Hey guys. Hoping this actually works. Elody and I are on a train, you can probably hear that noise. We’re heading to London now to do our show marathon and then start the trail home. I wanted to have a little bit of a Sam’s rant today. See, I was out and about in Edinburgh yesterday, and it’s not the first time I’ve experienced this, so figure it’s okay to rant about it. I was wearing black pants, black sneakers, a burgundy T-shirt, black jumper, long jacket. Had a little bit of lippy on, had done my hair, but then it rained really badly, so my hair had gon… Virtually every shop I went into, apart from the whiskey shop, I was completely ignored.
One shop in particular struck me. It was a two level shop and I picked up a few things, was looking at them because I had an hour to kill by myself. And I reckon I could have… And there were shop assistants there. I think the only way I would’ve got attention would be to have tried to steal something, which mind you, my mother actually did many, many years ago in Harvey Norman. She couldn’t get any attention so she picked up a lamp off a coffee table and started walking out the shop. And then this guy came running up to her at the entrance to the shops saying, excuse me madam, excuse me madam, what are you doing with this lamp? And she said, nothing, I just want your attention, I’d like to buy it something.
So what got me thinking was this happens all the time. You know when you’re at a counter, a deli counter, or a take-away counter and you can literally be the next… Or bar and you can literally be the next person in line and you’re, am I wearing… Did Harry Potter come over and I’ve got the invisibility cloak? Why ami being ignored? There are all these people around me getting served before me. And I used to think when I was a lot heavier, when I was topping the scales at 135 kilos, I thought it was because it was fat lady syndrome and no one wanted to talk to me because I was obese.
As I’ve gone through various phases, dress styles and how I have my hair or my makeup or whatever, I’ve justified it going, oh well maybe I don’t look like I could afford anything in the shop, or maybe I… Excuses, excuses, excuses. And I’m calling bullshit on all those excuses. It’s just rude. It’s just bad customer service. It takes virtually no effort whatsoever when you’re in a shop, and I’ve managed retail shops and I’ve worked in restaurants and I’ve worked in cafes, so I did know what I’m talking about. It takes no effort whatsoever to just acknowledge someone. Say hi, or, I’ll be with you in a second. Anything. To look them in the eye and make eye contact. To know that they are seen. That they have come into your presence, into your space and they are important to you.
It really kicked me yesterday. I got upset. I was, here I am in this beautiful city. I did really like Edinburgh and the only thing I managed to buy yesterday was some Mac make-up, I needed to replace. My favorite lippie was in stock, yay. And some whiskey. That was it. But I walked into lots of shops and was completely ignored. I get grumpy pants about it I’ve got to say. It brought up all this stuff for me about having… This happens so regularly to so many people everywhere in the world, whether it’s as I said, whether it’s coffee or shoes, being ignored in those front facing retail restaurant, customer servicey places is really awful and makes you feel like shit.
So if you are in any of those roles… Now we all have bad days and we’ll have stuff that goes on that might make us not the best customer facing person on that particular day. But I challenge you if you’re in any of those roles and this strikes a chord with you and you’re actually, yeah [inaudible 00:04:22] acknowledge a couple of people yesterday.
Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you? I genuinely believe some of the reasons are ageism, sexism, sizes and racism. All those “isms” I think really come up in customer service roles, in those front facing ones. And the other thing is I think the people that have really big cojones and push in and get really, oh, well this… Those attitudes. A lot of the time they get served first and the people that are just placidly standing by get ignored. And that’s not good enough either. So I’m going to get off my Sam’s rant. We will be home in a week, which is so exciting. I think.
Isn’t it exciting Elody?
What?
Is it exciting that we’ll be home in a week?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).
I suppose.
This trip has gone slow and fast, it’s been crazy. But we’re on the homeward stretch and we will return to regular viewing when I get back to Sydney, with a lot more learning stuff. So thank you for putting up with me as I’ve done my lives in random places. As you can see, I’m on a…