Really, really poor customer service
 

Today I had the unfortunate luck to experience the worst customer service I have ever seen.

I stopped to pick up some gas on the way home at a gas station in a small town about 45 minutes away from my farm. I filled up my wife’s Tribeca and 2 Jerry cans. While I was filling the car, I went to the pump on the other side of the island to fill up one of the Jerry cans with premium. I heard the pump click on the car and then thought I heard gas running out.

Sure enough, the nozzle tripped but did not shut off and gas was pouring out like crazy. I got that stopped and got my wife to help fill that Jerry cans with regular. Then the premium pump didn’t print a receipt.

I went into the gas station with my 9 year old son to ask for a receipt and tell them their nozzle needs to be replaced. They told me that I had to clean up the spilled gas... This turned into the 2 idiots working there refusing to issue a receipt (I took a video of this) and then being told to go F..k myself. I asked the guy what he said and videoed him repeat his suggestion that I go F..k myself. As I walked out, he told me to suck his c..k.

Obviously I was in touch with the store owner who initially tried to cover for his staff. Then I sent him the videos and his tune changed. He called the guy who it turns out has Aspergers and the guy quit. This guy is in his 40’s and his mom got involved... Needless to say, he has a few days off to figure this out.

I agreed not to post my videos of the incident and to drop it. The poor guy has been through enough.

What would you have done? I have this charming video of a guy in full uniform at Canada’s gas station telling me to go F..k myself...

Oh and seriously, I did nothing to escalate this. The videos confirmed this.

People are stressed. Good on you for not making it worse.

What HD said. We're all under a bit of pressure. Let it pass.

gee, here down south you'd just have yer lawyer send a demand payment for a full repaint.

Good of you to bite the tongue. No win there.
The station owner should have chipped in something for your troubles though.

First of all, I have a true passion for great customer service. It is like a religion to me.

But if the guy has Asperger Syndrome, then really you can't make a big deal out of it. The guy has a developmental disorder and is basically a handicap guy, and you got to see it first hand. I'm just sorry that the sequence of events was such that it made you have a bad day.

Was your son with you to hear this? If so I would have been hard pressed not to flatten the guy

Yup, Clay got to see (and hear) the whole thing unfold.

I feel bad for the guy but also think that this is an example of making sure you have the right people dealing with Joe Public representing your brand. I showed this to a buddy who is the retail store rep for one of the mega oil companies and he was gobsmacked. This would not fly at one of their franchises.

"Look son, watch me punch a mentally handicapped guy who can't help himself"...nice.

You (OP) are entirely right. But if the guy truly has a developmental disorder, sometimes you just gotta let it go.

^^^^ This....and you taught your son how to handle such a situation too. Make sure he understands the "why"....kudos!

.....and you weren't a local :D

Probably not a good practice to walk away from a running pump. Did that come up in the “discussion”?

About half the pumps around here do the same thing. The people working in the store have very little aptitude for such a thing. Sounds like you did what you could.

Watch for a replacement nozzle on the pump and at the counter. Having a disability isn't a blank check. I understand this as father of a daughter with one.

^^^^ I've done the same as unclebilly....fill my truck up while filling cans just a few feet away on the other side. I will also get back inside the truck if the weather is brutal while a slow pump takes forever. But I watch the unattended hose, and would never just walk away either.

Stuff happens....not his fault imo.

Sounds like you took a reasonable approach. I’m all for offering jobs to everyone willing to work, but it sounds like at a minimum that individual needs to be in a role that doesn’t interact with customers. I’ve never experienced anything like that in a customer service setting. Otherwise I’ve been told many times to go eff myself.:D

Yup. This came up in the discussion.

I pointed out that at every full service gas station, this is exactly what happens and further what happens when you wash your windows and check your oil. I worked at a very busy full serve gas station in high school and it was common to have 3-4 cars on the go at a time. The auto stops are supposed to work and this one didn’t. It clicked but the fuel didn’t stop flowing.

The guy gets a pass this time. The owner sent me a photo of a duplicate receipt. I explained what happened to my son and he gets it.

The world needs more this.

You could have just flipped a match into the gas and drove away like in a movie seen.

And yes I know a match only can light a puddle of gas when its done in a movie. Although I've only read this, never tried it.

Think Zoolander...

And I've never understood the people that put the pump in, then get back into their cars and wait for the pump to shut off... Sometimes it doesn't.

A lit match would absolutely ignite it. It's the lit cigarette butt that would not, as it always does in the movies.

I feel for the guy w the disability if it's legitimate but he should be nowhere near customers if that's the case. I'm going to take a WAG that this was not the first time he had a short-circuit on duty. If he said that to the wrong person down on this side of the border, he might get lead poisoning.

Lastly, I'm in WI. and I love just about everything here including the fuel prices but I've never seen so many malfunctioning pumps in my life! It seems like every diesel pump runs on a little after the click and gives the side of my truck a fuel bath. Even if I man the pump manually, (which I always do now as it gets close to full), it still kicks back a splash when it shuts off! I've never seen this happen in CA., where the pumps are a lot better because of regulation.

