Customer Service Day?

I had a really interesting experience with customer service - somebody must have declared last Friday "Customer Service Day". I just needed to get out out of the house after a busy week looking for a job. So I hopped into my car and drove all the way out to Fair Oaks Mall.

When I arrived at the mall, the first stop I made was at Domain Home Fashions, where they happen to have (cough, cough) several Aga models on display and an "shop within a shop" devoted to Aga products. Of course, I made a beeline for that shop and walked around, looking at the cookwares on display, leafing through the books, and looking at the book about Aga's history. Now, there was a heavy bookstand on which the book was propped up, on top of 3 copies. I carefully moved the bookstand so I could grab one copy, and then replaced the bookstand.

While looking through the book, the bookstand fell down to the table, making a loud noise. I tried to stop the crash and was only partly successful. Of course, I tried to fix up the display best as I could be. All this commotion drew the attention of the sales lady who came in and moved the bookstand to another location, and asked me if I was all right. If this happened at another high-end store, the salesperson would probably have been cross with me.

After getting my Aga-fix, I decided to walk around the mall and see what there was to see. I discovered Coldwater Creek, so I went in to see if I could find anything I liked. I found a really nice tencel skirt that was at just the right height and the right length. The lady in charge of the dressing room politely said it was all full but she would take down my name and call me when a booth was available. Didn't take long for a booth to open up, and so I proceeded to try on the skirt and decided to take the size that fit me, and went to the cash register. The saleslady rang up the purchase, wrapped up the skirt and walked out from behind the counter to give me the bag, and thanked me for visiting the establishment and invited me to come back again.

By then I was starting to get hungry, so I decided to treat myself to a good lunch. I discovered that there was a Japanese restaurant where they serve sushi and seafood buffet, Todai Fairfax. I was ushered to a table at a good location. The waiter told me that I was free to get whatever I wanted at the buffet. Later on, as the lunch period was starting to wind down, he apologetically said that the buffet was going to be closed soon. I appreciated that as I didn't know that the lunch period was coming to a close, and I left a good tip because service was so good.

When I got home, I stopped at Safeway to get some fish for dinner. I saw that salmon was on sale, so I told the lady behind the counter that I wanted two filets of salmon. She pointed to several filets until she got my choices. After wrapping my choices, she then grabbed a lemon and asked me if I wanted it as well. I was taken aback, because you just don't get this kind of helpful service at the average grocery store.

Now what are the odds of getting excellent customer service in disparate locations on a single day?

Sadly, this luck ran out the next day when Hubby and I went to see Something New. There was so many people and only one ticket stand open that we missed our viewing time and had to go for the next one. There was only one ticket stand open, and you still had to pick your ticket at the stand, so it would have pointless to go that route. Not a manager to be seen on location. Even the trailers didn't start displaying until 15 minutes after the movie was supposed to start. After the movie was over, it took forever to get out of the parking lot because people were driving every which way, trying to find parking, picking up family and friends, and so forth. At least we didn't catch two young people using their car as a love nest, fogging up the windows, when we'd gone to see another movie last month.