Rob and Elizabeth and I were having lunch at Wendy’s the other day when my attention was caught by a conversation at a nearby table. “Uh! It’s the WRONG SANDWICH!” said a woman, with an incredulous half-laugh. She couldn’t even believe it. It was supposed to be the SPICY chicken, but THIS was the HOMESTYLE chicken! She looked around in real disbelief. How could this possibly have happened—and to HER?
(screen shot from Wendys.com)
This has got me thinking about what seems to me to be a very low tolerance for human error. The clerk rings something up wrong, and the customer treats the situation as if the clerk has deliberately attempted a criminal action, rather than as if the clerk has made a normal error, just one inaccurate move among tens of thousands of accurate ones. The clerk apologizes for the error and fixes it, and the customer doesn’t bend at all, and doesn’t say thank you at the end of the transaction, and leaves the store with very unpleasant body language. Or an item is ordered, and the wrong item arrives, and the customer cannot believe such a company could even stay in business. Employees who are not 100% error-free! How can this even happen in today’s world?
We know from our own personal experience that humans make mistakes, and they make them regularly. We might try to improve, especially if we notice we’re making the same mistake again and again, but in general we completely understand that we are 100% guaranteed to make at least occasional mistakes, and we feel (completely fairly) that other people should understand that about us and allow for it. It can’t be otherwise, literally CAN’T BE otherwise: we MUST make occasional errors. (And, of course, apologize and fix it when we do.) But when we encounter someone else’s mistakes, many of us are seriously appalled. It was the HOMESTYLE CHICKEN, if you can believe it!!! This means that an employee PICKED UP THE WRONG SANDWICH BY MISTAKE!!!
It isn’t that mistakes aren’t annoying, or inconveniencing: of course they are. It is annoying to me to have to mess with a return because someone else made a mistake and sent me the wrong thing. It is upsetting to me to be overcharged for an item because someone else made a mistake and didn’t apply my coupon. I hate having to go up to the counter to ask for the sandwich I should have gotten in the first place, and I HATE getting home and finding the salad dressing isn’t in the drive-through bag, I REALLY DO. It has an effect on my life, and it’s a negative one, and it feels so unfair to have it be SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT. It wasn’t MY mistake, so why am I the one having to go to the effort to fix it? So unfair!
But this is an excellent area for allowing one’s own character to be improved by negative example: it’s so easy to feel outraged until you witness someone else being similarly outraged. When I ordered a used book, and the copy that arrived was paperback instead of hardcover, it was my first natural impulse to feel aggrieved. Look how little care has been taken to fill my order accurately! How inconsiderate! How thoughtless! And perhaps they are trying to RIP ME OFF!! In short: “Uh! It’s the WRONG book!!” But then I see someone making a huge fuss over a very similar mistake, and I can’t believe she doesn’t understand that every single human being in the world is going to make errors from time to time: that it is unavoidable, and that she is making her own share of errors that inconvenience/annoy/upset others.
It helps too to spend some time working in customer service, I think. Seeing people’s outsized reactions to one’s own (much easier to understand) errors can help a person stay empathetically pleasant when handling a transaction from the other side of the register. Rob doesn’t yet know it, but that woman’s incorrect chicken sandwich is what ensured him a retail job next summer.
I love this entire post, but the ending made me want to get up and dance.
Some people I know have an extremely low tolerance for human error, and I in turn have an extremely low tolerance for their extremely low tolerance. Mistakes happen. It’s not personal. No one is out to get me if they give me the wrong sandwich. I know how mortified I get when *I* make a mistake, so I try to be as kind as possible when someone else messes up, unless there is a CLEAR indication that they were doing it intentionally.
Also, I am acutely aware of the Fundamental Attribution Error, which is basically exactly what you described (I learned about it in The Happiness Project): the (very human) tendency to assume that other people’s mistakes or slips of etiquette are the result of them being complete jerks who don’t care about anyone but themselves, which tendency we have even while taking the view that our own mistakes are simply understandable human error. For example, if some guy jumps out and steals the cab I was about to take, I might wave my fist at him and yell something not-nice because clearly he thinks he lives alone in the world and isn’t, perhaps, rushing to a hospital to see a loved one — but if *I* jump out and steal someone else’s cab because of my own personal emergency, it’s completely ok and forgivable. Being aware of this tendency has, I think, helped me a long way toward taking a generous view toward others, yet has made me less tolerant of other people’s lack of tolerance.
