After my last post which was probably one of the most serious ones to date, let’s change it up with something a little lighter.

The other day, I was at the grocery store check-out. Mind you, this was just after I had discovered a little bird flying around and chirping by the produce section in the grocery store.* Yes really. And why yes, of course I took a picture. But I’m digressing …

After the customer who was in line before me paid and left, I was getting ready to pay for my groceries. But instead of saying hello to me or acknowledging my presence in any other way, the check-out clerk decided it would be much nicer to start a conversation with the clerk next to him.

About the conversation he just had with the last customer. Apparently she complained to him about the customer service at another store of the same chain. About how the employees there were so unhelpful.

This store had just been bought by this chain, so while the name has changed, it had kept the same employees. His take on it was that well, “it’s the employees of Bought Out Store, they just don’t know any better.” He said this in such a condescending tone, like he thought that he and his colleagues at this grocery store were so much better.

At some point, he did start scanning my groceries, all the while ignoring me and talking to his colleague about how the other store’s customer service sucks and theirs of course is the best. He did not address me except to tell me the total of my bill.

Well, kiddo, I got news for you. If you completely ignore the customer you are tending to right at this moment, that is the epitome of bad customer service. You really should not be talking about customer service. Because clearly, you don’t have a clue what good customer service is. And you certainly don’t have the right to feel good about how great your customer service is. Because it is not. And to keep going on about it to a colleague while completely ignoring the customer in front of you just makes it even more ridiculous.

Generally, I don’t think this store’s customer service is bad**, but the irony of the situation was just too much. Unfortunately, I was left speechless by the ridiculousness of the situation, and did not say anything.I wish I had, because he certainly would deserve a little reality check that would maybe get him off his high horse.

* I did mention the bird to the customer service desk, where I was told that they already knew about it and that they’d caught it several times but it kept coming into the store through the store-room and that there was nothing they could do about it, because they had to leave the door open. Now, while that little bird was kind of cute, I also think it kind of stops being cute when it starts pooping on food and produce, because, ew. And you cannot tell me this bird goes outside to poop. I don’t know what would be a solution to this, but I kind of feel that the grocery store should make sure the bird doesn’t come back in there.

** Keep in mind that I live in Germany where customer service is not the same as customer service in the US. Any of you used to US customer service would probably find 90% of store employees here rude. It’s not a coincidence that we have this saying, “Servicewüste Deutschland” (this translates as service desert/wasteland Germany). It is not too unusual for a check-out clerk to ‘forget’ saying hello, but usually they do not do this while clearly being so full of themselves about the customer service they and their store provide. I sometimes wish we had better customer service here, especially when some employees act like you are lucky to get to shop at their store rather than considering themselves lucky that you want to leave your money there. But what we don’t have here is when you just want to browse the store by yourself and you are constantly interrupted by store employees trying to help you. That can be a little too much sometimes and it rarely ever happens here.

What is the most ridiculous customer service experience you have made in a store? Do share.

First off, if you read my last post, you know how much I am loving the new library in the economics & social sciences building. It’s so modern, clean, well-lit and quiet, creating an atmosphere that is perfect for studying. If you want to take a peek at what it looks like, last week, I took some pictures with my iPhone and put them on my Tumblr. The pictures are a little blurry at times, but they’ll give you a good idea of what the library looks like. Take a peek into the library here.

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago. Actually, these pictures. I took the photo that the left half of this image was taken from on February 28th, and the photo of the right half a day later. I just thought it was amazing how different Heidelberg looked a day after a storm. Almost like over night, winter ended and spring sprung.* The muddy water looked a lot less muddy and a lot more calm just 24 hours later, and even the trees looked greener.

* Since then it has gotten colder and snowed again, so sadly, winter isn’t quite over yet.

It got me thinking of how it always seems like time just flies by. Now, that I am finally blogging about this, another 10 days have gone past. Time really does fly. It’s March. In just three short weeks, a quarter of this year will be over and I will only have three months of university left.

When I say that time sure seems to be flying by, you have to know that I am the person who used to roll her eyes whenever somebody would say that. I think it is such a cliche thing to say. I mean, come on, time doesn’t fly by. It always goes at exactly the same speed. A second is always one second long. An hour consists of 3,600 seconds. Yet, every time a week is over, a month is over, a year is over, everyone is like, “gosh, I cannot believe that it is [Sunday/March/2010] already! And that time flies? Is something that old people say. Of course that makes me a hypocrite, because I say it too. Maybe that’s because I’m getting old. Kids never seem to think that time flies by.

A while ago, I voiced my annoyance over this habit on Twitter, and San linked me to an article which actually suggests that this phenomenon of time flying by is not something we made up, or say because it’s cool or the thing to say, or because we have been conditioned to by our culture to say it. That it can actually be explained scientifically.

One theory is that, as you get older, you make less new experiences. When you are young, the brain has so much new information to store and analyze for every first experience because it does not know anything yet about this new thing it is experiencing. As you get older, you experience less new things, and your brain is not occupied for as long to analyze and store the experiences it makes. So when you are young, time seems to be moving more slowly compared to when you are an adult.

I thought this was really interesting. I never would have thought that there was an actual scientific basis for this platitude, this cliche feeling. Despite the knowledge that time always goes at the exact same speed, the feeling that time flies by is universal, across cultures, across time. Because of this, there has to be something to it.

You can read more about this theory and others trying to explain this phenomenon here.

Are there any platitudes that bug you? Are you surprised that there is an actual explanation for time flying by? Did you know this already, or did you, like me, never even consider that there might be one?