It’s my Menards time of year.
One of the upshots of the “more flowers, less grass” way of life at our house is mulch. We like the look of mulch around all the flowers and now that the front yard and boulevard are essentially all flowers, that’s a lot of mulch.
“A lot of mulch” and “very small Honda Insight” aren’t usually phrases you see in a sentence together. That’s because you can only put 8 2-cubic foot bags of mulch IN a Honda Insight if you want to continue to see out the back window. (You could transport more if you used the backseat and not just the hatch but that lesson learned was ugly.) If you go through 25-28 bags of mulch in the spring, that means several trips to Menards. Yes, I’ve looked into having a boatload of mulch delivered, but one of the things I know about myself is how unhappy I will be with a mountain of mulch that might get rained on before I get to it, is taking up driveway space and is also making me feel guilty until it’s all gone. And the savings isn’t that great anyway.
Mulch trips are in the morning – it’s cooler, plenty of room in the parking lot, not too crowded in the store – so for four mornings in a row, there I am, with my mulch on a big cart. There is an older woman who works the first register shift every morning and she is NOT a happy person. Could be that she resents working so early. Maybe she resents still having to work at all at this stage of her life. Might even be that she’s just not a morning person.
I try not to take this personally, but I’m a chatter. Every morning I say “good morning”. Once I said “Eight of them (the bags), if I counted right”. Couple of times I’ve said “see you tomorrow”. Yesterday was “Thanks”. Nothing from this woman. Not even a smile, which I would have thought would be helpful in a customer service role.
The mulch trips are probably over for this spring but I have determined that if I need more, I will probably just leave this poor woman alone when I go through her lane. It won’t hurt me and maybe it will give her a little relief at 6:15 in the morning. Of course, it’s not as much fun.
Tell me about a time you’ve gotten GREAT customer service!