If you go to a large retail store, odds are there will be little to no meaningful customer service that goes with it. Try going to Costco and using a debit card at the snack counter or asking the staffers slinging pizza slices and smoothies to give you two plastic cups for a smoothie. The staffer answer to the latter will be: "They won't let us do that. I don't know why."
Meanwhile in little independent retail shops throughout the Northwest and the country for that matter, ask for a little customer service and you'll get a truckload full. If for example, you leave a kid's little jacket behind at Wiley's, a little pasta place in Ashland, Ore., and offer to send a self-addressed stamped envelope so staff can then stuff the jacket in it and mail it back to Seattle, the answer you will get is, "How about if I just mail it up to you right now."
What you get with independent stores is good, old-fashioned humanity. And it is a tragedy that that gets lost as companies grow and become unrecognizable mutations of themselves.
The same loss of humanity and care (ironically) could be said about adding more density to cities, so much so that when you do come across it, you involuntarily begin weeping and genuflect in the street to thank the higher ups for delivering such bounty. Yet most of the time, as neighborhoods feel the squeeze from encroaching four-plexes, six-plexes and mammoth condominiums, or shadowmakers, there is an increased sense of disenfranchisement. The neighborhood gets a bit of spray paint tagging? What would someone living in an apartment or duplex, or renting a house care about that? Yard looks like hell? Ain't their problem. There is no investment.
But we all have to coexist, and if this is how you feel about things sometimes, then we at the Queen Anne News and the Magnolia News suggest you do something about it. Start an espresso stand of your own and give each customer a homemade cookie along with their double-tall Americano, or in a language not co-opted by Starbucks, a medium coffee with two shots.
If a customer at your restaurant leaves a jacket behind, and they call to see if it's there, blow their mind and offer to drive it over to them or their place of work in the morning. The kharmic windfall will be tremendous.
If you rent a place on your street, freak your neighbors out by starting a garden on the grassy sidewalk strip. After their freak out, they may just start helping you.[[In-content Ad]]
