Service

 First published in Column 8 on the 20^th of November, 1991

 Whoops! Even cautious columnists occasionally come a cropper.

After last week’s column I was bluntly reminded that the Presbyterians meeting together in Invercargill were not the Synod but the General Assembly. It was rather like calling the Government a regional council.

To change the subject. You’d think in these days of precarious employment, and businesses being on a knife edge, that anyone who wanted to survive the recession would consider pleasing the customer their top priority.

I’m a bit hot on this subject at the moment, because I’m reading A Passion for Excellence. This book repeats an age-old message in various disguises on every page – ‘the customer is always right.’

The matter isn’t so much that the customer is always right, but more that if we don’t see service to the customer as absolutely essential, we don’t see anything.

(Hands up all those who remember a time when there were creatures called Public Servants? Ten points to anyone who was actually served by them.)

Lots of businesses in Dunedin, and round the country, haven’t yet got this matter of service right. Service isn’t an American approach to business, it’s an approach that keeps you in business. In fact it’s the only approach.

On Friday evenings, if I haven’t had the energy in the morning to prepare something for my tea break, I go out for a meal.

My usual eatery has been one where the salad servings are so abundant they drop off the edge of the plate. I love their food, and their garlic dressing, but I never feel as though I’m very welcome there. (I’m not welcome at home either, after the garlic.) Perhaps I’m not a regular enough customer for them.

I’ve recently tried another café where the owner goes out of his way to find something quick and filling – and economical – and where he takes time to treat you as a person. Service in its best sense, in other words.

One evening, however, I tried a place where I won’t be going again. Service was definitely not on the menu.

Though there was no queue to think of – only two ladies waiting in front of me – it took five minutes to be acknowledged. The hold up? No potatoes in the Bain Marie. The young man serving was undecided whether to say potatoes were off, love, or to call his superior.

He did the latter. His superior was a girl in her twenties. She wasn’t very impressed at having to deal with the problem. She went out the back, and eventually returned with a potato that had been on a diet.

Then she turned her attention to me. Though I’d had ample time to read – and understand – the menu, she didn’t think I knew what I wanted. She tried to give me what she thought I’d asked for, implying I wasn’t quite with it.

The helping ultimately consisted of two fatty slices of ham on two bits of beef sharing the plate with three skimpy servings of salad. If you don’t get service to your customer right, at least give them decent helpings.

The lettuce was elderly, and sour; the beetroot slivers were tasteless, which was just as well since they were companions to two strawberries. The saddest part about it all was that this particular restaurant isn’t just geared to serving local yokels like me; it’s targeted towards tourists.

An episode like this is enough to put customers off for a considerable time. As the authors of A Passion for Excellence note, dissatisfied customers don’t go home and sulk alone. They warn all their friends.

 

A cafe in France - not the one I went to!
courtesy Velvet

Somewhat ironically, almost twenty years later I wound up working with the Presbyterians, which considerably improved my knowledge of who was who and what was what.

Political Words

This column was first published in Column 8, on the 13^th November, 1991

At the Presbyterian Synod in Invercargill the hierarchy voted to change the name of their church to Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand.

That was no great surprise, since certain leaders in this denomination have long been pushing for change.

However, this decision was made in opposition to what many of the people in their churches think. There’s a curious arrogance about some of the leadership here. Knowing that the majority of the people at the grassroots level didn’t want they change, they still went ahead with it.

I guess these ministers are just following in the footsteps of their namesakes in Wellington: Beehive ministers also have a tendency to ride roughshod over what the people think.

That’s the end of the name-changing matter. I feel about laughing when I read that the Presbyterian Moderator said his church now had to find a way to deal with the problem created by their name change. What problem? The fact that most members don’t support the new name.

It’s a bit like me saying to one of my kids: I know your name is George, and I know you’re quite happy being called George, but I’m going to call you Gordon from now on. I think I’d have to find a way to dela with the problem of George’s objections too.

There’s too much political mucking about with the language. By that I don’t mean it necessarily has anything to do with the Government, although they’re one of the most frequent culprits.

All manner of tautological circumlocutions arise through transient ideological worldviews (Wow!). In other words, people’s politics incite them to muddle about with the language. The language becomes a potent tool for their viewpoint, right or wrong. Shades of Marx and Mao Tse Tung.

Language doesn’t need the help of well-meaning individuals pronouncing debunkings of supposedly offensive words. (Did you know that Blacks in the US are now to be called African Americans?)

I could get myself into an awful lot of trouble here if I had a go at some of the more nonsensical excesses thrust upon us, so I’ll stick to some lesser hot potatoes.