To play devil’s advocate for a minute: did you happen to see the rest of the woman’s interaction? Had she already been up to correct that the fries were cold, and then gone back up because she was given diet Coke and not regular, and then finally sat down to eat her sandwich and SERIOUSLY? What is it with these restaurant employees that an ENTIRE ORDER is wrong?
I actually completely agree with you on how ridiculous it is that people can fly off the handle over what was most likely an honest mistake. But this just reminds me of our local Safeway and how finally, after the 4th shopping trip in a row where they had prices mis-marked and employees were unhelpful about it “well, what did the date on the sign say?” “uh, does it matter? the sign is still there and I’m only buying this because it was marked BOGO or whatever.” Honestly, four times, and on every trip it wasn’t until I was in the parking lot checking my receipt that I realized items were ringing up higher than they were marked. That first three times I went in and waited, and smiled, and asked for them to fix the mistake. On that fourth time I DEMANDED a manager because if this store can’t get control of the pricing situation I am going to stop shopping here. (the manager was very nice and acknowledged that it was a problem she was aware of and told me if it happened again to leave all my stuff in the cart and just not come back. can you believe that??)
Anyway, my main point is I think having any of your kids work in retail or restaurants is just fantastic life experience that there is really no way to replicate. Also, I worked at a fast food chain for a year in high school and it is the number one reason I no longer eat fast food. LIFE LESSONS.
Your last sentence feels like a wonderful breath of fresh air. Hurray! Something we don’t have to/ can’t fully teach our own children! Something they can/have to learn by themselves in the real world while we nod (empathetically!) as they recount their experiences!
I did, yes: they were behind us in line, so we were waiting at the counter while they ordered. We went to our table, they arrived at theirs shortly after, she opened her sandwich, she had her reaction.
Consistent, way-above-average, not-fixed-nicely, blamed-on-the-customer errors is why I almost never go to Walmart: there’s regular human error, and then there’s a pattern that goes WELL BEYOND what’s unavoidable. But I’m talking in this post only about situations where there is a Big Indignant Response to a Small Normal Human Error. If I’m behind someone in line, and the clerk makes an error, and the customer points it out politely and the clerk sighs and shrugs and says “You’ll have to talk to the manager,” and then rolls his/her eyes about how dumb it is to make such a fuss over a mere couple of dollars, and doesn’t apologize for either the error or the wait, and then makes several more such errors, and continues to be unhelpful and rude while the customer persists in trying to be polite, then I don’t put it in this category of issue at all.
Ah, well in that case she clearly was just being rude. Was it at least one of those situations where you could make *significant eye contact* with those around you or the clerk to show solidarity, or were you just left there staring and mentally noting to talk about it in the car on the way home?
I think there is also a problem that I will call the Wal-Mart factor, because I also dislike Wal-Mart, and that is- I have had bad experiences in other places (such as wal-mart) where I nicely asked to have an error fixed and it turned into A Big Thing, so now I’m REALLY MAD because I have to deal with A Big Thing, and then I approach the situation with a chip on my shoulder, which nobody responds to kindly, and it turns into exactly what I predicted– but if I had said, well, mistakes happen! and cheerfully asked to have it fixed, it probably would have been.
I find I have a very high tolerance for human error, and possibly I should be outraged a little more. The one time (and I still remember it) when I was sincerely outraged was when I went through the McD’s drive through with a sleeping infant and a 2 yr old. I ordered one cheeseburger, plain. I was starving.
My plain cheeseburger had no cheese. Plain, indeed.
I love this, and the last sentence is my favorite. I do think that working in a retail (or any customer service-based position) is very important for teens in shaping the way they view the world.
