It’s Friday afternoon! Time for our new column about the interesting, absurd and juicy experiences of former New Seasons staffers. As perhaps the only grocery store in the entire world that trains its employees to “say yes” to every customer request, the staff behind the counter have seen their fair share of crazy. Every Friday from now until we run out of ex-staffers, Blogtown will host bizarre and 100 percent unsubstantiated stories from staffers who just couldn’t say no.
This Week’s Installment: Leathery and Delicious. (as told by Agent Mango)
Part of the “say yes” policy is that when you’re in training, they actually give you a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. It’s an actual card that you get so that if you ever fall into trouble with your manager for doing something, you can just give them the card and say, “I was trying to please the customer!”
But sometimes there’s just nothing you can do for people.
This one time I was stocking eggs and this guy came up, he was an older guy, but a pretty normal looking guy, he wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat or anything, he came up to me and was like, “Hey, why don’t you stock snake eggs?” I was like, “What?” and he said, “They’re leathery and delicious. I would eat them.” He came back a couple times to ask on different days. Finally I told him we probably wouldn’t be getting them in. I mean, how do you farm snake eggs? They don’t lay like chickens. I thought it was funny that he thought it was a viable request.
They are leathery because they are old. They don’t get packed within hours of being laid, you find them out in the sun after they’ve been there a week. (If you leave a chicken egg out in the sun for a week it will turn leathery too. I wouldn’t call it delicious, but whatever you are in to.)
The problem with management telling employees to bend over (backwards or otherwise) to serve the customer is that customers will get a WIDE RANGE of care. From very good to very bad. I know, I used to work for a company that did this.
The problem is that as a customer with very little demands, I might be just as impacted by another customer that is getting their trivial-but-lengthy needs met. If my 5 second question is unanswered, I bail.
This hasn’t happened yet.
These stories aren’t as interesting as I’d hoped. Time for a new column?
new seasons can be annoying but I get tired of people trying to dis them, would you rather have no good choices like if you shop at safeway or even Kroger owned Fred m. don’t think so, be grateful for such a store. I lived in LA and other towns recently and it SUCKED because there were no good food options such as New Seasns. and what they offer
Oh no we lost BillandTed! I believe he was about to tell us how wonderful New Seasons is compared the the thousands of choices in markets you get in Los Angeles!
Let’s replace this column with “TriMet Confessions,” featuring late-night tales from anonymous TriMet riders and drivers.