Customer Service

       Customer Service.  Oxymoron?  The thing that is not?  The trigger for a snigger?

     Whenever I have to deal with customer service, I can’t help thinking of an episode from Grapes of Wrath.  I have had a few times to call customer service lately.

     In the novel, as the “Okies” travelled the road from Oklahoma to California, they found it necessary to stop, for groceries, to camp, and for gas.  Many of the gas stations had signs advertising themselves as “Service Stations.”  As their journey began, whenever they bought gas, they could use the restroom, fill the radiator with water and the tires with air as part of the service.  In many cases, the service attendant would take care of the water and tires.

     When the family ran into a station that charged for air and water, one of the Okies was prompted to tell the attendant a story about a neighbor back “home” in Oklahoma.

      Many of the families had a few head of cattle along with other livestock such as pigs and chickens.  Owning a bull for three or four cows was unnecessary and beyond the reach of many of the families.  It was the custom for  those with small herds to call on neighbors with larger herds who also were able to afford a bull whenever it was time to have a cow bred.

       In the story the traveler told the service station attendant, a young neighbor, Willie, took a heifer over to the neighbors to be “serviced.”   When he and the heifer arrived, the only one home was the bull owner’s teenage daughter.  Willie and the bull owner’s daughter turned the heifer into the pen with the bull. 

     The young gal and Willie perched themselves on the top rail of the fence to watch while the bull and heifer accomplished their business.  Willie tried to keep up his end of the conversation, but as the action picked up in the corral, Willie got fidgety. 

     Finally, unable to restrain himself much longer, he turned to the neighbor gal and said, “Boy, I sure wish I was doing that,” nodding his head toward the bovine couple.

     The young gal replied, “Well, why don ’cha, Willie?  It’s your heifer.”

    The traveler went on to explain the point of his story to the service station attendant.  “Whenever I see that sign ‘Service Station,’ I always wonder who’s getting screwed.”   

 

     I suppose if you follow that trail far enough, you will have to reflect on the concept of “self-service”. 

     Or maybe a close relative of customer service, “customer support.”  In my youth, I remember seeing ads for supports, sometimes called trusses, purported to aid in dealing with a hernia.  And of course, there’s always support hose, an absolute delight wear.

     In our politically correct times, folks are always searching for a nice label for things that are not so nice.  I think of the word “retarded.” 

     In our former community, we had a lot of support for “retarded” citizens.  We had a school called “Trainable Mental Retarded.”  That got shortened to TMR and was eventually renamed for a local family that did so much to bring that institution into existence.  That school went down the drain when the state mandated “inclusion”, which meant all students had to be in the same classroom.   To do otherwise was a form of segregation.

      We also had a “sheltered workshop” for retarded adults.  We had an organization called “Association of Retarded Citizens.”  We still have ARC stores.  Not yet politically incorrect?

     My old neighbor, now gone for 50 years, muttered behind his hand, when mention was made of retarded citizens housed in our neighborhood in group homes, “We used to call them idiots.”

     I thought at the time he was being nasty.  On further reflection, I begin to think he was probably accurate if politically incorrect, a term not yet in use in those days.  Maybe “idiot” was at one time a nice term and not the insult we now consider it.

     I see that following this thread will lead me down a rabbit’s hole.  Along comes the person that says we mustn’t label people.  That will lead us to the war over pronouns.  After all, personal pronouns label us by sex.  Man and woman do the same, as do boy and girl.

     Therefore, I shall quit while I am behind.  A euphemism by any other name should smell as sweet.  (With apologies to Juliet and her pondering on what's in a name.) 

     I only hope that reading all this has been of some service to you.