My MIL is one of these people who flies off the handle at the smallest error. Sometimes an unavoidable mistake is enough for her to stop patronizing a company, which is ridiculous to me. WE ARE HUMANS, NOT ROBOTS. Mistakes happen! It isn’t (usually) a personal attack!
That screenshot from Wendys.com is going to make me laugh forever.
Through college I worked at Sherwin Williams helping people select paint and wallpaper and supplies. People get very upset about paint mistakes even it’s their own mistake. Usually people come in to the paint store and tell the employee about their project and the employee recommends a couple appropriate options for them to choose from. I had a woman come in and ask me for a specific name of a specific brand of primer. I shook it up and sold it to her because she seemed to know exactly what she wanted. She came back in the next few days and ripped me a new one for selling her an oil based primer.
Later I interviewed for an internship at NARAL (pro choice advocacy org) and they asked me how I would handle how outrageously people behave when they call. I said, well you wouldn’t believe how emotional people get about paint, so I think I’m well trained to deal with it already. Funny enough, I didn’t get the internship. THAT person had never worked at a paint store for sure.
My MIL is also One Of Those People, but in her case, every error IS a personal attack. It cannot be that the waiter is having a bad day, oh no. It’s because it’s HER and every interaction ever in the world has her as the victim always.
Ahem.
I think it should be mandatory, like the Israeli military, that every person needs to work in some sort of service industry. Retail, food service, whatever. Two years mandatory service before you’re released into the general population. I think it would cut down on rudeness 100%.
Yes! And that experience should include cleaning a public bathroom.
THIS is a brilliant idea which I love.
I waitressed while in university, and worked at Pizza Hut when I was a teen, and I am VERY EMPATHETIC.
I have no problem cutting people some slack for their errors, but I will swear off patronizing a business that employs people that don’t seem at all contrite if they make an error. I was at a local, non-chain coffee shop the other day and since they have opened I have tried to give them my business to support them, despite the fact they’ve never made very good drinks, and this time they steamed my kids’ hot chocolate – knowing it was for kids – until it was so hot it scalded my son’s mouth and he was crying and holding his tongue. It wasn’t that that turned me off the place though – it was the employee’s reaction of “I tried to make it less hot but I guess I still made it too hot for him” without really seeming sorry. And when I asked if there was any way to cool it down (when she didn’t volunteer to do this) she dumped ice in it, which did cool it down but made it very watery. And when I told her that it wasn’t really drinkable at that point, she just shrugged and took it away. All I wanted was an “I’m so sorry for hurting your kid” and a replacement drink for him, but I got neither and I’m not going back.
And this is a place with a space specifically set up for children to play in, so it’s not like she was just trying to discourage me from bringing a 6-year-old in – that place survives on the mom set during the day.
Fellow Pizza Hut survivor/alum here, and I never thought about it before, but yes, all of my kids could use a year or two at a fast food restaurant. I still work in customer service, only for an insurance office, so the stakes are much higher on my mistakes, and I am always mortified when I check the wrong box or flip numbers, or whatever, and I always fix it. Lots of times people call to fuss about a $5 increase (for a six month car policy) and I love practicing my counseling skills on them: “So you seem really upset about that. It sounds like you’re under a lot of pressure,” and they will pour out their hearts to me and make me want to just pay $5 on their account…but I don’t.
Having worked at Hardee’s for years as a teenager and then as a restaurant server in college, I have almost UNLIMITED patience for errors, even those that seem to pile on one after the other. I can remember times where I legitimately rang up the wrong sandwich, then served the wrong drink, then forgot to give a receipt, etc. Partially because as a young person with little work experience, who WANTED to do well, one error tended to fluster me and lead to other, more avoidable errors. Anyway. In these situations (even the seemingly egregious ones), I try to just see myself as a statistic, just one of many, MANY transactions in the person’s life, each with the opportunity to go wrong (or right) in any number of ways, none of which has anything whatsoever to do with me personally.
( this subject drives me to vent for a second!)
