I know, I know! There’s a recession. Well so everyone is telling me, but I have to admit if you drove past Kildare Village on a Tuesday morning in mid-November, you would not believe any talk of a recession! Queues of cars out of the place, car park full and over-flow carpark (i.e. neighbouring field) being sorted for the cars!
So if you are heading off into that frenzy of buying that is usually associated with Christmas think on this.
I started out in 2012 having a little chat with myself, about not accepting if things were not as I expected. Bad service, bad food, bad customer care…. you name it, I was going to have my say.
And I did.
Not being nasty or rude, but just expressing dissatisfaction with how my experience was. And I must say I did feel somewhat better for having spoken out – except for the time I complained about the printing ink I had received, and the guy at the other end of the phone told me it was ‘my own fault’!!!! I just won’t be buying ink from him again!!!!
However, stop for a moment.
Think about this.
Why not also praise and give thanks for nice experiences?
My niece, Chloe, who I’ve mentioned on here before, works in retail and she could tell some stories about rude and ignorant customers. But she also has some stories of lovely customers who are kind and considerate.
So with this thought floating in my head when we had a really nice shopping experience for boring household things in DID Electric in Galway where we met the most helpful and charming shop assistant, Jenny, I thought you know what – let’s tell DID about how lovely the experience was.
All I did was say ‘thank you’ via email, but I hope it did make Jenny feel appreciated and let her bosses know that she is so so good with customers.
I am the worst person to go shopping…. I won’t be doing any in the next few days, but if you are going out into that madness of shopping – give praise and thanks for the nice things too!
Happy Christmas!
Margaret, this was a joy to read today- thanks for sharing your thoughts. I gave up hope of shopping en route from Dublin to Limerick in the Kildare Village weeks ago when the madness came early..it’s shop local from now on for me
I am with you on the Marie…. shop local (or chat totally and shop on line!) 🙂
Great post Margaret I agree with you on both counts, speaking up for the good and the bad! I’m always wondering too where all the shoppers come from in general, maybe they’re mostly window shopping! Thankfully I’ve all my shopping done bar the groceries but I love any chance to shop in Kildare – The Whitewater being more to my taste : )
Thanks Jane…. I was stunned by the amount of cars! I was only passing by so had no intention anyway of stopping off to shop! There must be tons of very organised people out there shopping early!
Great post! I agree we should speak up when things are not as they should be, poor service, poor products, etc. When we feel that we have to have to comment there is a way of doing so gently and politely and still getting the message across. Also, it only takes a moment to thank someone with a few words and a smile. I think it was lovely that you took that little extra bit of time to send a personal email of thanks to Jenny. Messages like yours to her certainly help to sooth over the comments she receives from rude customers.
Thank you Paula. Jenny was an absolute delight! Putting up with two ‘old folk’ (certainly in her eyes) shopping for mundane stuff and being picky! I do hope the bosses passed on our thanks to her!