Customer Service is an oxymoron in the UK

Customer service leaves much to be desired here in the UK.  No offense meant.  Just stating a fact.  Let’s begin with basics like customer convenience and the “enjoyment” one normally likes to associate with a shopping experience. These do not seem to be high on the retailers’ priority list here.  Big department stores tend to tuck their restrooms at the remotest corners, without adequate signs to show where they are located.  You just have to ask, or guess, or both.  I can almost swear this is part of a deliberate design to just have restrooms used less — less maintenance, less cost, less headache for them.  Perhaps a conspiracy among the retail giants?  Ok, I’ll try not to be too cynical.  I can tell you they have signages that guide you towards everything else but the loos though.

Today I took the train from our hotel in Falkirk into Glasgow, and did the rounds of the shops.  Mostly window-shopping.  It’s hard to really shop here knowing how much cheaper prices are back in the US.  But hey, every girl needs her retail therapy now and then; — or sometimes we shop with a purpose, as was the case for me this time.  The objective:  find shoes for a formal dinner event this Saturday evening.  It’s the hubby’s motorsports club’s annual gig (where he gets a few awards too), and although things have toned down a bit now, it used to be a “penguin suit” sort of affair, I heard.  Since I’m newly wed, and newly-moved, this is going to be my first time to attend.   I’ve decided to wear one of my Vivienne Tams.  I just need new shoes to update the look, since most of my dressier shoes are in Chicago.  I started the search in a few smaller shops and later turned into Debenhams, a large UK department store.  If I had to make an analogy it would probably be like the US’s “Macy’s” chain.  The store occupies an entire building on Argyle Street, if not a significant part of that building.  Inside it has 5 huge floors full merchandise — and guess what?  Only one floor with toilets.  Yup, only on the second floor, the women’s floor, tucked in one of those obscure corners.   But as if this disproportionate lack of facilities wasn’t bad enough, —  the restrooms were actually boarded up, blocked with cones and crates, and with yellow tape marking the area off much like a crime scene.  Then the almost “apology sign” (a common sight here), “we apologize that the toilets are under repair….”  With the amount of debris blocking that area, I get the feeling that this “repair” has been going on for some time, and no, no other restrooms available in the whole building.  You would think with the price ranges in such a store they loved their customers.  And if this is the condition in a big store in the largest city in Scotland, I can only guess how much worse it would be in smaller places.  But this is how it is, and what can customers do but get used to it, right?

I’ve often wonder how this country is going to be ready for the 2012 Olympics in London because the concept of good customer relations/service is simply not in the retail service providers’ psyche.  I don’t think they mean to be this way.  They’re just not conscious of what needs to be done and how they have to be done.  You walk into a store, and the sales people look away when their eyes meet yours.   Very rarely do they bother to say greet you.  You can be queueing up to pay and see cashiers talking to each other over their tills and delaying the lines.  You see lazy unattentive sales attendants who do not know their products.  You get very fast “no” and “I’m sorry, we don’t have that here” answers, instead of — “let me check if we have that somewhere in the backroom” or “let me check in our other stores if I can get that for you.”  You will also see the sales staff blocking the very cramped merchandise aisles chatting away while the customer pretends not to be annoyed.  Worse, some stores seem to have staff who “size-you-up” on entry and if they think you cannot afford, they just turn away.  I know I’m sweeping with my statements, but seriously these are not uncommon.  So for now I am keeping to mostly window-shopping (except maybe bookstores and Boots), and there are days when I miss the American “can-do” spirit and positive go-get-’em attitude.

P.s., I did achieve what I set out to do and got shoes from another store.

Fine Print

This year, I’ve added a new tab/page onto my blog which I headered (apologies, I know there is no such a word) “Better in Pictures“.  With all the travelling that I do, and the few more planned for this year (pure vacay travel for a change woo hoo!), I hope this turns out to be an interesting documentary of the places I will go and the curiosities I find.  :)

Oh Snow!

It snowed nonstop for a whole day here in our little village outside Manchester 2 days ago.   It didn’t take long for our front and backyards to be covered in a thick, puffy quilt of white.

