Are You Being Served?

Go ahead. Criticize America. Everyone else does. But at the end of the day, no matter how badly you feel you have been treated in the realm of customer service, rest assured, America does customer service the right way. Surely, on occasion, one will have a bad experience. Of course some companies have better service than others. Sometimes staffing problems or other circumstances occur which cause us to have a bad service experience in America. Naturally, we get frustrated when these things happen. We are tempted to throw our hands up in despair and ask “what is the world coming to.” I am convinced that even when you have had to wait an entire twenty minutes for a happy meal and a double cheeseburger, the pimply faced slacker handing you your fast food, who’s only real interest in working at all is to be able afford to upgrade his wii, has a far better understanding of the concept of customer service than does the foremost British customer service expert.

In America, everyone knows that the consumer is valuable. A happy customer spends money and returns to spend even more money. This notion totally eludes the British. The attitude here is something like this: participation in the services we provide is a privilege that you are very likely unworthy of, however if you attempt to meet our criteria we may be willing to lower ourselves in order to address your neediness.

Now, that may seem a little harsh, but it isn’t, it is how it really is. Take for example our attempt to open a joint bank account. It took us three tries at three different banks. Even though we had the requisite papers—primarily Jim’s original acceptance letter from St. Edmunds and a ‘letter of introduction’ from the administrator of Tyndale House.

At the first bank those documents only afforded us enough status for Jim to have his own ’student’ account. My name could not be included. I was not eligible for an account because I was at the moment unemployed. I assured them I was very soon to be employed, yet they were still unwilling to include me. So I asked them if it would be possible for me to, when I did get a job, deposit my check into Jim’s account. “Oh no,” they replied, “You must have an account to deposit your check.”

I realized we were getting no where, but decided to give it one last try. “OK, so when I get my job, and the company gives me my check, how am I supposed get it cashed?” I asked. The reply came in a subtly condescending tone, I was informed that nearly every company has abandoned the practice of issuing paper checks. “So how do I get paid?” My pitch raised in frustration, I was heading well down the road to an ‘ugly American’ episode. With a look that betrayed both shock at my ignorance and the notion that my concern was unwarranted in light of the fact that I was indeed UNEMPLOYED, the bank associate calmly said, “wages are direct deposited into your account by the employer.” I’m not sure what happened after that. I vaguely remember having a surreal hallucination in which I morphed into Bud Abbott and the bank associate became John Cleese, we engaged in a sort of the British banking version of ‘Whose on First’ I think. When I came to my senses I was standing with Jim outside the bank.

At bank number two they were much nicer. However the story was the same. Since Jim was a student he didn’t qualify for a joint account, and since I didn’t have a job I didn’t qualify for an account at all. This bank associate must have taken the “sensitivity to foreigners” in-service training. She encouraged us to come back when I had a signed employment contract.

We struck gold, so to speak, at the third bank. Our associate there was a middle aged female, probably re-entered the workforce as a rehabilitated homemaker. She was very sympathetic. The story was the same—technically we didn’t qualify for a joint account. With a bit of creative figuring she managed to get us set up. The real difference was that this bank does a great deal of international business, and they have been around enough to know that the rest of the world doesn’t bow to the status mongering that British institutions are so fond of.

Jim recently applied for a small grant from such an institution. The initial response was a letter berating him for requesting consideration, especially since he was past deadline and it explained how on several points he was absolutely not qualified for this particular grant. The final line of the letter explained to him how to proceed if he still wanted to pursue the grant. We are finding that here requests of any kind are only taken seriously after you have been sufficiently humbled for daring to ask in the first place.

The restaurant scene isn’t much better. Jim and I are amazed at how difficult it is to get people to take our money. When you walk into a restaurant the first response by the wait staff is to ignore you. Their lives would be much less complicated without having to deal with customers, so they want to give you the opportunity to change your mind and leave before making the commitment of being seated. This tactic works, we have indeed left restaurants during this interval. Once you have their attention, the next move is to try to dissuade you from staying by pointing out that they are either under-staffed or that the facility is over crowded.

The final effort to get you to leave comes after you are seated when the wait-person seeks a technicality or a personal disqualifier to keep from serving you. The other night we went for a walk to celebrate a grant Jim received from a British institution. It was 9:30 at night, and most restaurants were closed, but we decided just to have a dessert in celebration. We ended up at a small, but somewhat ‘posh’ pizza place. We rebuffed the first two efforts to get us to leave and were finally seated. When the waitress came to take our order we told her we just wanted dessert. She looked at us as though we had requested a roasted hedgehog. After she took a moment to mentally process our bizarre request she said “I’m afraid we are only seating for dinner now.” At that point I had to suppress the rebellious urge to lick the salt shaker or scratch my armpit with a fork, but Jim and I were becoming aware of the game, and we didn’t budge, we just stared back at her. Once she realized we weren’t moving toward the door, she said, “…let me check.” And she went off to seek permission for us to stay. The dessert was lovely, it cost about the same as a meal would back home, but the important thing is that we won.

It is no accident that our best dinning out experience so far was at KFC. In case you have forgotten, that’s KENTUCKY Fried Chicken, an Appalachian American institution! They do customer service right!

