Three lackluster retail experiences this week make me wonder if the heat hasn’t gotten to employees. Happily, I conclude with a wonderful example of customer service at Staples on Fifth Avenue and 39th Street.

A Trilogy of Booooooos

I dropped by one of New York’s high end grocery stores and as I tried to find what I was searching for I saw an elderly woman balancing herself on ski poles looking for help in the coffee section. I asked two employees who were a good walk away if they could call someone to help her. Each said, “it’s not my department,” and turned back to their tasks.

Next stop was a national big box store. I was still looking for peppermint oil, which was sold out at the first place, to give a friend to discourage families of ants who live in her garden from visiting her living room. Two information staffers were positioned by the escalators. They told me where to go [as it turned out literally as well as figuratively]. There was nothing like it “by the candles,” short steps from where they stood.

A friend bought a faulty washer from a well-regarded national home store. She was arranging for pickup and delivery and asked customer service for a morning appointment. The response: “Oh, I can’t do that. It would make me look bad.”

Love the Service

To end on a promising note, the opposite happens daily at Trader Joe’s where employees take you to the shelf with the item you’re looking for.

Kudos to Staples too. My store closed so yesterday I explored the next closest one. On the first floor are reams of expensive copy paper. I asked the cashier if there was a cheaper version upstairs. There is. As I reached the top step another staffer, who had followed me up the stairs, told me to follow him. The paper was as far from the stairway as it could be in a very large floor and thanks to him, I was in and out promptly. Even though the store is farther for me to walk in a direction I rarely go, I won’t mind.

I trust you’ve had more of the Trader Joe’s/Staples experiences than the other three. Blasé or self-serving staffers don’t set well with me. Are you inured and used to it?

   

I’m guessing that some folks think “picking tomatoes, lettuce, grapes or avocados” when they imagine immigrants at work. New Yorkers have nothing to harvest but immigrants are some of the finest folks I come across daily.

Blessed Bus Driver

A bunch of friends exclaimed “WOW” all at once when I told them this story. It was hot and humid last Thursday afternoon when at the last minute, after emerging from the subway, I suddenly decided to take a bus to pick up some arrowroot at a store I was sure would have it. I needed it for a pie I was making for July 4^th and I’d not found it in any grocery stores including Whole Foods.

I jumped on a bus and asked the driver if he stopped at 28^th Street. Turns out it was a limited and my choices were to get out at 34^th or 23^rd.  I hopped off at 34^th from the middle of the bus and as I headed downtown, passing the bus’s front door, the driver called after me and gestured that I come back on. I figured I’d left something on the bus but, no. He said “It’s too hot. I’m taking you to 28^th Street.” Never happened to me before!

And he did! I can’t tell you where he was from, but he spoke with an accent, and it wasn’t from Brooklyn. [How many drivers pull out inches from a stop faced with a red light who won’t open the door to a smiling pedestrian tapping on the glass?]

I shared an addendum with my friends who urged me to include it. I chose to leave at 34^th Street rather than enjoy the AC a little longer because I saw a person I knew on the bus whom I wanted to avoid!

Meds

A day before a stranger left a VM saying he had my prescription, identifying himself as a doorman on East 44^th Street. I was confused. Why would he have my meds?

I called him back sensing a scam. It took a while for me to understand him—English wasn’t his native tongue. Eventually I realized that the prescription I’d picked up earlier in the day must have fallen out of my tote bag. When I reached his apartment, thank you note and tip in hand, the doorman told me the caller had been the porter who had seen the little white bag on the sidewalk in front of the building.

He could have tossed it. I am so grateful he didn’t.

Papa

My dad hardly spoke English when he came to New York in his 30s and by the time I was old enough to have some idea of my parents as people he was conducting business in English in his own company. He never lost his charming French accent although his family would tease that he’d begun to speak French with an American accent. He worked effortlessly on The New York Times crossword puzzle and his letters to me, in English, were written exquisitely.

I wager most New Yorkers don’t think IMMIGRANT when a male Hispanic delivery person motions for women to exit an elevator first or a south Asian man gives up his seat for a fellow passenger sporting a cane.

If you are served by a waiter or gas station attendant with an accent, do you think anything of it?

I’m comfortable around people with foreign accents because I was lucky enough to have been brought up by a noble immigrant. Do you think that missing that experience may be why so many Americans fear them?

   

Some scams never die and even legitimate businesses play the game. I’ve been involved in or heard of the kind of tricks reader EAM shared a week ago.