For all that it felt so cold during those days, I find that the temps were at its worst just below 30*F (-4.0C), — quite a ways away from the sub-zero (Fahrenheit) windchilled winters of Chicago.  And yet — why did it feel so cold?  Why did the snow fall accumulation seem even more extreme?  I was griping about the cold until the Hubby reminded me that it is nothing compared to our winters in Chicago.  True, I probably complain less about the cold there than here.

Simple explanation.  The cold is more challenging here because the UK is largely unequipped or unprepared to tackle extreme weather of this sort.  On a grocery run for instance, I was surprised to find that SALT had run out, in Tesco, Sainsbury and in the neighborhood co-op.  I was later told that many had to resort to using table salt to dust their icy front door to prevent elderly from slipping; — which gives you a clue that the roads are totally ungritted.  The council took a while to send trucks to plough the snow off the streets, and if they did, it would only be the main thoroughfares.  Most houses are not amply insulated for harsh winters (and of course, let’s not forget the prohibitive cost of heating).  And the government services all seem to come to a halt.  The garbage bin (“wheelie bins”) were not collected.  Mail was not delivered.  Schools are out.  Parents cannot go to work because schools closed.  The roads to the supermarkets are superclogged.  Cars are stalled and abandoned.  Power is cut off in some places…. yadah yadah yadah.  I’m sorry if this sounds like a gripe sheet, but in some way it probably is.  It’s crazy how life almost comes to a stand still, and daily living just seems helpless to go forwards for those few days.   It makes me realize how much I miss the efficiency and readiness of Chicago for wintry elements which make for what appears to be hardier, keep-going, can-do city.  Remember this comment of Pres. Obama regarding a snow day in D.C. same time last year?

Overnight

Snow comes treacherously. Without sound. No footprints– no tapping nor rattling on windows. Overnight our grounds went from CLEAN AND DRY to THIS–

The hubby tells me this is the worst, or best as the case may be, that he has seen in 25 years. (Good job we did a Sainsbury run last night!)

IN any case, with all that white, it’s still a good 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer here than in Chicago– where I am due in less than 2 weeks!

Your Royal Sweetness

I love British cakes.  I specially love the creamy ones which, though laden with stuff, are never overwhelmingly sweet.  At least not to the level of their sugar-packed American descendants.  The Christmas cakes are such interesting visual treats as well, to add to my delight.  A sampling from the local Sainbury’s for instance:

A “madeira cake” –

How cute is that? A sleeping polar bear, and note the little Christmas pudding beside it!

    A fruit cake:

Reindeer and sleigh....

A…. chocolate cake (I think)….

Rudolph, someone squished your red nose onto the packaging!

and an “iced cake” (fondant) with a small poinsettia decor –

Prettily decked with a little poinsettia....

Speaking of poinsettias (and other Christmas icons), we have no tree or Christmas decor in the house, on this my first Christmas in England.   According to the Hubster, his Christmas tree is probably the one we saw at his parents last weekend.  Since he had spent his last 5 Christmasses with me in the US or Canada, he left the tree to them instead.  So, 2 nights ago, when we stopped by the Co-Op, and I picked the reddest poinsettia on the last minute to brighten up our living room.   Well, hopefully it’s doing the trick best as it can:

Yes, that's an antique safe that we use as a side table in the living room.

I cannot believe that Christmas is but 6 days away– the calendar pages are just flying.  I have yet to catch the Holiday spirit.  We did our Christmas shopping for (his) family three days ago, …. in addition to the gifts I brought over from the States, at a huge mall called the Trafford Centre.  The hubby reminds me that I haven’t chosen yet what I want for a Christmas gift.  But truth is, I don’t know that I want anything.  At this point, I am just overwhelmed with the stuff I have yet to move across an ocean.  And, I honestly am alright without a fancy gift for Christmas.  It’s really not the material things, and I mean it.  Besides, I’m also thinking to myself… “man, don’t you get it that for a change I want to be surprised?”  I just don’t want to be bothered wracking my brains for something that he has to buy. 

