Waiting .. Waiting

In this day and age you would think everything would improve and yet the one thing that has gotten worse is waiting.. waiting in lines, waiting on phones, waiting for things....

whats your gripe about waiting.. I personally hate taking a number and waiting forever in bank queues, automated response telephones and telephone queues and my biggest bitch waiting at checkouts.. There will be up to 12 people with full trolleys in front of me and only one checkout open... They like to get you in there to spend your money, over half my income goes to the supermarket giants, they post massive profits, yet you wait in queues for half an hour or more. Shopping trips now turn into nightmares.

Service as a priority seems a thing of the past. How many times have you stood inside a K-mart, or a walmart shoppy thingy, scanning the aisles looking for an assistant to answer your questions about products only to find none. Once upon a time you were jumped before you even entered the doorway... and if you do get one its a pimply 15 year old with a squeaky voice and no clue..hey kid which of these two has the best power for price... "umm I dont really know"........................ well is this your section.............."umm *scratches face.. "yes but I dunno"....WELL CAN YOU DAMNED WELL FIND SOMEONE THAT DOES?......"ummm I dunno" he wanders off to find someone and you wait wait wait another 20 mins...and then they come and get upitty for for scaring the daylights out of junior and threaten to ban you from the store...

My biggest peeve recently was waiting 25 mins at hungry jacks for a cheeseburger.... no joke.. and i complained cos by this time my kids were climbing the walls... I counted 52 people served with products while I waited... my other burgers had been served on the tray and by this time my fries were floppy and cold....and finally I get the cheeseburgers, microwaved, not wrapped up properly and slapped together looking like regurgitated cheeseburgers.......yup i screamd for my money back, stormed off and went to Macdonalds.........

and automated phone calls.. now im getting calls from automated voices...I just hang up, I figure if they cant afford a real person to ring me then they dont really want my business. Waiting for 45 mins on the phone to ask an enquiry? getting shoved around the country pressing 1, for this, 2 for that and 3 to hang up? Those automated voices make me cringe.... they never get it right.. ahh yeah I want the number for bobs towing in wollongong... voice says "ok you want bill the builder in japan" if this is correct say yes.. if this is incorrect say no... Noooooooooo.. Voice.. "I'm sorry I ddn't get your response please start again".......

The large companies hide behind the corporate wall now and we as the lowly consumer are left waiting waiting and waiting.. it stinks.. is this the future?

Its waiting thats gonna kill us all

heres what I mean

Quote:

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http://www.news24.com/News24/Backpag...940907,00.html
An Associated Press poll has found an impatient United States.


To get to the point without further ado, the US is a nation that gets antsy after five minutes on hold on the phone and 15 minutes maximum in a queue. So say people in the survey.
The department of motor vehicles is among the top spots where Americans hate to wait. But grocery stores are the worst.

Almost one in four in the AP-Ipsos poll picked the grocery checkout as the line where their patience is most likely to melt like ice cream.
And it seems people don't mellow with age. The survey found older people are more impatient than younger people.

Nor does getting away from the urban pressure cooker make much difference. People in the country and the suburbs can bear a few more minutes in a line before losing it than city inhabitants can - but that's it.
In short, Americans want it all NOW. Or awfully close to now.

"If you ask the typical person, do you feel more time-poor or money-poor, the answer almost always is time-poor," said Paco Underhill, an expert on what draws and drives away shoppers.
"We walk in the door with the clock ticking with various degrees of loudness in our heads. And if I get to the checkout and if I have the perception it's not working efficiently, often that clock gets even louder."

Americans are demanding, too.
Half in the AP-Ipsos poll said they refused to return to businesses that made them wait too long.

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impatient my butt... isnt it nice of them to twist it to make the consumer look bad..oh hes impatient.....arggggh

Yes Mayet,you have came up with a beautiful phrase."Time Is The Enemy"

My B*t*h sorry I mean complaint is cell phones.A rude person indeed is one who comes to a salesperson for help ties them up and can't get off the cell phone to converse.

When you ask a real live person for help with a product one on one...Turn off your damn Cell Phone.

You won't die.You want go into convulsions.Hell,you might even get help.

Service in Bahrain is excellent, even in fast food places :)

I shop at Tesco's, if there is more than one person queuing at the checkouts, they open more checkouts... but at Lidl (german company) they don't. It's a question of priorities and staff availability.

We have also forgotten the lines and queues we used to have. The post office was the classic example of shutting the counter you were queuing at just as you got there and you had to go and join another queue. Getting the car tax could take 2 hours.

Yeah get everything faster, but is the side effect that we no longer plan our time, so when the service is unable to supply right now, we blame them for our inability to factor in some contingency time?

Don't even get me started about public healthcare...

My wife waited 13 hours to get 9 stitches on a finger she had cut open on a window in an emergency ward here in QC, Canada. I kid you not. From 10 AM to 11 PM.

