During my two visits to Colombia I had enjoyed good customer-service at the Carulla supermarket chain, which I judged to be the best chain I have seen in South America.
At the Calle 10 store in Medellín, you normally can get wonderful fresh breads and fresh salmon plus certain products I have been unable to find in three years in Ecuador -- Muenster cheese, Philadelphia-brand cream cheese and Tropicana fruit juices, as examples.
But when things went sideways last night at a checkout counter at Calle 10 sucursal, a glaring instance of sub-par customer-service was revealed.
When I got to checkout counter 2, I noticed that a 70-year-old man at the head of the line was just starting to laboriously empty a filled-to-the-top shopping cart. So I expected things would go slowly.
Surprisingly, the man got checked-out on his items without incident. But when the young ponytailed shopper behind him tried to check out her few items, things spiraled out of control.
It’s unclear what the problems were, but soon a second cashier was at the station .. and then a supervisor joined the cashiers.
They were all staring at a screen and the supervisor -- on and off -- was furiously typing into a permanent keyboard at the checkout counter.
After a while, the cashiers suddenly pulled millions of Colombian pesos in 50,000-peso notes from the cashier drawer. These bills were counted and put in a clear bag. They these millions were taken out and re-counted!
The various delays were not explained. The jovencita in front of me who was ostensibly being checked-out started to make facial expressions as if confused and frustrated.
What disturbed me about the situation was the total lack of attention the Carulla team was paying to those of us who had been patiently waiting in line.
Based on my experience in the U.S. over decades, it seems to me that the supervisor -- or someone -- would mention a reason for the delays .. or apologize for the delays .. or at least say something along the lines of “We’re fixing the situation and we appreciate you folks’ patience.”
But at Carulla we were just taken for granted. No explanation. No apology. No timeline. Not even eye contact.
Finally, as it appeared they were making no real progress at the counter and I judged that the delays would go on indefinitely, I did something I had never done before at a supermarket checkout counter....
Without a word or a gesture and with at least 15 of my items still sitting on the checkout counter waiting to be rung up, I unceremoniously walked right out of the store.
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I will be going back to a Carulla in the next couple of days to buy items such as the ones I abandoned -- I like the selection. But I won’t be going back this time to the Carulla on Calle 10.
cccmedia from Medellín