Anyhoo, the hubby is (fingers crossed) done with his site consults next week, and we can spend more time together going around, enjoying Christmas without being hampered by work.  Maybe we can watch a good movie, or drive around, or watch a play or concert.  On my agenda of “to-do’s” in this life is a live experience of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College …. but realistically that will probably come a couple of years from now still.   I keep reminding myself I should stop feeling like England is a place I just visit.  It is in fact supposed to be “home” for the next couple of years, until we move to the US “in due course” (his words).  So I really want my first English Christmas to be Christmassy, and really memorable.  I want to be able to recall it in a flash and vividly.  Hopefully, we’re getting there, on our way to the holiday spirit, …. and counting. :)

To Be Or Not To Be — Adorably

Emmy-award winning Scottish actor, Brian Cox, coaches “Theo” to quote the third soliloquy of The Bard’s Hamlet.  This little kid is very talented (note how he catches the inflections of his drama teacher ….), and woh— those curls!!!!!

 

p.s.,  What’s not to love about that accent — even if uttered by a child!!

The Hot Water Bottle As Heating System

I first came across it in the Next store in Manchester more than a month ago.  It looked interesting enough — a colorfully knitted, flat-ish, matryoshka-design doll, lying among the “specials” arranged by the entrance to the women’s section.  But when I lifted it, it was heavier than I expected and had a wobbly feel to it.  What on earth is this?  I looked at the tag, and, surprise, surprise …. found out that this knitted “matryoshkha doll” was but a casing that housed a hot water bottle underneath.  Curious, I asked the sales attendant what exactly it was for.  “It’s something you can bring with you to bed to keep your bed warm.”  Oh.  Ok.  How ingenius I thought. 

I would soon find that this in fact is a popular Christmas item in most stores — at least among women and ladies.  (Note:  Hubby didn’t know that these hot water bottles came in “designs”, although he DID confirm that warming beds with hot water bottles was fairly common).  That’s one thing I’ve had to adjust to, coming over to the UK.  I used to gripe a lot about how cold it was/is/can be here in the UK, in response to which the Hubby would often remind me that “It’s not even close to the kind of cold you have in Chicago.”  Which is very true, … and for a while there I couldn’t figure why it just felt colder here in the UK.  THEN IT DAWNED ON ME.  The reason was largely due to the fact that in Chicago, once I get INDOORS of anything — a store, a building, even the bus – there would be heat.  The condo where I live in Chicago has centralized heating (with each condo unit having its own regulator to switch on and off) as part of your monthly association dues.  Over here (UK), you have to knock the heat on and it takes a while for the radiator to get busy.  And you can’t just keep the heat on forever because it is expensive.  So we usually keep it on by the hour and dab to extend the timer if the house isn’t warm enough.  Of course, we DO have a small fireplace which mostly heats just the living room, leaving all other rooms cold.  So the best, most efficient, low-cost and maintenance way to warm your bed?  A water bottle, of course.  :)  Who woulda thunk?   

These loveable little heating systems are found in ALL the major stores.  They come in the guise of dolls, reindeers, cows, — and just as they are, hot water bottles but in their winter coats:

From Next:

From John Lewis:

For a while while searching I had thought TopShop was spared this wonder of a merchandise…. until I looked  underneath at the lower rungs — aha, there you are hiding….

And in that girl-paradise of a store, Accessorize (the stand-alone accessories store of the Monsoon chain):

And even the Charlie-and-Lola series have their own.  I found these in an indie store on Cockburn street in Edinburgh:

There is a  small side story to all this, closer to home:  A few days ago, at the end of an 8-hour overnight flight from Chicago to Manchester, I came home to an house underheated due to the hubby being away on an off-site project.  Extremely tired, I barely made it through the usual post-flight cleaning up routine, and finally dragged myself to bed, ready to plop and bracing myself for the cold bed.  Guess what little surprise I found tucked underneath my blanket, all filled up with hot water? –

AH, THE BRITISH.  UNDERSTATED, BUT NEVER UNDER-ROMANTIC.

~Holiday Note~

This is still Miss Chicago, in a different “dress”.  I’ve decided to change my blog’s appearance just for the Christmas holidays — Christmas colors.  Christmas theme.  Even the falling snow.  I promise to revert everything to “normal” after the holidays.  :)  This year is going to be my first Christmas in the UK — far from old home, family and friends but nearer to new ones.   I arrived in Manchester from the Windy City 3 days ago, just before the snow and cold got EVEN worse.  I miss it already.  Good thing is that the harsh cold while I was there has made whatever they have here pretty easy to manage.  Weather-wise that is.

