Sometimes it depends on the employee, but often it is the place where they work that dictates how you get treated. Places with poor training will get low marks for employee attentiveness of course, but I find that the most usual places where service is terrible are the ones with low morale. There's a chain of stores here in Canada called
Zellers. It is a discount store that mostly sells the mid grade to lower grade line of product. They have traditionally understaffed, underpaid, and poorly treated their employees. The stores are never very clean or tidy, and the way you get treated -if you can even find someone who works there- varies greatly.
At the other end of the scale I have been in a few grocery stores and Mom and Pop operations where the young people working there are much more attentive and polite than in times past. I am very encouraged by the young teenagers I meet in those places. Most young kids are being raised well I believe. My main objection is a tiny one: When I thank a youngster for helping me, they usually reply "no problem". I feel that it is important that the correct reply in a business transaction be "you're welcome". I was pleased to hear the correct reply yesterday from a 16 year old who packed my shopping bag for me at the grocery store.
Oh by the way, very soon now the
Zellers stores will all be gone.
Target from the USA has bought out most of the stores, and some outfit from Quebec is taking most of the rest. I'm a little unhappy that they are going to force the Zellers employees to go through the hiring process again, but hopefully the majority of them will be rehired. Retraining will definitely be happening, I'll get back to you how it went.
None of the above of course, applies to companies like the cable TV/Internet providers, or Google. They have little real human interaction, so they get no accurate feedback to correct their bad attitudes.