That person is totally my husband. Only he generally doesn’t tell the person he felt made the terrible error, he just tells me and expects me to feel terrible for him being the victim of such an egregious error. Aghhhh. The part that really gets me is that i am well aware of his dumb mistakes. It is all I can do to bite my tongue. But oh well, at least he isn’t taking it out on some poor Wendy’s employee.
And…the ONLY difference between the spicy & regular sandwich – is the spicy has built in spicy-ness in the chicken coating. So someone simply didn’t notice the faint difference in appearance of the piece of chicken & put it on the sandwich instead of the correct one. That batch of spicy chicken could have even had a manufacturing error & wasn’t the color (spicy) it normally is, so it might have not been an error on the part of the employee in the first place!
Hardly a big deal.
Everyone makes mistakes. I make plenty!
I know someone with a sizable chip on his shoulder who seems to assume all mistakes are due to complete incompetence and laziness, and it’s super irritating. He hired his dad’s family handyman to fix a retaining wall at his house, and the handyman had a heart attack and was hospitalized before it was quite finished. He never did come back to finish it, and I suppose that a true professional would have helped to find a replacement, but the person I am thinking of made comments suggesting that the handyman was just too lazy to come back. Another time he bought a new car and it did not come with the color seats they wanted. Apparently, the salesperson told them they could get black seats with their trim level, but actually they couldn’t. It was a pain to sort out and they demanded money back, which is fine, but again, when he first told me about it he said the salesperson “lied,” but I think it’s at least equally likely the salesperson was just mistaken, especially given the salesperson’s contriteness and efforts to fix it.
So it wasn’t the sort of over-the-top reaction you’re talking about here, but I just think things are better if you approach a situation like this by giving the person the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was an innocent mistake. Don’t get mad until they don’t care about fixing it. Not only will you be happier, you will have better luck resolving an issue if you don’t begin by screaming, “THIS IS THE WRONG SANDWICH!”
So I did work in retail in high school and part of college and totally agree it provides a useful perspective on life :)
BUT my main comment is about your last sentence how “rob doesn’t know it yet” which leads me to believe Rob doesn’t read your blog. Which led me to wonder how much your kids know about your blog and/or read it.
My 8-year-old knows i have a blog and will sometimes ask me to blog/not blog about a specific thing but she is not a reader. But I sorta assumed teens who were blogged about usually read the posts. I know you’re anonymous so maybe not an issue but I thought I’d ask.
The kids know about the blog, enough to tease me about it (“Oh,” they simper, in ‘my’ voice, “Does this MUG match my BLOG?”) and to refer to it as something I do. So far they haven’t shown much interest. I’ve told Rob and William that I’d prefer they didn’t read it because I like to be able to talk about things without worrying my family is reading. They might nevertheless read it, I’m not sure. My GUESS is that if they went to it out of curiosity, they would soon lose interest—but I keep in mind that it is possible they could read it at any time. So, for example, the last line is at least partly a joke: Rob wouldn’t be surprised to read that sentence (and I wouldn’t be alarmed/dismayed if he did), because he knows he’s expected to get a job next summer and he knows most of the options for 16-year-olds are retail-based.
I used to do customer service for a book publisher. You would not BELIEVE the number of people who would call and yell at me about their missing orders from a different publisher ENTIRELY. On the plus side, it was always VERY satisfying to say (as sweetly as humanly possible)”oh, we don’t publish that book, so you might have better luck tracking down your order if you call the company who does.”
One thing working retail taught me, that not everyone out there seems to grasp, is the difference between saying “I’m sorry I personally attacked you/ screwed up/ made your life a living hell” and saying “I’m sorry this situation exists, and I’d like to help if I can.” I worked at a chain bookstore, and very often we didn’t have the book someone was looking for, or our computers said we did but we didn’t, or an order took longer to come in than we’d said it would, or a book was slightly damaged on the shelf. None of these things were my personal fault. But it went a really, really long way with customers to say, “I’m so sorry your aunt won’t get this in time for her birthday. Can I find you something else she might like/ give you 5% off when it comes in / see if the same author has another book?” Or whatever. Errors tend to sting less if someone says sorry for them.
