Sunday, December 13, 2009

Karma in action.

This woman was having trouble with her card out at the pumps, and came in with an attitude.  Before I could even say “HI”, she says to me 20050814-0674“What’s the problem out there at your pumps?”  Instead of saying that 9 times out of 10 it’s the proverbial ID-10-T error, I blamed it on the  weather, and cheerfully offered to run it pre-pay at my register.  Attitude still intact, (apparently I was suppose to mystically fix the problem at the pump), she agreed and we ran her card.

“Credit Card Declined”.  In this case, the most beautiful words I’d seen all day.  Usually I don’t like to see those words.  It makes the customer unhappy, makes me uncomfortable and I hate explaining that I have no idea why the card was denied and, no, I can’t change it.  But I have to admit, making an arrogant person eat crow feels good.  Especially when you can do it in a customer-service appropriate way.

sartin

4 comments:

A Paperback Writer said...

Kind of like catching a kid red-handed cheating on a test, eh?

Max Sartin said...

Nice analogy.

Jeff said...

:)

As someone who once worked in a gas station and is now a teacher, I can agree on both of those counts.

jmpnmark said...

Run it again! I don't know why, but that's what they always asked me to do. Like the bill magically would get paid in those 30 seconds.