Customer Service Lament

I've been thinking a lot about customer service. Companies have entire departments devoted to it. You can call customer service, e-mail customer service, even chat live online with customer service. Management trains their frontline or first contact employees to provide customer service. Some businesses I patronize give great customer service. Sadly, most businesses do not.

On Friday, June 12, Waste Management failed to pick up our garbage. Our delivery is on Friday afternoon. I e-mailed customer service and received this immediate e-mail back: "A customer service representative will respond soon to your question." I waited. Our trash sat on the curb over the hot weekend. I e-mailed customer service again at the beginning of the week and received an immediate e-mail back: "A customer service representative will respond soon to your question." Frustrated, I called the Waste Management customer service phone number in the Twin Cities. They said they would schedule a pick-up of our trash which had sat on the curb over the weekend -- for Wednesday. That day came and went. My trash finally was picked up on Friday, a full week late on my regular service day. I researched the costs of two other garbage haulers that service my neighborhood and vowed the next time our trash isn't picked up to switch services.

A couple of weeks ago I completed a customer satisfaction survey Waste Management e-mailed to me. I rated my recycling service middle high, my garbage service middle low. And I took the opportunity to clearly explain that sending an e-mail back saying "A customer service representative will respond soon to your question" -- is not customer service.

On Thursday, Oct. 15, more than four months after I e-mailed customer service twice and received messages that a customer service representative would "respond soon," I received a phone call from a Waste Management customer service representative. I laughed that my service problem finally was getting an airing. She tried to make me a satisfied customer by explaining to me that my e-mail requests for service went to their national system but were never routed back to our service region. The collective "They" she spoke for, has no record of my requests for service. However, in the future, I can "chat online" for immediate customer service. Then, she qualified, but only during the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

I choose to laugh, rather than cry. My hauler made it today. He's even early. Let's just hope he doesn't miss any more pickups.

A Blue Ribbon Day

We watched a fair princess have her likeness carved in butter and robots play a game of tag. Sam got his Monkey with a Tool Belt book signed by author Chris Monroe. We walked through a haunted house and saw some cows being milked. We marveled at the prize-winning fair entries -- from commercial cheese and student art to pies and quilts. We ate fresh cut french fries while scoping out the midway, pausing for Sam to test his skill at a ring toss game. We walked from one end of the fairgrounds to the other -- for a second time -- just so we could eat meatloaf on a stick. We rendezvoused with Tom at the CSS booth and started a pin collection. We caught the tail end of a bee beard demonstration. We devoured deep fried Oreos. Sam rode his first roller coaster with his Dad, both coming off  the ride with big smiles and a little bit dizzy. We took pointers from a honey harvesting demonstration.

We liked everything we experienced at the Minnesota State Fair, except that Sam was a half-inch shy of being tall enough to drive a go-kart and we didn't have room for those deep-fried twinkies on a stick. There's always next year.

A boy and his sailboat

We took our inflatable mini-catamaran to the cabin yesterday. It's perfect for a boy of 10 on a lake the size of Sweet Lake. My husband spent the morning showing our son how to stay on course with the rudder and adjust the boom to catch the wind. Sam spent the afternoon sailing the lake.

A successful experiment

I harvested some beets yesterday. They were one of my gardening experiments. Last year's was potatoes and onions. This year's was beets.

I have never bought a beet in my life -- let alone grown them. But I bought two different varieties, golden and candystripe, at a fundraiser for my son's school. I transplanted them into two big pots, and watered them during dry spells.

I grilled these in the oven with olive oil and pepper. Then tossed them with some scallions and lemon juice, put them on some lettuce and topped them with crumbled feta. They were delicious!

The missed shot

I was checking on our blueberries when I noticed this young robin sitting in one of the bushes. He didn't seem to mind as I quietly observed him. In fact, he had barely moved in the time I walked back to the house, grabbed my camera and returned.

Several minutes later, however, he sent off a squawk when my husband reached for a few blueberries on his way out to the garden shed. "Help, I'm being attacked," I heard, rushing out the back door to see two adult robins squawking and flying wildly around my husband. One actually hit him on the head. The young robin, meanwhile, made a low escape through our backyard gate.

Too bad I didn't still have my camera in hand.

Beautiful, bountiful berries

I love this late July convergence of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries in my backyard. Today I used them to make these breakfast parfaits. Alas, the strawberries are almost finished. But the blueberries are coming on strong and raspberries are just beginning to ripen.

Great Literature

By sheer coincidence I find myself reading two books about the sea simultaneously. Both are turning out to be excellent reads, most notably for their absorbing tales and descriptive writing.

Our family read-aloud is Margi Preus' "Heart of a Samurai," a book that was gifted to my 10-year-old son. It's a story about a Japanese boy who is shipwrecked, rescued by a whaling ship, and comes to live in America in the 1840s. We're captivated by the boy's efforts to adopt western life, the cultural comparisons he makes, and his struggles to achieve his dream to once again see his family and homeland.

My personal read, E. Annie Proulx' "The Shipping News," is a true delight I discovered in a Little Lending Library on Minnesota Point. A widowed man moves to his ancestral home of Newfoundland with his two young daughters and aunt to start new lives.I'm awed by the vivid images of life in Newfoundland, the simple way in which the complex struggles of the dad in starting life over again are portrayed, and the depth the author has given her colorful cast of characters. I savor carefully crafted phrases, such as evoking his daughter's "Beethoven scowl." I'm smitten with the small-town newspaper stories the protagonist and his colleagues cover and, especially, the headlines that run through the main character's mind about his own life.

Both books received high prizes: Preus earned a Newbery Honor, Proulx the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Reading them, makes me commit to writing more regularly and entertain the idea of returning to newspapering -- but at that small-town level where it can be a lot more fun.