Customer service is in decline

Customer service seems to be a thing of the past in a lot of places these days, although pockets of it still exist.

Last week Thursday and Friday I was out of town for 30 hours on a quick trip to Du?buque, Iowa, to deliver a load of paperback books that I, had I not had good customer service, wouldn?t have been able to deliver on time. I needed really good customer service from one printer because of bad customer service from another.

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It was a chain reaction, of sorts. But the bad service was compounded by bad service from a delivery company that triggered the bad service from one of the printers.

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Because of my trip, I wasn?t able to attend the opening night at the new Wendy?s in Hillsboro. In honor of the event I stopped at a Wendy?s in Des Moines to make up for it.

On Saturday, when I was back in town, we went to our Wendy?s.

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I stayed overnight at a motel that shall remain anonymous although it had the word sleep inn its name.

The remote control for the television didn?t work and the wireless Internet was slower than dial-up.

When I checked out in the morning I thought I would mention those two things so they could look into taking care of the problems.

Instead of apologizing for the problems, the clerk didn?t even look up as she slid my receipt to me and said, ?Have a nice day.?

At that point I thought about telling her the orange juice at their continental breakfast was brown, too?but what good would it do?

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I?ll be able to say that I witnessed the groundbreaking for the new Joel Wiens Stadium at Tabor College. I am really looking forward to the new digs for outdoor sports. It will be a tremendous asset for Tabor and USD 410 in this new partnership.

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When I got home from the game, my shoe was making a funny noise when I walked. I looked and found a big wad of gum stuck to it.

It?s becoming a habit that when I need an answer for a problem I go to the Internet.

For removing gum from a shoe, you press a plastic bag against it and put the bag and shoe in the freezer. Supposedly, when it freezes together you pull the bag off and the gum comes with it.

Not having any patience for that method I used the second option, which was to spray WD40 on it, wait a minute or so and then wipe it off with a paper towel. It worked!

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I don?t believe I will ever be the kind of listener I need to be when my wife is talking. As much as I would like to pay better attention, these types of conversations keep occurring.

She: ?I?m doing a style show in Florence on Dec. 7.?

Me: ?A style show in Lawrence?? I?m thinking why go that far, but maybe our friends in Lawrence have asked her and she is going for that reason.

She: ?Lawrence? ?No, Florence. It?s a church group in Florence.?

Me: ?Oh, I thought you said Lawrence. Florence makes a lot more sense.?

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I saw gas as low as $1.67 per gallon with 10 percent ethanol on my trip to Iowa with the highest at around $2.05 for regular unleaded. As usual I waited until I got back to Kansas and found unleaded for $1.79.

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