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's answer to the latter would be: "They won't let us do that. I don't know why."Meanwhile, in little independent retail shops throughout the Northwest, ask for a little customer service and you'll get a truckload full. If, for example, you leave your child's little jacket behind at a little pasta place in Ashland, Ore., and offer to send a self-addressed stamped envelope so staff can mail the jacket in it, 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 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. As neighborhoods feel the squeeze from encroaching four-plexes, six-plexes and mammoth condominiums, 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 bad? It isn't their problem because there is no investment.But we all need to coexist, so let's do something about it. Start an espresso stand of your own and give each customer a homemade cookie along with their double-tall Americano. If a customer at your restaurant leaves a jacket behind and they call to see if it's there, offer to drive it over to them or their place of work in the morning. The kharmic windfall will be tremendous.If you rent, surprise your neighbors by starting a garden on the grassy sidewalk strip. They may just start helping you.[[In-content Ad]]
