Where's the "Service" in the Service Industry?

So, I had my first really frustrating holiday shopping experience today. And at one of my favorite stores, no less.

We are big book fans, so we love to shop for books, we love to hang out at bookstores, we love to listen to the music they play in the bookstores, and we love to drink the coffee drinks they sell at bookstores. And our favorite book store franchise is Borders Books. Barnes & Noble seems bigger and less personal, their staff isn’t as friendly, and their seats aren’t as comfortable.

I went in to our Borders today looking for a gift for my nephews. I know I’ve seen the kind of story I was looking for at school libraries and other places, so I didn’t anticipate a difficult time finding what I needed. After browsing in the Children’s Department for a few minutes I think to myself, “Hey, this may take me a while to find, and the Customer Service folks have always been so helpful -- golly, I’d probably save myself a lot of time if I just go ask them directly!”

So I skipped over to the desk, la di da, waited my turn in line, and, when it was my turn, I smiled to the Borders employee (not one I’ve noticed before, and I can recognize many of them on sight, we spend so much time there) and started to explain what I was looking for. The guy looks at me superciliously and says (now, you must read this with deep open vowels), “Well, do you have a title for me, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this type of story.” He gives me one of those fake sympathetic eyebrow frowns, purses his lips, and shrugs. I have just been officially blown off.

That sound you hear is my internal holiday background music screeching as the needle scrapes across the record and the arm flies into empty air. Then what you hear is silence.

I take a breath. “That’s all fine and good,” I respond, with an edge of ice in my politeness, “but maybe someone from the Children’s Department may know a bit more about this than you?”

“Sure, there should be someone back there,” he replies, tilting his head towards the back of the store, “you might want to go and check.”

I still just look at him, no smile on my face now. He continues, “Unless you’re already been back there?” I nod my head and give him one of those oh-so-impatient closed-lip smiles. [Yes, damn you, of course I went back there to check. I had ignored the irritation of not finding anyone back there because I am in my favorite store, and I was willing to give Borders the benefit of the doubt!]

He messes with some papers on his desk. “Unless she’s at lunch [people, it is 10:30 in the frickin morning] . . . no, she should be back there,” he looks towards the back of the store. “It looks like she’s helping someone in . . . DVDs.” Now, he hasn’t looked at me since I gave him the Freeze-o-smile, so I know he’s feeling uncomfortable, but whether that’s because he realized he had made a faux pas or because he didn’t like me by this point, I didn’t know.

So I decided to simplify this unknown variable by asking in a terse and frustrated voice, “Would you mind give me a NAME or a description of what she’s WEARING, so I can go back there and try to find her myself, then?”

There, now he definitely won’t like me. He runs off to go to her and calls to me over his shoulder that I should go to the Children’s Department and he’ll send her right over.

The long and the short of it is, they didn’t have the kind of book I was looking for. And he didn’t even offer to help me order it through them.

Now, I agree that I got pissed. But I wouldn’t have had to get pissed if he had taken my question seriously in the first place, and if he had actually made some effort to help me find the answer, rather than base his inaction on whether he, personally, had ever heard of this type of story.

Maybe we’ll have to go check out Barnes & Noble.