My wife received a form in the post regarding The Card – the one that can’t make up its mind what it’s going to be called. The accompanying letter talked about partners being ‘someone with whom you are living in a relationship in the nature of marriage.’

These official forms no longer state husband or wife, or even spouse. The thing that makes me sick is that the bureaucrats are kow-towing to people who haven’t ever bothered to make the commitment of getting married.

Married people don’t have a choice about what they’re called – married or de facto we’re all lumped together as partners.

I cross out that dismal word on any such forms and put in what I am: Husband. ‘Partner’ implies a debasement of marriage.

I see it’s now being used in some magazines to mean any person with whom you may be living – males with males and females with females. Why do we have to have a blanket word for so many different relationships? If the ancient Hebrews could have four different words for the humble locust, why are humans impersonalised under one word – partners?

To finish up, though de-sexed words are now a bit of a dead issue, there is one that still niggles – actor for actress. For example, I do a double take when I read that ‘an actor called Meryl Streep played The French Lieutenant’s Woman.’  The use of actor in this instance clunks up the sense, and the sentence.

Meryl Streep is anything but masculine.

Let’s hope television doesn’t do a repeat of The Waltons. Confusion will have a field day when we read that Mrs Walton is played by the actor Michael Learned.

'Actor' Meryl Streep

I don’t now remember which ‘Card’ I was talking about. It’s probably long been surpassed by something else.

 There were also some letters about this Column.

 

20.11.91

Sir, When your columnist, Mike Crowl, has stopped falling about laughing (Midweek 13.11.91), he may like to make a resolve to check his facts in future and make sure he knows what he’s writing about. There was no Presbyterian Synod meeting in Invercargill; there is no hierarchy in the Presbyterian Church; the vote to change the name of the church was not made by ministers.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met in Invercargill at which a decision was made by over 400 people, half of them lay people. Those people are appointed as commissioners, which means that they are not representative of other people’s opinions, but are trusted to vote responsibly out of their own convictions. I believe they did just that.

Mike Crowl claims that ‘there’s too much political mucking about with language.’ I claim that there is also too much mischief caused by journalists who can’t cope with language or with the need to check their sources. I think an apology is due.

Rev Neil Churcher

[Neil Churcher, whom I knew a little, has long passed away, and gone to a place where there is no voting, and where opinions are a different kettle of fish to those of the earthly variety. Yes, I got some names wrong, but the argument about using ‘Aotearoa’ with official names and as a name of the country continues on. The media in particular pushes ‘Aotearoa’ as the name of the country, when the majority of the people call it New Zealand.]

 

24.11.91

Sir, Mike Crowl has missed the point again. calling an actor an actor is emphasising the work a person does, not talking about whether they are a mummy or a daddy. Words like actress, tigress, usherette, etc carry connotations of less than or a smaller version of the original. Just plain boring old sexism once more. Yawn.

My Partner and I

[Whoever this writer was makes an odd claim that the female words carried connotations of ‘less than or smaller.’ I think this would be news to most people: usherettes and actresses aren’t noticeably smaller than ushers and actors; like all other humans, they vary in size. The words just help us to know what we’re talking about. And that’s surely more helpful than causing confusion. The following letter writer agreed.]

 

1.12.91

Sir, The latest fetish of changing perfectly acceptable and pleasant-sounding words such as ‘actress’ into ‘actor’ is a ridiculous innovation and I, for one, see red whenever I come across the stupidity. Contrary to the assertion of ‘My Partner and I,’ that a feminine ending designates [sic; I think it should be ‘denigrates’] the female person, this is sheer ignorance or else is a sign of a very bad inferiority complex. In my own understanding all the great actresses of our day share equal respect and applause as the male actors, if not more.

What is wrong with ‘lioness’ or the feminine version of any other animal. Plenty more are used and in many areas are practically important. What on earth is ‘demeaning’ about the feminisation of names?

I advise ‘My Partner and I’ never to go to France, where all nouns as well as living things are either masculine or feminine. To carry the idea to its absurd extremes, my name is Josephine. Should I sign myself Joseph?

J.L.

 

1.12.91

Sir, I am a female of the species and, unlike ‘My Partner and I’ (November 24), think it is a good idea to differentiate between male and female by title, instead of lumping everyone into a sort of genderless mishmash, as seems to be the boring trend these days.

It is often not only interesting but also important to know who is what. I would definitely want to know whether I was meeting a tiger, tigress (or tigrette?). It would also seem that, for some strange reason, anybody chairing a meeting must be sexless.

Pirouette.