Moaning Minnie on Monday

I hate complaining; it does no one any good, does it?  But sometimes I am so disappointed that the only way to process my feelings is to vent my frustration. Today I see red because of how Daly Bread treated me.

On Friday, as is customary, I ordered Almond Croissants from Daly Bread in Worcester telephonically. There is no denying that they are the best, and I will put up with almost any poor service to lay my hands on a bag of those delicious, flaky morsels.   With full knowledge of the delivery circumstances (this is not my first rodeo), I enquired about a convenient pickup time. We know the rules.  It was agreed that eleven would be fine.   Butch left a busy schedule and trotted over. No croissants. He phoned at 12h00. No croissants.

What’s more, no one had an inkling of a delivery time. The assistant just shrugged and grimaced. With that in hand, arrangements were made, and Butch simply had to wait for a telephone call.  Bear in mind Butch works; he’s busy; he must please his clients, otherwise they go elsewhere. Later, we learned Butch received a call (from an unknown number), to which he responded that he could not take calls.

At 17h00 Butch received another call from an irate barista asking him why he’d not picked up his order.  The barista had no clue about the arrangements and offered no apology.  I expected better communication and accountability from Daly Bread; instead,  I felt dismissed and ignored.

Good business practices don’t seem to matter anymore. If you have a good product, you don’t need to ensure customer satisfaction either.  I am no fool. I know NEVER is a long, long time. I do not shoot myself in the foot either.  I sincerely wish that I didn’t like those Almond croissants so much. 'You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.' Carl Jung. It's frustrating to try for quality service and feel ignored.

We had a house guest, and we really wanted to make his stay as memorable as possible, so off we went to the Fernkloof Saturday market to indulge in a cinnamon-and-sugar pancake, instead of the Almond croissant. The soggy, floppy, leaking pancake was dreadful. I can only sigh.

Next, we set off to the Vodacom shop at the Whale Coast Mall in Hermanus to purchase a SIM card for our friend from Rwanda.  A young schoolboy assisted us.  Must’ve been his first day on the job.  He was clueless.  His father, the manager, or owner, we presumed, was busy with another client and hardly made the effort to look up from his keyboard when his son asked for advice. He was persistent, but Dad was too busy.