West Virginia

This is what West Virginia looks like, at least the part we call home. Most of these pictures are from my aunt's farm in Clay County. A few pictures are from Tea Creek Camp Ground in Pocahontas County.

Roots and Gravy

Face it fellow Appalachians, our roots are here in the U.K.. I see it all the time. My own maiden name is Elswick, you don’t get any more Anglo-Saxon than that. When walking down the streets of Cambridge you can hear the Scottish and Irish music ringing out by the street performers, and it reminds me of home. So for all the differences in our cultures there are similarities as well. I am sure this is a great deal more comfort to me than to my British friends.

One British trait that I see in the generation of my Appalachian grandparents is the ‘stiff upper lip’ thing. OK, so it is a stereo type, but stereo types usually exist for a reason. The idea is that feelings are private, and that letting someone know what you really think gives them an advantage they don’t deserve. Play all things close to the vest. Be observant, but don’t ask too many questions. Be proud quietly, don’t brag. And by all means, if you are hurting, suck it in, buck up, and keep going. In my observation this is still very much the way of life for proper English folks, but it has been loosing ground fast in America in my parents generation and has only gotten worse with my generation on down.

It must be very disconcerting for people here that we Americans constantly bleed our emotions all over everyone. We lay it all out on the table, our joys and sorrows, our victories and defeats and angst. And talk, talk, talk, talk, talk….Brashness and unbridled enthusiasm are viewed as unseemly. I have tried to be sensitive to this notion, but it is a challenge. My grandparents, while they both sported a great sense of humor, held very a very similar attitude. There is a certain type of nobility there that is worth aspiring to.

All seriousness aside, another important link between the Britain and Appalachia is pork products. Rarely have two cultures had such a mutual affinity for sausage, bacon, lard and pan drippings. This must indeed be a direct link to our roots. Gravy is the child of this affinity. In Appalachia the gravy tends to be milk based, with flour and bacon drippings, and here is it stock based. We like ours over buttermilk biscuits, and they prefer to pour theirs over meat and vegetables and bake it in a pie, but the principle is the same: waste not, want not and don’t let that tasty stuff in the bottom of the pan get away.

Recently I have begun substitute teaching here in and around Cambridge. If I want to get a big reaction out of the kids all I have to say is that I love to eat ‘biscuits and gravy.’ Here biscuits are cookies. You can’t find anything to equal our good old buttermilk biscuits here, the closest thing they have is cheese scones. I tell the children our biscuits are like dinner rolls, but more like cheese scones without the cheese. The description doesn’t do the real thing justice, but it is as close as I can get.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Jim and I, both with Appalachian roots, went off to college and found ourselves among the “Intelligentsia.” We were the intellectuals, the deep thinkers, the chess players and poets. So with all our deep thinking and so forth we didn’t consider our genes. It doesn’t matter how intellectual you think you are, eventually your genetics will catch up with you.

This happened to us after Jim got his master’s degree and we moved to Oklahoma, rather gradually. First, we bought a pick-up truck—because with all our moving we really needed it. Then my child hood interest in fishing returned. No problem, lots of intelligent women like to fish, right? Then my dad gave us a .22 pistol, and a shot gun—lots of wild critters in Oklahoma, you never know when you might need it. However it was the night Jim and I were driving around in our night clothes, in our pick-up truck spotlighting and shooting skunks that I realized our genetics had finally caught up with us. I knew then that our intellectual days were over.

Over the next decade I became at peace with who I am. What ever intellectual leanings I had were tempered by the knowledge that I am essentially at heart: an Appalachian-American and proud of it. I have been able to strike a balance. I can play chess, write poem and have deep conversations and still grow a vegetable garden, skin a deer, and go fishing.

But in spite being adaptable in many ways I am very 'out of place' here in Cambridge. It doesn't bother me though because it really is a privilege to be here and I find it so amusing. Thursday night we had dinner at St. Edmunds Formal Hall. To make a long story short, all the students at Cambridge University have to belong to an individual 'college' Jim's 'college' is St. Edmund's. Anyway, here at this end of term formal dinner, all of the students were wearing their "Gown's" (they kind of look like creepy wizard robes) and all of the guests were wearing formal dresses, (present company included), it was very fancy. When we walked into the dining hall and the steward couldn’t find our name on the seating list. I took a look at the seating chart and realized they had placed us at the head table right beside the Master and His wife ('The Master' is like the president of St. Edmund's). The reason we couldn't find our names was that no one would have dreamed of us being put there! What a hoot! It was quite the honor, but totally wasted on us! You just know there was some snooty student out there saying 'why am I here at this crummy table, I should be sitting beside the Master.' And there we were not really sure which fork to use when. The whole dinner was chalked full of ceremony with gongs ringing, there were half dozen pieces of silverware at each place setting, and four glasses, three of them for wine (Jim and I just used the water glass...). By mimicking the natives we managed to represent our primitive race well. We were charming and proper, but the joke really is on them, they had a couple of hillbillies at the head table, shhhh, don't tell them, just enjoy the moment!