It’s the season to shop and make decisions – not only decisions on what to buy but also the choice of visiting a physical store or purchasing online.

Online sales climb every year, and I increasingly hear men say that shopping in a store or at a mall is akin to having a root canal. I’m not one of these men; I enjoy the experience of touching items rather than viewing them in a catalog or on a computer screen.  It’s ironic that men have no qualms battling a crowd at a Utah Jazz game, but scowl at being within two feet of another human at Dillard’s.

That said, however, I am annoyed at poor customer service which is as easy as finding a snowflake this December.  Last week I saw examples of great and disgusting service.

While shopping on a weekend, there were several stores where employees obviously wanted to be somewhere else rather than working. They huddled with co-workers or stared at their phones rather than helping customers. They viewed people coming into the store as intruders, not folks who were responsible for paying their wages. We have been in these stores, and we have all wondered how the employees were hired in the first place.

In one case, however, I put the blame on the store owner.  At a fast-food restaurant, I approached the counter and asked for a napkin since the dispensers were empty.

“Oh, we’ve been out of napkins since yesterday,” the employee said. “I’m not sure when we’re going to get any from our distributor.”

OK, the young man was honest. But when the store manager joined the conversation and agreed, I pointed out that a grocery store was located within one block of the restaurant. To my limited mental capacity, I figured one of the staff would take a couple of bucks out of petty cash and buy 1,000 cheap napkins to get them by.

I received a stunned look. Maybe the manager didn’t care to extend any more energy than punching the time clock (although I assume the mess customers made in the dining room without napkins probably used more staff energy cleaning up the place). Then again, there was a high probability that the owners never gave the manager the ability to use his head and make decisions vital for the store operation. Taking a few dollars from the cash register to buy a pack of napkins would hardly force the store into bankruptcy, and any owner not giving leeway for a manager to actually “manage” is an example of executive stupidity.

And now for an example of great customer service. At a Minky Couture store, a smiling employee told me her location did not have the requested size for a plush bathrobe.

“They’re sometimes hard to find at this time of year,” she said, “but let me look and see if any of our other stores have one.”

A store did and they promised to hold it for me. And once I arrived at that store, another cheerful employee had it ready for purchase – another example of personal service.  She would be glad, she said, to look in the back and see if there were any other colors that I might like even more than the one she was holding for me. 

Two great employees making shopping a comforting experience. Somehow, I think that if either of the Minky stores had run out of toilet paper, one of the staff members would have run over to a nearby grocery store and brought back a four-pack.