I once ordered a book on graphic art so as to communicate effectively with graphic designers to achieve what I wanted for a client. I didn’t need any more books on the subject. The publisher put me on its book of the moment club. It took ridiculous follow up involving calls and letters for months at the time to put a stop to the avalanche of hard covers. A lawyer told me I didn’t have to return the unordered books.

EAM wrote: “I recently ordered deodorant online at a special price. One month later, four more deodorants showed up for $90. 

“I thought ‘how much deodorant do I need?’ There was a complicated process to return it, and I had to pay the return shipping fee. I cancelled the entire thing.

“This also happened with People magazine which auto renewed for $138. I immediately cancelled.”

For this reason, in the day, I subscribed to stacks of magazines, but I never gave my credit card number. I paid by check. I didn’t have time to fight to stop the subscriptions, some of which I wanted only as long as I had a client or project in an industry.

Today I don’t fall for drop-dead discounts for publications I might be interested to explore because I’d need to share my card number.

Friends tell me to take advantage of a special rate when Hulu offers one and then cancel after I’ve seen episodes of the “Gilded Age” that they rave about. I am uncomfortable doing that and dread the hassle to disengage. I’m sorry to miss it.

I also missed “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” because I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime Video.

Slightly off topic but related I have a bone to pick with Netflix. I adore it. But something happened when I wanted to watch “The Miracle Club,” Maggie Smith’s last movie. The video streaming service told me that I can’t see it for licensing reasons because my subscription isn’t eligible. Grumble. I would need to pay more—I currently accept commercials. I enjoy them! They are refreshing compared to all the medical adverts I see on cable and network TV. But I don’t want to pay more all year to watch one film.

Have you had a hard time shedding—or dealing with–a subscription of any kind?

   

I go out of my way to pay less for my purchases. I always have. My husband used to say I’d still buy my clothes in discount stores even if I won $millions on the lottery. When my CVS drugstore coupons match my needs, I’m thrilled.

So why do I think that it’s a mistake for Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat’s candidate for NYC mayor, to make good on one of the promises—free bus rides–that helped lure primary voters to check the box next to his name? Shouldn’t I be over the moon as by all accounts, he’s positioned to win, and I take a lot of buses?

For one thing, New Yorkers can’t afford it. The Metropolitan Transit Authority is $48 billion in the hole, paying $3 billion a year to lenders. “Who cares?” say you, “The state owns the MTA. It’s not NYC’s problem.”

Jeanne to those who say—or even know–that: A NYC citizen pays taxes to the city and the state, right? And who do you think will pay the freight? Why should I pay more taxes to cover the rides of the many who can afford them?

Will visitors pay nothing too?

Here’s how I would handle it. Give OMNY cards programmed with free bus rides to those whose income is below a certain level. OMNY cards are a contactless fare payment system for public transportation accepted by subways, buses, paratransit, and other regional services.

Extend half price rides, currently provided to seniors and disabled NYers, to the next poorest level of citizen regardless of age or health status. Everyone else should pay the fare.

And since all the cards look alike, nobody will know who is paying what.

At the same time, make it easy for New Yorkers to direct financial support where they want it to go. Just as we can opt to donate our organs on our driver’s license applications, let us check off our choices on tax returns to donate $1 [or more] to, for example, food banks, public hospitals and public school athletic or arts programs.

I’ve had fierce arguments with friends over my objection to free bus transport. What do you think?

   

If like me, you are addicted to “Blue Bloods” reruns, you will occasionally hear Tom Selleck refer to the question “Where were you on 9-11?” Anyone alive and old enough at the time can tell you.

In everyone’s life, there are such moments. Some are shared with millions of others and like 9-11 don’t currently need a year. Take January 6. Eventually, however, the year will creep in—June 6, 1944, D Day, for example.

You might not think of a date at all but can describe your surroundings when you heard that Presidents Reagan and Kennedy were shot.

I’m terrible with dates—like I can’t tell you when I had Covid or some medical procedure—but I remember where I was when I met my husband Homer, when my parents and he died and when I learned that my Uncle Martin lost part of his finger in a snowblower accident. I remember seeing my niece when she was less than a day old and the anxious expression on a then boss’s face as I headed for Chicago to run a weekend workshop plus entertainment for hundreds of retailers. He knew we were severely understaffed and was nervous. It nevertheless went well.

I can visualize my surroundings when I received a phone call from Pottery Barn decades ago to tell me that I’d won a drawing or with a different phone in my hand when I heard 2 days before closing that the buyer of our house was backing out. I can see me sitting on the bed holding Homer’s hand waiting for the all clear from our lawyer when it finally sold on the last business day of 2018.

Are there moments that you visualize with vivid clarity?