It took 15 minutes to complete the actual procedure.

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Originally Posted by Stalemate

Don't even get me started about public healthcare...

My wife waited 13 hours to get 9 stitches on a finger she had cut open on a window in an emergency ward here in QC, Canada. I kid you not. From 10 AM to 11 PM.

It took 15 minutes to complete the actual procedure.

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Had there been another emergency? 13 hours you would only see here if there had been a local disaster.

I'm with Mayet. I hate standing in those lines!

It doesn't matter if you're in a car parts store or Wal-Mart (they're the worst) or the local grocery mart, I always get stuck in the wrong, slowest line available.

Those Wal-Mart SuperCenters have 200 fricking checkout lines and only 4 of them are open at any one time. I hate going there and I now refuse to go at all. My wife still goes and I stay outside in the parking lot listening to tunes.

Stalemate

Here is the same. In accident and emergency you can wait up to 48 hours to be seen. My mum had a brain anurisym (*sp) and slept on bed in A&E for three days until a bed became available for her in intensive care. At the hospital there can be six to eight ambulances queued for hours in docks at the A&E waiting.

I have waited over 12 months for an appointment with a specialist for my Crohns disease and will wait a further 24 months for a colonoscopy after that appointment. Elective and non urgent surguries can wait up to four years under the public system.

Its four years for the public dental waiting list for fillings and extractions and 7 years for the public denture waiting list.

15 to 20 years for the public housing waiting list.

At centrelink (social secuity/welfare) there can be fifty to sixty people waiting in each of two queues which run out the door and down the street with only one person on reception.

Donj

four checkouts open? wow thats good we get 2 out of the 20 available if we are lucky.

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Originally Posted by DonJ

I'm with Mayet. I hate standing in those lines!

It doesn't matter if you're in a car parts store or Wal-Mart (they're the worst) or the local grocery mart, I always get stuck in the wrong, slowest line available.

Those Wal-Mart SuperCenters have 200 fricking checkout lines and only 4 of them are open at any one time. I hate going there and I now refuse to go at all. My wife still goes and I stay outside in the parking lot listening to tunes.

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Some parts stores will have a few in line But when that phone rings they stop what they are doing and help whoever is on phone while you the one with
the money has to wait.

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Originally Posted by xpuser357

Some parts stores will have a few in line But when that phone rings they stop what they are doing and help whoever is on phone while you the one with
the money has to wait.

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Since the phone rings all the time...Imagine the service we could have if they hired someone who only spoke broken English to answer the phone.

Everyone would say,"I ain't callin agin,I'd rather go there first.Just put someone on the phone that makes it hell on earth.Use the other people to
do there job.

It's like Wal-Mart being the largest,richest,worst store chain in the world.

The workers wear a shirt cover provided by Wal-Mart that reads"How may I help you?"

If you make eye contact with one of them that "How may I help you "gets smaller and smaller.

I never did figure out how a company that:


1 :Don't care if your there or not.
2: Offer the poorest service in the world.
3: Barely provide better products than a thrift shop.
4: Aggravate the hell out of you.
5: Claim to be a 24 hour a day store.Yet 90% of the
departments where you need help have limited hours.

Examples for number 5 are: Deli,Optical,sporting goods,garden shop,
Automotive,Pharmacy,********ics,Jewelry ETC.I just got tired of
listing the things.They are by no means a 24 hour a day store.

People like being crapped on or Wal-Mart would not be number 1.

Just me and the fine people of Windrivers don't like it.. :grin:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NooNoo

Had there been another emergency? 13 hours you would only see here if there had been a local disaster.

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There were other cases to be treated to be sure, and my wife's was categorized as a "class 4" when she came in, so... tough luck.

Such is the beauty of a public health care system. :rolleyes:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DonJ

.......It doesn't matter if you're in a car parts store or Wal-Mart (they're the worst) or the local grocery mart, I always get stuck in the wrong, slowest line available...

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In the vein of Murphy's Law:

Etorre's Observation:

The other line moves faster.

O'Brien's Variation:
If you change lines, the one you just left will start to move faster than the one you are now in.

The Queue Principal:
The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are in the wrong line.


:p

Taking a "fatalistic" approach to lines in Walmarts, et al, I try to pick a line where the people in front of me appear to be folks I won't mind standing next to for a while. Am trying to teach the wife the sanity of ignoring the small inconveniences in life and focusing on the "larger" issues. You have to pick your battles, and I would rather not expend energy on the inevitable, or merely annoying. Of course, this may be the result of having grown up in Caracas, where queueing is a way of life. Have patience, you'll live longer. :p

In a few of the larger stores like Loews and Home Depot they now have self check outs. I refuse to use them, as they invariably screw up and the one lone store attendant that watches up to 6 stations is too busy cleaning his / her fingernails to come over and whack the machine for me. Everytime I give it a much deserved smack, they get real agitated about it.