One day last week I had a lot of free time so I decided to punish myself by going into a Telstra shop in Castle Hill - looking to buy a wireless broadband USB stick.
Modern looking design, nice white benches on the walls with bits of orange and blue. There were lots of service persons servicing many customers. I approached the big reception bench and waited a bit. While I was waiting I curiously had a listen to the chatting between the service persons and their clients. It was mostly about the weather, about dogs and occasionally about news from Lybia - not much about buying a phone or anything Telstra sells.
After about 15 minutes, a nice gentleman came to me and asked for my name. I asked him what for and he nicely replied: "To put your name down on the waiting list, we are very busy and can only arrange an appointment for you - say - in about 2 hours..."
"What? Why the long wait? So your people could chat to these clients about Lybia and what not?"
It turned out they had to chat up because they had to wait for the contract to go through or for the wrong number to disconnect or for the main server to boot up or for blah blah blah ... about 30 mins per client!
I told the nice manager I had to go for a pee and disappeared. I was fuming!
"Why can they not see other clients while the first lot could just sit there and wait for those things to go through?"
On my way to the car park, I reflected upon our service at the medical practice. I felt the frustration my clients go through waiting for us, their GPs.
"We are just as bad ... Are we, really ?"
Then I thought about it a bit more and realised we are not the same sort of service.
I cannot ask a crying lonely woman who just lost her fifth pet turtle to simply sit there and cry on her own for a bit while I run next door to see the screaming child with a sore throat. I cannot tell a man with impending heart attack to calmly meditate in the street waiting for the 000 bus so I can counsel the man who happened to run over a confused turtle.
I admit sometimes I do leave a patient in the room and go to see another in the next room. Like when mother instinct takes over and a woman decides to breast feed her crying baby at the end of 2nd month vaccination. While this is a very amazingly lovely caring natural act, I would look like a dork to just sit there being amazed by it.
Everyday I look for a finale for our waiting room horror show. But so far I got nothin' !
There was a happy ending to my day though.
I drove to Carlingford Telstra shop and got my stick in 5 minutes. There was only one salesperson on duty and she served 4 clients all at once. Maybe she was paid on commission while the Cattle Hill mob got paid by the hour?
PS: The turtle story was fictitious to protect the identity of the distraught woman. (but if you must know ... it was a hamster, ... or was it a kitten? I can't remember).
2 comments:
Love reading your story. You need to speak to that crazy telstra shop. I am sure you are very attentive to all of your patients.Have you thought about doing some casual shifts at Norwest?
I think your theory on the commission is right ! Those who work on hourly would careless of doing more business and give better service so they would get more clients.
I get very frustrated when I got bad service, as I think even with the hourly, they should be happy to have a job, looking at the economy and competitors now a day
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