The snow may have all melted, and the temperatures are back up in the 50’s (I did the conversion for you), but today’s mission was to go rent Kaitlyn’s skis. She was very excited about this. Of course, any time she enters a retail environment, she’s excited.
I was so proud of myself because I did the whole thing in French. Only one time did the guy have to switch and ask me a question in English when he needed to know her weight. I said what I wanted, gave her height and eventually her size in French. I also stumbled through describing her skiing experience.
Last year’s skis had penguins on them. Today, Kaitlyn went straight to a lovely pink pair with butterflies. She got something pretty generic… that makes her look like she has some idea what she’s doing on the slopes.
What amazed me the most happened when I went to pay. The sales guy asked if I’d rented there before, which I had, so I managed to spell my name and he found us in the computer. Then after some tapping on his calculator to compute our Caterpillar discount, he looked at that number then lowered it a little more. He told me that because I’d rented snowshoes there last winter and had a problem with them (which is true), he took an extra 5 Euros off the price. I couldn’t believe that a note by my name in their computer resulted in anything… especially nearly a year after it was entered. It may only be 5 Euros, but it is enough to make me feel like a loyal customer now.
Wonder what that note said. In the US, the note would make reference to how the customer reacted to vile circumstances, whether they threatened legal action or consumer advocacy tactics, reporting followup via Better Business Bureau, or posting viscious messages on the “Sprint Sucks” website.
In France, it may well have said “lovely lady had a problem before, we should take better care of her next time.”