Me, Myself and I

I am trying to get back to my daily blogging after being interrupted for the past couple of days. Now that the family is back from their vacation and the cheerleader is home from camp, summer has officially started. Like most moms, this means that transition time for me that happens when you go from a quiet house with nobody home, all day, to having kids in and out and mornings of blasting music from the cheerleader's room and extra people to feed and extra everything. I had to get my summer groove on and now I can get back to blogging.

With the summer prep, came a day of errand running and appointments, yesterday. It was a nice day so I left in my convertible, Elle Woods, had my Ipod cued and ready to play my entire Elvis Costello playlist. (Yes, I have decided that this is the summer of re-reading all Bret Easton Ellis, so Elvis Costello continues to play in my mind.) But, what started out to be a sunny and happy day quickly turned into the most annoying day of my life. Each step of my journey became even more annoying.

In my ever changing moods, I continued to encounter what I am now calling the downfall of society. I blogged about this a few months ago but yesterday really took the cake. I don't know when the world, or a large chunk of the world, decided to downslide but it has happened. And I wish it would change. My friend, D, said, this morning, that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. She is so right.

I think that the biggest problem is that everyone seems to have an over inflated ego. I call this the Me, Myself and I syndrome. It's just bad behavior, bad attitude, bad hygiene, bad language skills and really, really bad social skills and customer service.

I was just thinking the other day that there are a few local places that I frequent and I never go anywhere else. One of them is a local coffee house and the other is a local coffee/bistro place. I stay loyal to them both for their great coffee and food but the other reason is for their OUTSTANDING treatment of customers. I appreciate that. I appreciate that when I walk through their doors, I am going to get a warm welcome, friendly banter and great service. I would pay a million times over just for great customer service. More businesses should come to these places and take lessons.

In the course of my day, yesterday, I encountered the rudest receptionist ever known to mankind. I had an appointment with a doctor I had never seen before. I was referred by my regular doctor and just based on the receptionist, I will travel 100 miles out of my way if I ever have to see this type of specialist, again. The receptionist made the appointment so awful that I will never go back. Her nasty tone, her rudeness, her awful attitude.

During my drive there and back, in my fun convertible, I encountered so many people not using turn signals, driving too slow, driving too fast and on top of me, blasting horns, swerving left and right of center, turning in front of people. So, now we have to watch out for all of these rude drivers because by gosh, they are just going to drive however they feel like driving and it's your problem, not their problem.

I had to make a stop at the drycleaner where we spend a small fortune, each month. The afternoon girl, not the owner, must have been bored and decided she would go ahead and ready the place for closing. A half hour before closing. I just had a drop off but if someone had come in for a pick up, they were out of luck since she had cleaned out the cash drawer and did the daily money count and shut everything down. I looked at the clock and mentioned that she was closing early. That got me a big eye roll and sigh. She asked if next week would be good for the cleaning. Um, no...I am a preferred customer that gets next day service. More sighing and wadding up of my clothes. Nice.

One more stop at the store found people operating grocery carts much like the left of center drivers. They crash into you, cut in front of you, and basically just get mad if you are in the aisle. One lady was chewing gum and cracking and popping it so loud that it made me cringe. A lot of people looked and smelled like they had no shower. For days. One person continued to pass me in the aisle and let out loud belches. The cell phone talkers were out, too, talking about everything under the sun while they shopped and their kids ran rampant in the store. The express lane found the person with 100 items and claiming not to have seen the express sign. All the while, butchering the English language to the point of sounding like they had never set foot in a language class. Is proper grammar gone, too?

Yesterday, I really noticed how so many people just do not care, anymore. They bring their private conversations to the public, they scratch, belch and expel gas in public, they drive like nobody else is on the road, they operate a business on their own time frame and they all treat people like we just do not matter. It's me, myself and I all the time.

More people need to visit my fav local establishments to see how to act and treat people with wonderful customer service skills. They have to start somewhere and I have no idea where to start them on the rest of their rude behavior...