Of customers, care, and feedback

Among the many habits one can adopt in order to annoy a partner, what I witnessed in my family as one of the most recurring habits consisted in my father sitting at the table for lunch and starting to tell my mother all of what happened at his work, while she insisted that she was too tired and her head ached. In other words, she was totally unconcerned, having she heard way too many stories about his customers.

My father was a pedlar fruit seller. He had his lorry and a loudspeaker that he used to announce what he offered from a wide variety of fruits and vegetables he would buy at a big market — a unique place in my memories. A couple of times per week he would wake up very early in the morning and go to buy the fruit at this big market in the city, or occasionally at a smaller one which opened in the afternoon.
During all of his working life my father hasn’t had much more to talk about: a family that used to complain in the Summer for his loud announcements at eight in the morning; some people who had always to quarrel for the prices, or others who would meet him just to chat, some who would even invite him to a beer or a coffee; my favourite is the old lady who argued every morning when my father stopped for a few minutes in front of her house, because his lorry there “darkens my soul”.
Dad had to follow few simple rules: be nice to his customers, let go of the very annoying ones, build some relationships, select the best fruit, apply a fair price. People can’t really avoid to buy fruit and vegetables, so his business has always survived.
My dad’s stories may have been repetitive, but they take on a new meaning to me now, as I’ve also started to have my own customers, and I wonder how many stories he could tell if he tried to deliver a different kind of product or service.

Most of daily relations are based on buying and selling, and that’s where most of us are called to express our personality, not only our skills.
Since I live in Czech Republic, for instance, I can’t explain how so many people just do their job and when you enter their place they give you clearly to understand that you’re interrupting something which they were doing, whilst back in Italy, some sellers would follow you home with their enchanting smile and gaze, shouting their offer, till you react somehow.
In the UK I had several trainings on practices that, at the end of the day, I knew I could just base on my common sense and on my good manners. And no matter how much the company made pressure on me until I smiled to every single customer: when that woman came to me and read rapidly her list of drinks for her colleagues, reacting very irritated when I asked to repeat slowly, my big smile sent a very clear message — not a very polite one.
At the same time, I used to wonder, how well can you train someone who has evident problems with the human beings to whom he can still perfectly smile and say those two nice words?

Every time I don’t cook something at home, I go to buy my lunch at the same place: it’s clean, the food is good quality and at a fair price, the selection is wide, plus the workers have a nice attitude; but after a few weeks I could notice how they weren’t really enjoying all that smiling and repeating nice words that none expects elsewhere in the city.
Once I entered a new place in the centre of Brno, a cozy café with a beautiful garden right under the main cathedral, and the girl working there had nothing better to show than a bored face and her urge to sit back on Facebook; when I had to choose again the same place, before it started to rain heavy, the owners entertained us and brought grilled meat and vegetables for free in addition to our coffees.

When a customer is impressed, a positive feedback is often motivating; a negative feedback, instead, can be tracked into an electronic system, and mapped to the agent, who simply gets a reduced salary at the end of the month. My dad would never imagine that — he’s a free soul after the client has turned his back!
Between showing satisfaction in any instance, or being always objective when on the side of the customer, between giving my best firstly because my parents taught me to be nice, or just working hard on my monthly bonus as the only purpose of my job, I struggle every single day to choose what always pays: respect and honesty.

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