Yes. This. Just today my husband waited in the waiting room over 45 minutes at the Doctor’s office. He went up to the counter and asked if there was a problem. He was then informed that his appointment was at 1:00 (it was already about 1:00). He pulled out the handwritten appointment card that said his appointment was at 12:30. They seemed uninterested and reiterated that his appointment was at 1:00. Then he pulled out his phone (he’s getting kind of irked now) and showed them the TWO text messages they sent him reminding him of his 12:30 appointment and asking him to arrived 15 minutes early. They then came off like “gee – something went wrong there”. No apologies at all. No sympathy or regret. He walked out and it pretty much ruined the rest of his afternoon. It could have been handled so much better. If they had been remorseful, had apologized and maybe offered a different appointment time it would have been different. He totally gets that everyone makes mistakes, he’s really an easygoing guy, but people should acknowledge and apologize when they make mistakes and if possible do something to ameliorate the effect of their mistake.
Yes: definitely I’m not talking here about situations where someone has made an error and then doesn’t acknowledge it, apologize for it, or try to fix it. Those are a different category entirely.
I am mostly glad for/occasionally inconvenienced by my summer answering customer service emails for a popular website because it means I have always understood that a real human with eyeballs and a brain is on the other end of those things (and that is almost definitely not the human who made the mistake I am irritated about). People were generally pretty polite to me during my food service/retail stints, but WOW did they unleash some vitriol through email.
What continues to shock me (and it shouldn’t since it IS continual) is that people mostly don’t seem to realize if they are polite when bringing up their problem they’re more likely to have a positive resolution. Trite but true – you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
I am happy to be gentle and understanding about mix-ups… unless it is because someone was screwing off. If you are talking on the phone, or texting a friend, or chatting to another employee rather than paying attention, then I am going to say something about your mistake.
I think it is fine to remark upon a mistake, and to ask politely for it to be fixed, and to discuss with a manager any carelessness that made the mistake an avoidable one. I’m talking here about people who, upon encountering normal human error, act as if supreme carelessness was involved, when it wasn’t.
I just have to say that I can’t wait until Rob gets his first job, so that I can read your posts about it. My son (17) got his first job in July at a restaurant, and it has been the strangest experience for me. I know he’s growing up, I get it, but to have someone treat him like a responsible, hard-working employee? That’s just strange! And then there’s the worry that goes with it – is he working too often, will it affect his grades (well, he doesn’t do his homework anyway, might as well work instead of play on the computer!), will he meet people who will lead him astray (got drunk for the first time and many more times with the older employees at my first job), is he making good choices…So far I have been impressed with how he has stepped up his game and it seems to actually have helped him organize his time and think for himself a little bit more. I fear the battles about where the money should be going (Mom: you’re going to save it for college, right? Son: um, yeah, after I build myself a new gaming computer, and buy some games, and …) Anyway, I love your posts so much because you’re so good at putting all of these feelings into words.
“How could this possibly have happened—and to HER?” Haha! That brought me right back to my first job as a waitress in a pizza parlor. Working in the service industry, teaches a person to be more tolerant of human error and less tolerant of rudeness, either from other customers or other service people. I was in service (food, retail and phones) for about 15 years and I am a generous tipper and the type of person who writes emails of praise to companies regarding the service people who helped me. Conversely, I will also under tip and report people who are rude and not doing their jobs. I was never an A+ employee, I was more of an A- or B+ one, so I expect as much as I would have given in the same situation, which is to say, not perfection. I also gently scold people close to me who are rude to service people as there is no reason to meet rudeness with more rudeness.
I never had the experience myself, but when I want to vicariously experience the horrors of dealing with the public in the service industry, I go over to http://notalwaysright.com and get my fill.
That link? Dangerous! I don’t dare bookmark it for fear of spending hours reading those stories! Or should I say more hours?
I agree – not only should everyone work in customer service, but I also think everyone should work somewhere at least six months answering phones. People are much ruder about perceived mistakes over the phone where they cannot see your face.
