Customer service

I was at the store today, trying to find Shake 'N Bake. The clerks recognized the name even though they don't carry anything like it. I'm not sure how that works - do they see too many American ads? How odd to watch advertisements for things you can't actually buy.

While I was shopping a clerk came up to me and said she remembered me asking for American stuff a few days ago. So she told me about the USA Foods store (where my brother-in-law got me the A1 sauce).

When we went to the bank to cash an American check, the teller closed her station just so she could walk us to the front desk and hand us over to our account rep, who opened a new (interest bearing) account to hold the funds. The account rep asked about the baby, even though we'd left her at home with Grandma.

All of this incredibly personal customer service strikes me as so... inefficient. American business practices have been pared to the rational minimum, and trained me to expect it, to the point where it's weird for clerks to remember my name. It feels, and this won't be the last time I say this, like the 80s.

At least there's no disco, though.