Life’s Lessons

It’s year-end sale in all malls. As much as I want to shop, my wallet is almost empty. I have withdrawn my earnings last Tuesday, Dec. 23 and I forgot that aside from the regular holidays, the rest of the following days until New Year is declared as Special Non-Working day so the banks are all on holiday*sigh*. I was hoping to receive my earnings from paypal on the 29th but it seems so impossible to happen. But then I was still hopeful that a miracle would happen so I was checking my UnionBank account online from time to time but to no avail. Such a bummer. I should have withdrawn it through Xoom so the money will be in my hands within the day. I am actually thinking about that before I transferred my paypal earnings to my UnionBank EON account but Xoom’s service fee is almost $10 so I opted to withdraw through my bank account. Now I will be celebrating New Year without personal money in my wallet. Of course Ace’ money is also mine but it feels different if I have my own money especially if I do shopping. Hence, the impulsive buyer was tamed for a while. Not totally, though because I was able to shop for simple gifts for mine and Ace’ family.

Anyway, we’ve done last minute shopping for Ace’ family a few hours earlier. It was really quick shopping as we are running out of time so I didn’t have the luxury of time to look for some bargain. The stores are not busy so I am expecting not to wait too long in the counter. I am the 5th customer from the cashier and everybody ahead of me have just 2-6 items each so paying and wrapping it is supposed to be quick but it took me almost 30 minutes to wait. One more customer and it’s my turn. But before the woman before me was entertained, Gaisano Mall employee came to the cashier’s side and had her items entered to the POS system and paid. I wanted to blurt out but I just kept my cool. When it’s my turn, another employee came to the cashier’s side and had so many items scanned to the POS. I can’t let this thing pass by without voicing out my thoughts so I asked the cashier “nakapila ba yang mga items na yan o isiningit kasi sa empleyado na naman?” (are those items waiting in line or inserted because those belong to an employee?). The cashier and other employees were speechless as I did my usual lecture on how they should serve their customers. I felt my cheeks are red because I am really mad. How dare them to have people wait in line longer because they are entertaining their co-employees who didn’t fall in line to pay. Is it their previlege or right? Whatever! That shouldn’t be. Ace was clueless what’s happening so he asked me what I was talking about in the counter. I am just glad that he’s not at my side then because he’ll be more mad than me. 

On the way home, we were comparing the different malls in the city. No doubt that our fave SM City is far way better we speak of customer service. The place is so clean, mall supervisors and security are always roaming around to check and address concerns immediately, all tenants follow the rules especially on cleanliness and observing store hours time (in SM, all stores will open and close or stop from letting people come inside the stores upon the signal security guards while in other malls, other tenants close before the scheduled time), the supermarket and department stores have a very efficient POS systems so you’re confident that the price tag attached to the item is the same as that in the POS (other malls have issues with this). For us, there’s no better place to shop but in SM City Davao. I am not paid by SM, huh. I just wanna brag about their system and services.

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