You would be hard pressed today to find anyone outside of a Corporate Marketing Department to insist that customer service is not a dying art. In fact, great customer service is already dead and anything but the most basic customer awareness is a thing of the past. But as far as I am concerned there is no place on Earth where customer service is in such a late stage of utter decomposition than in Israel. And I have proof.
Yesterday I walked in to the Shoe department of the Ra'anana branch of Israel's only department store, Hamashbir. I just ran the word hamashbir through Google translate and what a surprise .... it doesn't seem to mean anything. It apparently doesn't do anything either. (Addendum: I asked my friend Sherri who I met in the work-out room today what Hamashbir means and she -- a much more knowledgeable Jew than moi -- said that she thinks it is connected to the grain storage halls in Egypt during the time of Joseph and probably means that it is a place where you can find whatever you need! Ha! The irony just won't quit.)
I had seen a pair of sandals or three the night before when I was there with my son, shopping for his new shoes. Unfortunately shopping with my son does not include time for me to even consider looking at anything that interests me, so I made a mental note to return the next day.
The next day I returned early and went straight to three pairs of shoes that I wanted to try on. After playing a five-minute game of hide-and-seek with the one and only person in the Shoe department, I asked her if she could get me the shoes in my size. She left carrying all three shoes.
After waiting about 15 minutes, I was considering sending out a search party. Another customer wandered innocently in to the area and asked me if there was someone working in the department. I said that I last saw the sales lady 15 minutes ago and that by now she was probably half way to Jordan. Five minutes later she returned with the same three shoes and nothing else.
Here's the conversation that followed. Please keep in mind that I held my end in the world's most ungrammatical Hebrew.
Me: Did you find the shoes?
Sales lady: I can't find them.
Me: What? They're the new Spring shoes.
Sales lady: The shoes are all in shipping boxes in the back, and I don't have time to look for them because I am here alone. (Please note that at least two other sales people were standing around doing absolutely nothing but they would not help out because they didn't work in "Shoes".)
Me: Then why are they on the display shelves if they are not available?
Sales lady: They are available.
Me: Okay, then I want to try these three in size 37.
Sales lady: It's not possible because they are in big shipping boxes and I can't unpack them now.
Me: So they aren't available.
Sales lady: Not now. If you want to come with me I will show you. (Suddenly she had time to leave the sales floor.)
Assuming that she was a lazy oaf, I agreed to follow her and prove her wrong. Off we went to the loading dock of the Ra'anana branch of Hamashbir... where I came face-to-face with about a dozen huge shipping boxes that apparently held most of the new season's shoes.
Sales lady: Go ahead and have a look.
Me: You want me to open these boxes and look for the shoes?
Sales lady: Why not?
Next thing I knew I was unpacking boxes in the loading dock in search of any of the three shoes I wanted. After another seven or eight minutes we had managed to find only one of the three.
When I told her that I still wanted to try on the other two, she told me to come back tomorrow.
It sounded wholly plausible that the shoes would be unpacked by the next day since they were the Spring offering and it is now Spring in Israel. Stupid me.
I arrived there this morning and guess what? None of the new shoes had been further unpacked.
By this point I was starting to lose it and much to the amusement of the skeleton staff working there, I asked to speak to the manager. I really wished I had video taped what happened next because it was more ridiculous than I can possible describe.
Me: Lior (I now knew the manager's name was Lior). If there are shoes on the shelves then doesn't that mean they are available to buy?
Lior: Of course.
Me: Then why can't anyone who works here find the shoes so I can try them on and maybe buy them? Don't stores exist to sell things to customers? If not, what are you all doing here? In America (that really pisses them off) if you ask to try on something that is on the shelves then someone goes and gets it for you. That's how stores work in America. They put things on shelves so customers know they are available.
Lior: That's how it works here too.
Me: I don't think so.
In an effort to show me what a dumb "American" I was, he made a few calls that sounded very impressive. Then we stood and waited. Then we waited some more. And then some more. Then Lior made another call that sounded distinctly more peeved than the previous call.
Me: Do you see the problem now?
Lior: (silent glare, subtle shrug and then finally resignation)
Lior: Okay, give Edna (the original sales lady) your name and phone number and she will call you when we find the shoes.
For those of you sitting on the edge of your seats wondering what happened .... At 6:00 pm tonight my cell phone rang and it was Edna. She had the shoes.
I rushed in and bought them before anything else could happen and when I said good-bye, thank you (never burn a bridge in a Shoe department) and do not expect to see me tomorrow, the sales lady, the cashier and the sales lady in the adjacent department all waved, smiled, called me by my name and wished me a good evening. I guess you could say that I actually got what I came for.
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