Customer Service. Has anybody heard of it?

Apparently not the young lady at the store where I bought my groceries today. She talked to her friend the entire time she was scanning my items. Even worse, she would stop scanning items to look her friend in the eyes occasionally (her communications skills far exceed her customer service performance).

The young man at the fast food restaurant I recently visited must have missed out on customer service training as well. As I walked up to the vacated counter to order, he looked up from the deep fryer and said, “Sorry, ain’t my job” (at least he used good manners, although poor grammar).

When someone finally came to take my order, she was talking on her cell phone.  She looked at me and said, “just a second” as she finished up her phone conversation. I guess from the perspective of the person on the other end of the line, she was being considerate.

I could go on and on –and I’m sure you could too. Customer service is hard to come by these days. It certainly is frustrating.

But what is more frustrating is the fact that many folks who are quick to complain about how they are treated at a local business are guilty of treating others the same way.

“When,” you may ask, “does this happen?” Every time someone visits your church. If you’ve ever been the visitor, you know how uncomfortable it is when people who are supposed to be hospitable totally ignore you in order to talk to their friends. Or how hurtful it is when it is obvious that you are alone, but nobody invites you to sit beside him or her. Or, even worse, when right in front of your face, they invite each other’s families to go out to eat after the service without inviting you.

In my opinion, fast food restaurants and grocery stores will eventually get back to teaching their employees about customer service when enough people complain and business suffers.

Unfortunately, however, the church reacts differently. In my experience, when people don’t return after visiting, the church tends to go into denial. Phrases like, “They just didn’t fit in,” or “I guess they are just church-hoppers” shift the blame from ourselves and places it upon them.

While it’s true that every visitor won’t end up joining your congregation, that does not diminish the fact that your church is called to be hospitable and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Otherwise, we are like a waitress who wonders why nobody wants to sit at her table. The same table, by the way, which she never wipes down.