It was a slightly scrappy day. In the middle of the morning we had a power cut, which knocked out the tills and the credit card machines. The manager, the gardener and my young colleague rushed about looking at fuse boxes and starting to dig out the emergency generator, while I waited at the till as two sets of customers advanced on me. The man who runs the cafe was stuck as well, with no cappuccino machine, microwave or toaster, and stood behind his counter looking rather nonplussed.
The first pair of customers wanted to buy over eighty pounds worth of bamboos, for which they expected to pay by card. I explained that I could take all of their card details, guard them very carefully, and put the transaction through later when we had power, and that regrettably that was all I could do, unless they happened to have the cash. They agreed to do that, though I'm not sure they were thrilled about it. It's a nice dilemma when the system breaks down, leaving the customers about as uneasy at leaving their card details with a stranger as the retailer is about seeing a trolley load of goods go out of the door without (at that moment) payment. The next customer also wanted to use a card, and was fully prepared for remote credit card transactions, having one that she only used for gardening, with a deliberately low credit limit so that if her details did go astray the thieves couldn't spend much.
The power loss was limited to the shop, and by dint of switching everything off, resetting the fusebox and switching things back on again one at a time, they narrowed the problem down to a particular socket in the cafe. We had wondered whether the fault lay with the chiller cabinet, which does sound as though it is labouring awfully hard when the compressor comes on. Once I was sure they'd stopped messing about testing things, and that the electricity ought to stay on I processed the two credit card transactions. They both worked. I thought they would, but you never know.
The phone rang, and it was somebody wanting to know whether we had a Sapium japonicum in stock. I checked in the place where I thought it probably would be if we had, and then in a couple of other places where it might possibly have been, and drew a blank. Then he wanted to know whether we had Fraxinus sieboldii and I hunted about, but we didn't have any of those either. He complained that he had contacted us previously about plants that we listed but didn't have in stock, and that it was misleading of us to have such a big fat catalogue, and we shouldn't claim to sell them if we didn't. I apologised and promised to pass his feedback on to the owners. He ran through his list of complaints again, and I apologised again and promised to relay his comments to management. He began to go through his list of our deficiencies for a third time, comparing us unfavourably to other nurseries and grumbling that we didn't call him back when we couldn't get plants, and I lost patience with him. He knew that he was speaking to an underling and not part of management. I had been polite, and sympathetic, and apologetic, and promised to pass his comments on the relevant people. Ceasing to be polite or sympathetic and employing the Today Programme's politicians' trick of talking over the person who is talking to you, I told him that I had taken his comments on board and had already promised to pass them on to the right people.
When the manager got back from lunch I thought I had better confess that I'd been rude to a customer, though strictly speaking I suppose he is not a customer if we never have any of the plants he is trying to buy, and that the manager had better call him to say when the Sapium might be available and why we hadn't supplied any of the other plants, though be warned that he was a truly horrible man. The manager went to make the call and came back saying that I was right, he was an appalling individual, but the good news was he wanted all his outstanding orders cancelled, so I could have the pleasure of crossing him off the list. Shop assistants should not be rude to customers, but equally when you are complaining about a service there is no point in bawling out junior people who were not involved in whatever it was that has gone wrong, and have no power to change the way the firm does business. You need to direct your complaints to the appropriate level of the organisation. Smile, take a deep breath, acknowledge that it isn't their fault personally and then explain what went wrong. Clearly. Once only.
Later on I called somebody who had been waiting for a particular Daphne since March, since we still couldn't get that species but had a possible substitute. He'd found the Daphne elsewhere, but wanted some shade loving plants, so we had a nice chat about those and he said he would come over and take a look. I then called someone who was looking for a crab apple that had just come in, though I remembered from our previous conversation (this time last year) that she lived in Norfolk. The crab was too big to post, and although it would fit in a car she can't drive this far, so unless she can think of a friend or acquaintance who is coming this way and would collect it for her she will have to forego it. Last time she hired a man with a truck, but that is prohibitively expensive for one tree. She was happy to be remembered after so long, and my faith in human nature was partially restored.
The power cut had its last laugh in the middle of the afternoon, having disrupted the timers for the automatic irrigation, which suddenly came on in one of the tunnels. Luckily nobody was in there at the time.
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