"Our Director of Customer Service is Helen Wait. If you want customer service, go to Helen Wait."
Is anyone reading this old enough to remember newspaper boys?
They were usually elementary or jr. high age kids who would make their delivery rounds by bicycle early in the morning before school started. Part of their job was to deliver the paper TO YOUR PORCH. Anything less would usually result in a call to the newspaper, who would dispatch the kid back out to knock on your door and hand you your paper, along with an apology.
Later, for whatever reason, the rules were changed. I guess the kids' work ethic was beginning to slip, so the newspapers gave the kids plastic baggies and told them to bag the papers and just try to hit the front yard.
Later still, I suppose they couldn't get enough kids to do the job so they recruited adults who had cars to cover larger areas of town. They would drive down the street at 40 mph and just sling papers out the window. If it landed anywhere at all on the property it was considered a successful delivery.
IMO today we've hit absolute bottom. One of the (print) papers I like to read is the Sunday NY Times. It's printed locally by the Dallas Morning News and distributed by their crack crew of
I'm surprised they don't just tell us to come on by and pick one up, or better yet, just go on-line and read it there (which is what I do M-Sat) and quit callin' and wakin' em up. "Paying customers are just so darn demanding these days...sheesh!"
Listen up Amazon, REI, LL Bean, and those handful of others who still have excellent customer service: Don't let your people mingle with the general public. Filter the air in your buildings and boil all water before use. Offer all available immunizations against this insipid "give-a-shit" disease that is devouring customer service across our land. Your reputation, your very existence even, depends on it!
S
Right on S. I always felt it was much easier being friendly and helpful than it was to be a surley pain in the ass. Apparently we are just old fashioned.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a News Paper?
that remind me - I have to contact the NYT about my missing paper
ReplyDeletekelly
I had an afternoon paper route in Lyndhurs, Ohio outside Cleveland. Rain, snow or sleet I got on my bike and road up each drive and put the paper between the storm door and regular door. My folks drove me only a few times. And each week I had to go around and collect the 50 cents for the week's papers. I got about 10 cents of that for $5 a week. 50 papers at that time was a large route. Kids don't have opportunities like that now. Bureaucrats, attorneys and insurance companies have killed many of those opportunities.
ReplyDeletePS: No helmet or knee pads either.
Oh I remember paper boys. In fact one of my first tentative 'romantic' interludes was with the paper boy. my parents put the kibosh on that though. he lived in an apartment, fer cryin' out loud! his family wasn't in our social bracket! the first of many kiboshs I received from them. They never liked the kids I chose for friends.
ReplyDeleteI sold and delivered "Grit" when I was a kid. Also telegrams, the forerunner to email.
ReplyDeleteBeing in the newspaper business has gotten very tough and very cut throat, and that goes for anyone - from the person who delivers the paper to the owners of the newspapers. It isn't any more like it was in the days when Warren Buffett was a paperboy.
ReplyDeleteOur paper person drove a car - but we lived in the country. I guess I should be glad we got a paper at all!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE your last paragraph - ha!
Yeah, it sure is a joy when one receives good customer service these days. You're right - Amazon is fantastic, so is L.L. Bean. Who stinks? Every cable company.
ReplyDeleteHello. I like your blog. I stumbled across it while researching old delivery bikes.I had to write, because I was one of those paper boys you mentioned. When I was in middle school, I delivered the New Orleans Times Picayune every morning, rain or shine. I had a black Schwinn heavy duty delivery bike with a huge basket. In my area, it was a kind of small business. I received 130 papers every day from my distributor, and I'd deliver them. Then, at the end of the month, I'd go around to all of my customers and collect the money. I'd pay my distributor, and then the rest was my profit. This was from 1979-81, and I'd make about $135.00 per month. That was pretty decent money for a fourteen year old kid. You couldn't really be hired by a business till you were sixteen, so it was a nice way to make money and be my own boss. I learned lessons that have stayed with me all my life. If I didn't do a good job, I'd lose customers, so I had to be on the ball. I wish kids had something like that now. I teach school, and most kids just expect parents to give them spending money, a car, insurance, etc. We learned to budget money, maintain equipment, and save. I'm hoping now to find a bike like the one I had, so I can put my little dog in the basket and ride with him on the levee. Good luck in your quest for understanding.
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