I once worked in a sandwich shop as a teenager, and we were having a really busy night. I made one of those mistakes where, in the course of fixing it, I made it worse, and then made another mistake because I was self-conscious and really trying to fix it. The customer got understandably frustrated with me, but by the third mistake, she made such a nasty, over the top comment that I almost started crying right there (I’m already frustrated, I’m really trying to help, and I keep messing up in front of not only her, but the other people in line, it was like something out of a nightmare). When she saw the look on my face in response to her comment (again, it was fine that she was frustrated/annoyed, but her comment was disproportionate to the situation) she actually looked startled and checked herself, and apologized for going over the top (after all, she was yelling at a teenager in a sandwich shop who was clearly having a bad night). That went a long way with me (and I also had surrendered at this point and had my manager come in and fix it all).
I just had this same conversation with myself this morning; why is no one allowed to make a mistake, ever – there’s just no tolerance for it any longer. I don’t mean major, life-threatening or could cause long-term legal situation type mistakes, but simple, human error ones.
I also wonder why employees in stores/restaurants are not allowed to say “I’m sorry”; is this something that’s taught in training now? From a legal standpoint, is that an admission of guilt? 99 times out of 100, if someone would just say “I’m sorry that happened; how can I help”, it would go a long way towards mending the relationship. I’m looking at you, Walmart…
Love this.
Partly because that woman is my father-in-law with the added fillip that he will ask for ridiculously complicated changes to the menu (even at someplace like a Wendy’s) and then be deeply shocked and offended when the order isn’t perfect. (“I want my fries with no salt” and then, “Uh! There’s a grain of salt in this fry! How dare they!”) It’s probably perfect that’s he’s become a personal injury lawyer. When we eat out with him (at a place at which one would normally tip), my husband and I always feel compelled to leave an extra tip behind him as an apology to the staff for having had to deal with his Sally-like order (and because he’s a chronic under-tipper in spite of being a difficult customer).
And partly because my teenaged job was working phones at an answering service, back when that was an actual person thing. We did a lot of paging the doctor or plumber for you, but we also answered for the cable company. You would not believe the number of people who would yell at the cable company’s answering service person for their cable having been cut off that day because they hadn’t paid their bill in 2 months.
I got out of jury duty for a similar opinion. The case was that of a woman who was suing the city for injuries resulting from a fall on an uneven sidewalk. The lawyers for both sides weren’t too interested in the thoughts of the potential jurors so we were pretty much all impanelled. I put my hand up and asked to speak to them. We stepped outside and I said “Look. I don’t know the merits of the case. Could be there was a huge sign that said ‘Walk here! Its safe!’ and it wasn’t. But I just feel that people don’t take responsibility for their own actions and are too quick to assume someone else is to blame. My first thought is…everyone trips, why should the city pay you?” I was dismissed!
I was re-reading a Mary Stewart book the other night-“Airs Above the Ground”, and in one part the narrator is talking about the woman who owns the hotel, and she says something like “some people need to feel angry to feel alive”. That really struck home with me, because I do know people like that, and I am as fond of righteous indignation as the next person. I worked in customer service, so I am very sensitive to issues where the person has no control over the policies they are enforcing. Yet, I do get worked up over rude, indifferent service, and I need to take myself in hand, and think about the person I want to be! The biggest reason, I am not just affecting the rude person, but I affect all the people around me with my reactions. The innocent bystanders!
I read this post and left. I didn’t comment because, well who knows why really, maybe at first I wasn’t that moved by it, or whatever. But I KEPT thinking about it, which is my way of saying BRAVO, if you can keep me coming back to thinking about what you had to say well then, good point! I guess it made enough sense too that when my very overly sensitive 9 year old had his lego knocked out of his hand by his clumsy(ish!) 10 year old brother I was able to point out it was simple human error. Well that stopped them right in their “about to take this silly little kerfluffle to the nuclear stage” tracks. And we had a good talk about doing things inadvertently and doing things with ill intent. Simple human error versus creepy brother move. Again BRAVO, you even made my kids think! And I’m back to leave a comment days after reading this.
The last line made me cackle with evil glee!