Today I visited my local Verizon store. My task was to check on a bill, seeing what my options were for reducing costs. I suspect you’ve had a similar task, for which you either volunteered or were drafted, conscripted, and dragooned into performing. And in this instance I experienced serious personal exasperation.

The attendee at the desk took ten minutes to notice me. Then, I was asked if I’d been helped. Hearing my negative reply, the attendent urged me to “check the screen.” I looked up and saw a screen. The attendent followed up with this–“are there any names on the screen?” Yes, I informed him, there are six. “You need to check in and register,” I then heard, “and you’ll be the seventh; then we can serve you.”

Pitiful and pathetic. That is what passes for customer service in far too many of our transactions these days.

I wonder now what this attendee believes is the difference between leadership and management. I wonder what he thinks of accountability, of being held to a standard of something even barely above the miserable. And I wonder what he regards as genuine communication between two people. None of what he or his faceless, soulless, and heartless corporation does now qualifies to address any of these points.

Always ask yourself–am I treating others like people of meaning?