Actually, I’ve never been happier. I have turned from a mild-mannered factotum at a nonprofit organization into a troublemaker. I have, in short, become a professional curmudgeon–and I am having the time of my life.
What does a curmudgeon do? Curmudgeons are the people who call the phone company for an explanation of the word “surcharge” and don’t hang up until they get an answer they can understand. They return the carpet cleaner that doesn’t clean for the “money-back guarantee.” They trot back to the supermarket, sales slip in hand, and point out that they were charged full price on the salsa that was on sale. I recently devoted two hours to returning bed pillows that I’d used for more than a month.
Actually, the pillow story is a good example of curmudgeonry at its best. Some time ago, I bought what I thought were the perfect bed pillows at a discount store. Before buying, I had examined the firm, the soft and the antibacterial. I considered carefully whether I was a stomach sleeper, a side sleeper or a back sleeper. Over the next few weeks, though, I came to realize that the “perfect” pillows were as hard as blocks of liquor-store ice that showed no promise of thawing. Before I retired, I might have chalked up this unfortunate purchase to rotten luck, since besides having made the criminal error of tearing off those do not remove tags, I had subjected the pillows to many a night’s wear. As a curmudgeon, however, I was undaunted. I took the time to go back to the store and press my case. I described my sleepless nights to the department manager. I demonstrated how unyielding the pillows were. I said I was sure he valued return business. I walked out of the store with a couple of wondrously fluffy pillows and a 10 percent discount certificate to use with my next purchase.
Retailers like the pillow guy make my heart sing. They come face to face with customers every day and deal with the growlers and the whiners and the frustrated masses. They must, in fact, come up with solutions to consumer complaints on the spot.
What becomes more difficult is finding solutions in this impersonal, online, e-mail world. Customer service? Went out with the rotary dial. A conversation with a real-life person? Doubtful. Punching enough numbers on a telephone keypad to play the entire score of “Cats” before you can leave so much as a voice mail? You bet. Voice-mail box full? E-mail returned marked user unknown? Yeah, yeah.
I used to be like a lot of consumers. I’d let a lot of small inconveniences go. If a product that I ordered online came with a screw missing, I’d find a close match somewhere in a kitchen drawer. If a bill showed a $5 service charge even though I’d mailed the payment well before the due date, I tended to let it go, knowing full well that I’d spend precious time tracking down the error. If a company’s service representative was less than polite (like the one who hung up on me after stating curtly that “this conversation is over”), I would do no more than mutter to myself that I would never do business with that company again.
Now no wrong is too small to be corrected. I avoid using e-mail to complain. I use the phone or old-fashioned snail mail. And I will pursue a complaint until the cows come home. Just recently I got charged $8.13 for a $2 phone call from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It took me 30 minutes of toll-free telephone time to get it straightened out, but I’ve got $6.13 that can go toward a movie (senior rate) and popcorn. Not long ago I wrote a letter to the manager of a nearby department store because a clerk had been terribly rude to me. The manager wrote back by return mail, apologizing profusely and stating that she had read my letter to the entire staff that very morning. A detailed letter about bad service to the manager of a computer technical-support team resulted in a $100 check for my troubles.
The problem with curmudgeons, though, is that they are often viewed as cranky nitpickers. All of us have stood impatiently behind someone at a supermarket cash register who is questioning the bill item by item. I remember, before my own happy curmudgeon days, staring with embarrassment when an older man at the back of an endless line at the bank shouted out with gusto, “More tellers, please!”
Now that I’ve joined the troublemaker ranks, I recognize that I’m striking a blow for all the working people out there who don’t have the time to fight back. I hope you’ll join us when you retire. Together we curmudgeons will show the world what “customer service” really means–and get a good night’s sleep into the bargain.
