Friday. A time to tie up loose ends with the home business and get ready for the weekend. And you can't begin the weekend with out checking this out:

It's Friday night & time for Virtual Girls Night out! Yee-haw! I just love reading all the other blogs out there!

Lately, Friday's just haven't been working for me. So everyone, hopefully I'll be there - or I'll be Square. Talk about dating myself :-)

Anyway, click the button above, go to Ann's site and add your link. Go back tonight and take a look at all the blogs listed It's really very fun.

Do not dare to leave this site with out having a drink with me & reading my post. Below is a drink that I used to start my night out with. It's called a Stinger and it is Good with a capital G!

I would have one of those, get a buzz going on, and start in on the beer. Ok, that was WAY back when I was more of a drinker and way younger. Now a stinger may very knock me on my butt and put me out for the count.

I'm toying with the idea of getting the ingredients and making one tonight. But being I would have enough booze for more than one, that would be a waste....

...unless I started EVERY VGNO with a Stinger!

Yeah, right! Anyway, it's easy to make:

Stinger

Ingredients:

1 3/4 oz brandy
3/4 oz creme de menthe, white


Preparation:

Pour the ingredients into a fancy glass (hey, we're ladies here and it IS a party, right?) with crushed ice. Stir well.

Drink...slowly please, or you won't be with us for the party!

I thought it would be fun to talk about "Customer Service" or rather lack of Customer Service . I thought I wrote a blog post about this a few weeks ago, but darned if I see it. Maybe I commented on another blog about it.

I know I have been victim of bad customer service at least 3 times in the past few weeks. If you want to count the number of times a cashier didn't even look at me or say boo, well...I lost count.

A few weeks ago, I was out & about putting out flyers. I was in a small town about 15 mi from home. I had to be somewhere in a little while- I think to pick up my son from work, about 1/2 hr away. I figure I have a few minutes to stop at the little homeotwn market there. They have great meat and fruit and there are always have specials going on. And they have a bulletin board for my flyers!!!

Anyhoo...I fill my cart with all kinds of goodies. When I get up to the counter I hear the cashier tell the woman ahead of me that the credit machine was down . They could only take cash or checks.

My heart drops .. S*#T! I had neither with me. Only a card. I was going to the bank LATER, but had no cash now. I'm like searching my purse, maybe I stuck a $50 bill somewhere and forgot???? Maybe some bills fell off a money tree as I passed?

Apparently not. Nothing. Maybe some change. That's it.

Another employee /the owner??? sees me standing there, dazed and confused. He comes over and asks what's going on. The lady explains the situation.

I flippantly said, " I guess I'll have to put everything back."

The guy kind of shrugs and mumbles something and walks away. I wait a sec in case he said something like, " Oh no, ma'am I'll take care putting that stuff back. I'm soooo sorry for the inconvenience"

OR

" Come on over here ma'am. If you don't mind, I can call in your card information. If it's approved, we'll get you on your way. I'm sooo sorry for the inconvenience."

I wait..

The guy is over fooling around with a display...

I wait..

The guy never looks my way...I put all the groceries away

I leave, with very little time left. Now I have to shop AGAIN, after I get my son. I'm starving. I stop at McDonalds. I decide to go in instead of the drive-thru. I go to the counter & order Chicken Nuggets (the only thing I can stomach there), fr. fries and a Chocolate Shake (Follower's-just for clarification, that post about joining the YMCA & losing weight was AFTER this).

So back to the subject at hand- Customer service. The people behind the counter were barely friendly. The woman took my order, and I swear this to be totally true....I took about 5 steps or whatever it takes to the counter on the side with the straws and napkins. I grabbed one of each - it took me about 10 seconds, and I hear, "here's your order, ma'am." I'm like looking around. The only other people were some hunky road crew guys with bulking muscles, fantastic tans, curly bleach-blonde hair...oops...got a little lost there.

She was talking to me. Talk about Fast Food! That was maybe 10-12 seconds! Of course, I got in the car, started racing toward my son's work. Grabbed a nugget- it was barely warm. French Fries-yuk! They are delish piping hot- but cold??? I shudder thinking about it! Anyway, I really didn't have time to go back. So I lost out. Another crappy fast food meal. Blah!

Then yesterday, I have a Wally-world incident. The day before, my Bluetooth died. Having become dependent on it, a little piece of me also perished. I felt stifled in my biz. Holding a phone, taking notes and sometimes doing other things all at once, hey.. it freed up a hand. My son had to be to work at 7 a.m. and works almost across the street from a Walmart.

I stroll into the electronics dept at Walmart at around 6: 50 a.m. The bluetooths are right across from the cash register. There's a young fellow there behind the register. He looks at me and barely nods. He puts on a sweatshirt and zips it up.

I start looking at the different models and find what I want (I think) but they are "locked" onto the display. I turn to ask the guy for help. He was gone- vanished without a sound. I stand there for 3-4 minutes, watching the Tv's.

No one...No one....Finally I look for someone. I FINALLY find a guy standing around who looks like I woke him up from a nap. It is posssible, I used to work in a commercial bakery and learned to sleep standing up...and how to "sense" when the boss was coming and to open my eyes and smile at him and wave as he walked by.

So anyway, I ask if he can help me in electronics. He drones, "Maybe." We walk over and I show him what I want. He points out the obvious; that it's locked.

I say, "Do you have the keys?"

"No." says he.

"Oh", I say. " Do you know where the guy is that works here?"

"They are on shift change. Someone should be here in a couple of minutes."

A couple of minutes? It has to have been 10 or 15 minutes already.

I calculate in my head where the closet Radio Shack or Kmart or something is. Everything is quite a ways from that particular hick town, so I decided to wait it out.

Finally a girl shows up, clearly not happy to be there so early in the morning. I get my blue tooth and left feeling like crap. I hate shopping, but every now & then it's ok because I got got great customer service- a smile, a little joke, a whatever.

For a funny poem on grocery shopping read my post Grocery Store Madness

When I am doing my home biz, I put a smile on my face even if I'm on the phone. I try to go the extra mile. If I have a new member that needs help scheduling a first appointment, I'll 3 way call them in to a provider and get that set up. That is not part of my job. My job is to enroll them. But I go that extra mile. I believe it's just good customer. That member will most likely refer me to a friend who needs a good dental or health plan. A few extra minutes, a few extra members.

Same thing with a new business partner. Of course I will help them with training, learning to advertise, provide some free leads, etc...like any leader would. But I have often gone the extra mile there as well.

I have often had new broker's who barely knew how to use email much less copying & pasting text, saving folders and more. I have taken time to do a little "over the phone" computer training to those whom I felt were future "stars." I would hate to see anyone quit on their dreams because they were frustrated with something that I can teach them in a few minutes.

I know this is about customer servcie, but I just happened to remember I had done a previous blog post called The extra mile. I went back and read it- I like it! Sometimes I go back to things like that & want to change it. But I think I like it that way. And I just sort of whipped it up one night.

Anyway, leave me a comment. Have you had a bad cusomer service experience? Link to it in your comment or tell us about it! How about The extra mile? Any thoughts?

Bye see ya' all later!

P.S. Oh, yeah, don't forget to go to my OTHER Blog, Bloggers Connect to for links to some great prizes being given by our fellow blog-buddies.

I'm giving away this book:

Just click here to enter for a chance to win a copy.