Interesting observation vis-a-vis customer service: A lot of other cultures observe ours and draw the conclusion that American consumers are essentially spoiled brats who can’t brook disappointment but feel they are always entitled to get their way. I’ve decided, though, that most American consumers can handle disappointment just fine–just not at the first level. In other words, if their complaint or suggestion goes farther than just the first person in the store they approach about it, they’ll be satisfied to a degree whether their issue is properly resolved or not. <\/p>\n
An example: I went to the Y late today, around 7:30, to work out and to turn in my registration for an upcoming 5K. It was the last day to turn in registration without getting slapped with a late fee, and I thought I was in the green. However, upon approaching the front desk, I was informed that the member service desk had closed at 6 p.m., at which time they had stopped taking registration forms. I pleaded my case to the attendant at the desk and was stonewalled; there was absolutely nothing she could do. I mentioned that nowhere on the form had it said that it had to be turned in by 6–November 25 was the only thing mentioned. “I’m sorry sir, nothing I can do, not my fault,” yadda yadda… At that point I turned around to investigate the member service desk and saw two people sitting behind the counter. I walked over to them, and through a few explanations and some persuasion, got them to waive the late fee and agree that I could just bring my form in the next morning when the desk was officially open.<\/p>\n
Thinking back on the event, even if I had gotten turned away at the member service desk, I would have felt better about the situation knowing that I had exhausted at least more than one option in terms of pleading my case. I see this at the grocery store all the time. People will ask me if we have a particular item, and even if they’re ultimately disappointed, they’re happy that I take their issue to the next level up–the customer service clerks–instead of immediately turning them down or issuing a patent response. I think this is a pretty universal attitude. People like to feel empowered.<\/p>\n
After resolving the 5K registration issue, I hit the weights for a little bit. The evening of the Friday after Thanksgiving is officially the best time to go to the gym. The weight room was completely empty and it was nice to have everything totally to myself. I felt a bit as if I had just come into a hefty chunk of money and had splurged and built my own private gymnasium annex onto the house. Although, truth be told, I would have had different music. Justin Timberlake, Rob Thomas and Nickelback don’t exactly fire me up.<\/p>\n
The weight room is unfair to tall people. We’re at a disadvantage on just about every exercise. How, you ask? Leverage. Longer limbs mean farther to push\/pull the weight for a given rep and also means the weight, or load (for you physics fogies) is farther from the joint (or fulcrum), requiring greater force to move. Not only that, but we just need more material, period, to bulk up to the same degree as shorter folks on account of the longer distances between limbs. I see a short person on the bench press, moving the weight the extent of his arms’ travel (all of 12 inches) and think, “It’s so not fair,” as I climb on the same bench and have to press the weight two feet because of my freakishly long arms.<\/p>\n
Being slim, on the other hand, is a decided advantage, especially for the types of exercises I favor–more body weight resistance ones, or calisthenics. My reasoning is that it’s good to be able to move a lot of weight, period, but being able to move weight in relation to one’s own body mass is advantageous for all kinds of athletic pursuits, not to mention agility and flexibility. So in terms of exercises like chin-ups and dips, where I am disadvantaged by tallness, I have the advantage of lightness (relatively speaking) and things even out. That’s what I tell myself, at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interesting observation vis-a-vis customer service: A lot of other cultures observe ours and draw the conclusion that American consumers are essentially spoiled brats who can’t brook disappointment but feel they are always entitled to get their way. I’ve decided, though, that most American consumers can handle disappointment just fine–just not at the first level. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}