3.11.10

WHERE HAS ALL THE SERVICE GONE?

Before I venture into the topic of this post, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I just celebrated one year of TheWittySmitty earlier this week. I've truly been humbled by the response to this site, which I simply started for no other reason than to serve as a creative outlet for my own amusement. My friends who have read my posts have been beyond kind in their responses, and for that I am truly grateful.

Now, on to the subject of this post. Can someone please explain something to me? Why is it that prices for everything have gone up, yet service has all but disappeared?

I'll give you a prime example of what I'm speaking. A few years ago, when you went inside at a fast food restaurant (as opposed to going through the drive-through, which could be a whole separate blog of its own) and ordered your food to go, the person behind the counter would do everything to take care of you. They put your napkins in the bag for you. They put your straw in the bag for you. They would throw I'm a few packs of ketchup and salt. Heck, they would even pour your soft drink and put a top on it for you.

Nowadays, however, if you forget to stop by the condiment bar, you will find yourself driving down the street, fingers greasy from your unsalted fries, unable to touch the steering wheel, soda spilling out of your uncapped drink that you had to pour yourself (if you remember it!), cursing yourself and the 16-year-old who served you. All this, yet your price has doubled since they used to do everything for you.

I'll give you another example. Wal-Mart (along with Home Depot and many other stores) now has self checkout lines. Now, I'm not opposed to self checkout. In fact, I'm many cases, I prefer it. But if I'm now doing most of the work that they used to pay someone else to do, shouldn't my bill go DOWN instead of up? Why couldn't they program the self-checkout lines to automatically give a 3- or 5-percent discount since I'm doing the work?

And one more thing that bothers me in the way of service. If I go to a buffet, where I serve myself all the food, why does the waitress that did nothing but get my drink give me a dirty look when I only leave a 10-percent tip? At a full-service restaurant, I'm a very generous tipper (assuming the service is decent), calculating 20-percent and then rounding up to the next whole dollar amount (so normally 21-22 percent). But at a buffet, I think 10-percent is MORE than generous. Am I crazy?

When service is involved, I don't mind paying premium prices, and haven't minded ever since I started working I'm a service oriented industry almost 20 years ago. But just don't ask me to pay a premium for sub-standard service.

1.21.10

CSI SMITTY – THE CASE OF THE MISSING CELL PHONE

Monday night, while I was refereeing basketball, I received a text from my wife that simply said, “Call me.” Now, for those of you who don’t know my wife, she hates talking on the phone. She would rather text for five hours than talk for five minutes. So I knew right away that something was amiss.

Between games, I called her, and she proceeded to tell me that our youngest daughter, returning from a beach trip with a friend, had left her brand new cell phone in a bathroom in Montgomery. The family she was with discovered it about halfway back to Birmingham, turned around and drove all the way back, but the phone was gone. Cynthia said Julianna was devastated, and repeated calls and texts to the phone had been fruitless. At that point, the smart thing would’ve been to just let it go (it was only a $50 cell phone), replace the phone (after disciplining Julianna, of course), and be done with it.

Checking back after the next game, I learned that Cynthia had, in fact, spoken to the person who found the phone. She claimed her name was Brittney and that she worked at the Hyundai plant just south of Montgomery. She said that she was working on Tuesday, and that if someone wanted to meet her there she would return the phone. In hindsight, Cynthia probably should have gotten an alternate number from “Brittney,” but they agreed that we would call Julianna’s number on Tuesday morning to set up a time and place to meet.

Being a natural cynic, and not nearly as trusting as my wife, when I finished refereeing that night, I decided to call Sprint to see if they could use the GPS chip in the phone to locate it and give me an address, just in case I needed it the next day. They said I would have to use the Sprint Family Locator, a $5/mo. option that would allow me to track where the phone was, as long as it was turned on. I had to go on the internet to do that, so I had to wait till I got home.

“By the way,” I asked the person at Sprint, “have there been any calls made from that phone tonight?”

“Ummm…yes, there has.” She explained that I could shut off everything on the phone, with the exception of incoming calls, so that I could still try to reach the person the next day. I was starting to think that part wouldn’t matter, because I felt that anyone who was using another person’s cell phone to make calls after she found it wouldn't be inclined to answer my calls the next day. But I was still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

So when I got home, I got online and both signed up for the tracking program, and looked at the numbers she was calling. Between 6 p.m. and 8:50 p.m., she had made 18 phone calls. None lasted very long, none were overseas, but 18 calls seemed like a lot for someone planning to return a phone. I printed off the list of phone numbers, thinking I might need them the next day. I ran the tracking program, and it came back with no response, meaning the phone was turned off. I was afraid retrieving the phone was done before it got started, but I was determined to do all I could. At this point, it became less about a $50 cell phone and more a matter of principle.

