A few years ago I was out shopping with my mother, a very wise woman I might add. I don’t recall where we were, but when we went up to pay the cashier didn’t have any change. We waited for about five minutes and it was taking them a long time to give us 7 cents change. After more frustrating minutes of waiting, I told the cashier not to worry about giving me my 7 cents change – we walked away and I was happy to leave the store. My mother very wisely said to me, “If you owed them 7 cents they would not allow you to make the purchase.” That provided an epiphany of sorts for me. Mom was absolutely correct, why should I give this store 7 cents or why should I feel badly about expecting this business that makes millions of dollars in profits to keep “my” 7 cents?
I have thought about this moment often as I shop or pay for services. Many of us pay for services with credit or debit cards so exact change is not always an issue. However, more recently people have discovered that paying cash leads to better money management. As a result, more of us use cold, hard cash to pay for goods and services. If you too have been using cash as a form of payment, you may have noticed an interesting trend. You count your change, you count the amount of cash in your wallet and you are careful in ensuring that you get correct change in all transactions.
I share this background because of something that occurred last week. A friend and colleague had a bout with pneumonia. As a single person with no family in the area, my colleague needed help to buy food, fill prescriptions and general support to recover. I, like other colleagues, volunteered to provide some of this help. Two of us drove to Walgreens to fill prescriptions. It was raining that day so we chose to go through the drive-up window and avoid ruining a good hair day. I provided the necessary documents to pick up the prescription and slipped $30.00 to pay for a $26.77 bill. Then I waited. The person on the other side of the glass bagged the prescription said thank you then gave me a quizzical look as if to say, what do you want now? I pressed the button to speak and said, “I didn’t get my change.” The attendant then said, “Oh I forgot your change, how much was it?”
At this point I was perplexed, she had my bill right in front of her and had just given me a total. Once she gave me my change I made a point of counting it right in front of her – to ensure there was no further error on her part. As I was putting my change away, the colleague who was sitting in the car with me stated, “The exact same thing happened to me last week at the Walgreens in Denton.” Now I don’t usually make a point of naming a business since I don’t endorse any of them. However, how can it be that two customers who pay cash for their prescriptions at the same chain pharmacy – Walgreens – have the same experience. The person charging us “forgot” to give us our change.
I have noticed that customer service seems to have disappeared just like box stores seem to have taken over the landscape of our country. In our desperation to pay the lowest price possible for items manufactured in some foreign land by child labor we somehow failed to notice that rather than walking with us to find an item store employees point us in a general direction and will often say – if we have that item it’s in aisle 5. Gone are the times when we were thanked for our purchases and the people behind the counter truly appreciated us as customers. When did it become alright to not get our change following a purchase? I am not a doubting or negative person by nature, but I am not naïve. I can tell when someone is working quickly and may forget something like giving me my change, although that is the one job that person is hired to perform. Charge a customer for a purchase and offer the correct change for this mutually beneficial transaction. I don’t however understand how someone can forget to give me my change when they just turn around and chit chat with a co-worker. I understand even less, when I hear from someone that the exact same thing happened to them at the same store. Walgreens may hire incompetent employees at their pharmacies or not train them properly. Either way, this is a serious lapse in customer service and corporate responsibility. Unfortunately, this may not be the only business where this is occurring but it happened to me and a co-worker in the same month at different store locations.
I write this to have the conversation, it is not about 7 cents, 2 dollars or 20, it’s about good old fashioned customer service. If the major companies like Walgreens don’t care enough to provide proper customer service to paying customers – then those customers should show companies like Walgreens that other pharmacies do care. And we do so with our feet – walking to other companies that spend time and money training staff about what customers want and deserve. Any business can make a one-time sale, it is the businesses that care about their customers that will enjoy customers for life.
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