly.

[/ QUOTE ]

I feel badly that I didn't say anything or request a supervisor, but I didn't want to end up getting a cavity search and miss my flight. That was my rationale "TSA is full of [censored], I don't want to end up in jail" I suck. It's ridiculous that a guy like this has a job, let alone one in which he interacts with thousands of people a day.

[ QUOTE ]
4. In an extremely busy bar, two guys to my right are incorrectly given full Guiness drafts when they asked for Black & Tans. The bartender throws them down on the glasses shelf and 10-15 minutes later, while waiting on the servers, sends those two drafts out with a waitress to the restaurant.

[/ QUOTE ]

Being an ex-bartender, this is the one I complained about. That's just nasty to let a drink sit out and collect who knows what in it for 10-15 minutes before serving it. I don't care that there was nothing wrong with it, but with the amount of flies, gnats, smoke, liquids, hair and sweat behind a busy bar - SOMETHING was floating in that beer after 15 minutes. I complained to the manager, the bartender denied it, the guys on my right confirmed it and we all got a free round out of it -- no idea if the people that the drafts went to actually got anything out of it.


All of these except for the TSA thing happened in Alabama which is prone to fascinatingly slow service to begin with, so I wasn't really expecting much.


Paul B: Oriental is the play here ever since Big Lebowski. I used to try to guess the actual country of origin, but that pissed people off. I'm a geography nit, so I refuse to use "Asian" to describe anyone because friggin Russians and Indians are as Asian as Koreans. Oriental it is. Also, I may suck at life, but not for calling these borderline, judging by the thread, there are plenty of others that see a blurred line here.

LFS: Yes, Full Service. I know it's different in different states (I'm looking at you New Jersey and your ban on self-serve gas), but some states have the option of pumping your own gas and letting the attendant do it. I was on the phone, so I went full serve.

LFS, Tuq: None of them wig me out or get me worked up. The only thing that rages me up is NHL refereeing. Well and now OOTers that call hot chicks "weird" or "embarrassing". Alright, well, the guy calling nice oriental ladies "Dyke chinks" pissed me off.

[TheDudeAbides]

1. Definitely complain. wtf kind of retard does that?

2. This one is kind of meh. There's a level of expectation when dealing with people working minimum wage jobs.

3. This is a huge one. I would go right to the supervisor without question. And I don't think I'm being nitty. This is unacceptable behaviour.

4. Meh.

[Quicksilvre]

I would say one and three are definite complaining situations, and two is definitely not a complaining situation. I don't think four is a complaining situation either, especially given that it's a busy bar and the Guinness was going to move soon anyway.