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Yet a growing number of shoppers have no time to get smart. Two-income householders have become hooked on convenience. Their expectations of quick, personal service have risen at a time when they are less likely to find it. Result: growing friction between harried workers and hurried customers. Says Irma Reyes, a New York City bank teller: "We try to service customers within three minutes after they walk into the bank, but they expect you to work miracles for them. Some customers get annoyed simply because you ask for identification."
The widespread perception of poor service has reached most corners of the U.S. because some of the worst offenders are national chains. Yet big-city consumers more frequently encounter poor service because some businesses feel they have an abundant supply of customers and thus are not dependent on long- term relationships with the shopper. Says Paul Schervish, a sociology professor at Boston College: "The situation is adversarial in a peculiar way. The seller acts as though the customer's gain is his or her loss and not mutually beneficial." In small towns with a more limited pool of shoppers, by comparison, buyer and seller have a long-term expectation of encountering each other again.
The simple reason that service workers have so little attention to give is that businesses often overwork them to save labor costs and keep prices low. Flight attendants, for example, once had time to chat with their passengers, but now their work is so speeded up that they can barely make sure all seat backs and tray tables are in their upright positions. If today's jumbo jets were staffed at the levels of a decade ago, an airline-union official says, the planes would carry 20 flight attendants instead of twelve to 14.
Service workers who handle customers over the telephone have been speeded up most of all. Any consumer who regularly talks to rental-car reservations clerks or mail-order takers probably feels the rush. Reason: computers monitor the workers' calls to measure performance. If a phone operator spends too much time with one customer, it spoils his or her average and standing on the job. Operators have been known to fake a disconnection when customers ask questions that are too complicated. Observes Harley Shaiken, professor of work and technology at the University of California at San Diego: "These assembly-line methods increase profits by boosting productivity, but there is a long-term hidden cost -- the decline in service."
The heyday of personal service probably came early in the postwar era, when labor was relatively cheap and prices were fairly stable. Businesses could afford to lavish attention on customers, who in turn shopped for the most personable service. Music stores, for example, provided record players so that customers could give disks a spin before buying them, and drugstores offered free delivery. But during the decade of rampant inflation in the 1970s, when prices rose 87%, consumers became willing to give up service in return for the lowest possible price tag. They began buying in bulk, bagging their own groceries and shopping in warehouse-like mega-stores.