Tuesday morning, I checked the GPS Locater again and the phone had been turned on again, and it gave me an address. BINGO! Now I had all I needed, I felt, to get the phone back. I headed to Montgomery, not really knowing what to expect. I tried to call the phone numerous times that morning, but to no avail. I went ahead with Plan A, which was to go to Hyundai, armed with nothing but a first name, and get the HR Director to find “Brittney” and retrieve my phone. My best friend had warned me that they wouldn’t help me, but I was still stupid enough to be optimistic. He, of course, was right. They wouldn’t even let me past the front desk at Hyundai – I wasn’t even allowed to speak to the HR Director. Mental Note: Never buy a Hyundai – they were very rude!!

Anyway, I moved on to Plan B. I went to a nearby hotel to make a few phone calls. I was hoping that some of the people that the girl had called the night before would help me find her, and thus, find my daughter’s phone. Again, I was way too optimistic. I called three numbers, and no one knew anyone named “Brittney.” I used the business center in the hotel to check and see if the phone was still at the address that it showed on the tracker earlier, or maybe it was now at the Hyundai plant (I hoped). It was till located at the address that it had been at when I checked at 7 a.m., so it appeared I was heading for Plan C – heading to this person’s house to request they give me the phone back.

I punched the address into my GPS, and headed the 16 miles back to Prattville to see what this would bring. The closer I got to the address, the worse the neighborhood turned, which is what I feared. When I turned on the street, it turned out to be a housing project, and although it was a bright, beautiful day, the thought of walking up to a housing project and demanding to get my phone back wasn’t exactly the smartest thing I could do, so I moved on to Plan D (my final plan), which was to call the police to see if they could help me.

Prattville PD sent a patrol car out to where I was after I explained the situation to the dispatcher on the phone. I was gratefu, because I thought when I told them what was going on, they would tell me to take a hike. I was a little disappointed at first, when the officer driving the patrol car turned out to be a little old white woman who looked more like a grandmother than a police officer. I have to be honest – at this point, I was hoping for a big, black police officer who was willing to go in, kick the door down, retrieve the cell phone after scaring the devil out of this girl, and return it to me. But I was willing to take whatever I could get, considering I didn’t think they would be willing to work on something this small to begin with.

I explained the situation to the officer, and she said she would drive over to the house and see if she could get it. In less than 5 minutes, she returned, saying the address I gave her didn’t exist on that street. I explained that with GPS, it’s only accurate to within 50 yards, so it could be any one of the houses around there. Without an exact address, she couldn’t go door-to-door to find it, she said.

I understood, and figured we were done, but then I gave her the list of numbers I had printed off, and she called the dispatcher to cross-reference the phone numbers for a couple of names that they belonged to. She began calling, explaining the situation. Maybe it was because she opened her dialogue with “This is Officer”…, but she had better luck than I did. A mother said her daughter had received a call last night at the time the officer mentioned, and through some pretty good persuasion, convinced the girl to give up a name and address for “Brittney.”

The address was only a block or two from the address that I had from the GPS tracking, so the officer decided to go and try again. Some 15 minutes later, she came back and wasn’t happy. She was convinced that she was being lied to, and that they knew where the phone was, but without a warrant, she couldn’t do much. “One of the women kept asking me what it looked like,” she told me. “I told her I didn’t know, but she knows if they found a cell phone or not.”

“Can you check now and see where it says the phone is,” she asked.

“Yes, I can check through my phone,” I told her. I went to my car and began the search process, but as I was looking, my phone rang. It was a Montgomery number.

“Who is this?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Who are you looking for,” I asked.

“Are you the man looking for the cell phone?”

“Why, yes I am.”

“Well, we have it, and we want to bring it to you. Where are you?”

I told her, then told the officer what happened. I found out that before leaving their house, she had told them that right now, it was simply possession of lost property, which was not a crime, but if they continued to use the phone, it was possession of stolen property, and it would then become a crime. I felt certain that was what changed their mind and caused them to rethink keeping the phone.

After starting back home, I started checking out the phone, only to find that the girl had personalized it with a new background, entered her name in place of my daughter’s, and downloaded multiple ringtones (which I’m getting hit with the charges on!!!), and had taken a picture of a little black baby (I don’t know if it was hers or someone else’s, but it is still on the phone). There was never any intention by this person to return the phone to us, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t work for Hyundai.

Needless to say, this was an adventure that I’m glad is over and I hope I never have to repeat. But if I have to, I will, because again, there was a principal involved here, and that is that you don’t take and use what doesn’t belong to you. By the end of this, it became less about getting back a $50 cell phone, and more about being sure that someone who would behave that way not be allowed to keep something that wasn’t hers.