They said Asperger not Turrets. It was a poor choice to put someone who has Aspergers into a role working with the public.

Not worth starting a fight. Physically touching your son or wife without permission, that is worth starting a fight.

Hahaha!!

I don't know about that. I would pay someone else to do the open palm forehead slap like George Costanza's dad, on my nephew. It would save me the carpal tunnel.

Gas station attendants work with the low end of society on a regular basis. They sell a lot of cigarettes and tobacco, beer, and lottery tickets to people that can't pay their own rent or utilities. Certainly not all the customers are that way, but a high percentage are. If I have a pump not print the receipt, I just take a photo of the pump with the display of gallons and the total price and I am done. I try hard not to go inside, but I need to pee I certainly go it. I see the same thing from San Diego, California to northern Maine and in the Florida Keys.

It does not matter what part of the country I travel to, the gas station - convenience store always has the same people in it. The plants and wildlife may be very different, but the people are the same.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1590416044.JPG

The cranes in Jupiter, FL were not something I ever see at home. :eek:

I'm assuming that the spill wasn't too bad to be a major hazard. But my experience with observing gas station personnel dealing with emergencies indicates that they aren't well trained in handling them.

I once put out a fire at a gas station with a 2 liter bottle of Orange Crush while the two station attendants looked at each other like Laurel and Hardy. That would not have worked if it had been a puddle of gas, but I expect most stations have automatic fire suppression equipment now.

I don't think I would have dealt with this as well as you have. Well done.

I have a kid with Aspergers. The stuff that kid says is painful. No filter.

Thanks for under-reacting.

There are a couple really nice gas stations in north San Diego, Morgan Hill, Palo Alto, Visalia, Elk Grove, Placentia, etc. I think for the most part they reflect the communities that they are in. Just avoid the bad areas and you should get better service.

I'll try to post a couple photos from my place during the first few months that we were open. We've raised our game since then but I haven't taking any new photos.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1590423041.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1590423041.jpg
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We have some high end gas station & stores around here. One chain has put a lot of older stations out of business, and the other chains have rebuilt store into nicer places. I avoid those giant places because of large crowds. So yea, nicer places can be found if you know your way around.

There is no excuse for a employee to use profanity towards a customer, even if the customer started with it. The employees are used to dealing with the public on a constant basis, and often for just minimum wage. Anyone that has ever delat with the general public will quickly learn the people suck for the most part.

Absolutely no profanity. We probably deal with easily over a hundred thousand people during the course of a year. I would say .5% are potentially violent or reason to remove them from the premises, maybe less.

But rude people? Why, we specialize in catering to those people. They love us because we make sure that we make them happy before they leave. The crowded but nice stores are the ones that go above and beyond. The ghetto ones, not so much.

Did he know he had a handicap at the time? Who the hell hires someone that needs to deal with the public that might have outbursts (not their fault), of utter profanity to a customer?

Society has fallen off the cliff of PC to the detriment any benefits

Here's what you wrote before you erased your own post: "Was your son with you to hear this? If so I would have been hard pressed not to flatten the guy".

You want to call out the "rest of society" for being PC because you wrote that you want to punch out a mentally challenged guy? You did read the OP. You knew, I'm assuming, that you wrote that you would "flatten" the clerk with Asperger's, right?

Totally missed my points...

You could run into unstable people in line at a grocery store. The takeaway, since you can't stick people in a bubble, is to not get so easily offended because you don't know their situation. The easy no-think thing to do is to call everything you don't like "PC". The reality is none of us were there and it's impossible for us to judge the situation accurately.

I can think of two reasons:

1. he was trying to help out a dis-advantaged person

2. he was getting a subsidy to help out a dis-advantaged person

Should this type and level of disorder mean they should not be involved with flammable liquids?

- not to mention a service work role

Finally, if in Alberta I am sure some choice regional Canada comments could be made rather than .. ah... fisticuffs, esp. if one were to invoke the French speaking provinces...

I was plenty furious about the situation. I was in complete disbelief as what was happening hence why I recorded the second half of the discussion.

When I spoke with the franchise owner, he told me that he expected that the individual may have special needs. At that point, I had the same point of view that he shouldn’t be in a public facing role. This being said, apparently this was the first time there has been an issue like this.

The young lady co-worker was the one that fueled the fire and really ought to be taken to task for her actions. She fueled the fire and created this situation.

When the franchise owner called me back several hours later and told me how his interaction with the employee with Asperger Syndrome went down, I decided that he was no longer making excuses... this is a guy who is doing the best he can in a small town where there isn’t a lot of other opportunities.

It never crossed my mind to hit the guy. Having the video of him telling me to F..k myself had the potential to be more of a problem for him. If this were posted on social media, pretty sure he’d have a tough time getting another job.

Given the circumstances that I am now aware of, the video won’t make it onto social media or anywhere else.

You posted some pics of the build last year, didn't you? Nice looking place.

For the best.

You're still going to need some time to mentally unwinds from this.