I am documenting everything about this year’s English Christmas (or should I say “British Christmas” to be politically correct?).  At least the highlights, so watch for it.  ;)  For some strange reason, while it is really never even close to as cold here in the UK as it is in Chicago (where I left under -20F weather, yes there is a minus in front of the number and yes, that is Fahrenheit), it somehow always feels colder here.  Warmth I guess operates on all levels, not just externally; and I am optimistic that things are thawing somewhat somehow over here.

Happy Christmas — which is how they say it here, more than “Merry Christmas”.  and I am wishing this Christmas will be toasty and memorable.

Thanksgiving Post-Op

This is largely a stub post, so I don’t forget what happened this year on Thanksgiving with me on this side of the Atlantic, and the hubby on the other.  I returned to Chicago from CowTown the day before Thanksgiving.  Did the usual 9 hours straight, with multi-purpose stops…. gas, use the restroom, and grab a quick drink or cookie.  At the end of the drive, where all I ate was a  cheap hotdog and lots of blueberries (let those antioxidants at work while I drive), I was, well, tired and hungry,– surprise surprise.   The nice coincidence is that my best buddies who are based in Kansas City were in Chicagoland area – for a totally different reason other than to visit me.  They took the time out to drag me out of my apartment for food.  We went to the new Sun Wah.  “New” because it  moved from its former home of 20 odd years on Argyle  a few steps east, on Broadway.  Sun Wah is one of the  hubby’s favorite Chinese restaurants in Chicago.  Well, actually, one of many.  He loves Chinese food (I wonder why?  :)), and agrees that the Chinese food in Britain does not compare to the ones in the US.  Notwithstanding the sizeable mainlander Chinese and Hongky population in the UK.  We ordered a white fish in black bean sauce, a large portion of honey pork belly and char-shiew (see below….)

bittermelon in beef,  ma po tofu, and soup (their “small” fed all 3 of us a bowl each plus spare); we also had 3 portions of rice, 3 rootbeers and a coke.   Burp.  I was a piglet, and we had a ton of leftovers to box up to bring home.  The bill came to a grand figure 51 dollars which included a 10.25% tax.  That means, pre-tax the bill was around 46 dollars or roughly under 28 British pounds.  Best of all, it all tasted delicious.  I don’t know that you could get a deal like that in the UK.  I went home stuffed, exhausted from the long-drive, and too happy to be back in my own bed.  I had the perfect sleep.  

Next day, … Thanksgiving, great….  What do we do? I had totally made no plans, having hit the ground running and kept going since I flew into the States 2 weeks earlier.  Carla and Rose (my Spanish teacher) were supposed to come over to my place for dinner.  But Carla has a new apartment, and this time, we agreed to use her kitchen.  As expected, Rose was late (to be fair, she had to work, even on Thanksgiving, …. ay pobrecita!), and Carla could only make the salad (following everything in the recipe book to the letter).  We had no turkey, … so I whipped up what best I could manage.  Anyway, in the end it’s all about having good wine and wonderful conversation and bonding time.   Never mind that I was half-groggy most of the time. :)  

Around 8:30 I had to go home over Carla’s insistence that I just sleep over.  I still wanted my own, familiar bed.  We were planning on our Black Friday activities just as I headed off.  I promised Carla I would look into the coupons I could use the next day and would call so that we can plan which stores hit the next day.  That call didn’t happen.  I intended to wink, but woke up the next morning.  But no one took it against me.  Carla let me sleep in heavenly peace without calling to follow up. 

I still woke up at 7:30 the next day, and yes, we did the post-Thanksgiving American tradition of shopping like it was an Olympic sport, although we played like a Third-World team.  Never mind, we saved more money that way. :p

Yeah, Thanksgiving was alright.  Wish you were here, hub. ;)

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts.  No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.  ~H.U. Westermayer  

Hilarious

I read this blog post of an American’s observation on the British gal’s Saturday night attire.  I couldn’t agree with it more, and I just could not stop laughing.  Finally — my sentiments/observations exactly! – and I could not express it as hilariously! 

Flashback:  Not too long ago, while in town on Saturday in Manchester (UK), I once commented about how “different” British girls dressed on weekends.  [Note: I was honestly thinking "slutty", but the diplomatic "different" came out of my mouth.]  My husband (then boyfriend) beamed proudly and said “yeah, women here really fixed themselves nicely when they go out.”  OH.MY.GOD.