Last Saturday I visited my Mother and little did I realise that I would have a lesson in how embarrass customers, employees and in poor management.

An outing for Mother
My Mother has just broken her arm and is feeing very sorry for herself. So I decided to take her to a hotel for a favourite outing of afternoon tea. With great anticipation we drove up the long hotel drive in Miskin, South Wales, for a relaxing afternoon overlooking the large gardens to find that there was just one other couple in the lounge.

To say that the meal of sandwiches, cakes, scones and even the service was disappointing would be an understatement.  On leaving my Mother, an excellent cook in her time, caught sight of the manager and mentioned the fact and said that at £25 ($32) she considered the meal overpriced and lacked value.

The person responsible
The manager asked us to wait a minute. I wondered if some adjustment was about to be made to the bill. To my surprise he reappeared with the chef saying, “This is the person responsible, make your complaints to him” and then without waiting to hear what we had to say ran off on another errand. My Mother was at a loss to know how to handle this unusual situation and I outlined the problem in the gentlest terms to an embarrassed and petrified member of staff.

“The scones had been freeze-chilled and therefore had a consistency of being stale, the profiterole was similar and lacked any taste in the filling such as vanilla and the bread on the sandwiches was too thick to be able to taste the fillings…”. By this time I began to feel extremely sorry for the chef who was looking quite helpless. I end his torment I smiled and described the meal as “uninspiring”.

Not a customer’s job
We left vowing never to return. Not because of the poor tea but because, as customers, it was not our job to instruct the staff, that’s the manager’s job. It’s also not the kitchen staff’s job to be appraised of a “poor job” by customers, that again is the management’s job. I also attached the chef’s poor performance on lack of training and expectation by the management.

My offering of help!
However, as I love to cook cakes, pastries and have a wide collection of Indian, Chinese and Japanese teas I would be delighted to offer to show the manager how he could instruct his kitchen team and waiting staff to deliver a fresh, great tasting and perfectly served afternoon tea. That way he can manage to do his job!

To succeed in today’s business climate it’s not enough to have general intelligence coupled emotional intelligence to be a success! Social Intelligence is also an essential requirement.

Over the past year I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time working with aspiring executives and explaining that their colleagues want the top job as much as they do and that often the only difference between candidates is their social intelligence.

it’s more than a smile, walking around the office thanking people for their work, being at the top of people’s party list or even having a sense of humour. Social intelligence is the ability to set oneself apart and to be identifies as the candidate for leadership because people are attracted to you and will follow.

I so enjoy working with people to develop their social radar and create an understanding of what will create and harm reputation. So the manager who accepted that having the 007 theme tune on his mobile phone was’t  the “coolest corporate image” was in fact demonstrating a distinct lack of social intelligence.

Creating a personal presence so that we can empathise with people’s feelings and, here’s the difference with emotional intelligence, being able to manage how we work with others despite our internal emotional feelings is now an essential tool.

Loads of shops say they deliver an “excellent shopping experience” who, in reality, don’t. So I’ve decided to award these businesses my own “Poor Shopping Experience Medal” and the first is awarded to Homebase in Bridgend.

Yesterday I needed some bubble wrap, the stuff that protects fragile objects. Homebase in Bridgend allowed me to buy it by the metre at £1.49 (meter in USA) and some kind assistant walked me to the back of the store and cut a length after measuring it against a ruler.

I took my neatly rolled bubble wrap to the counter to pay. “Three metres of bubblewrap” I helpfully told the young lady behind the till. “I’ll have to measure it” she said as it was unravelled. Then looked at me as if I was trying to steal the crown jewells “It’s five metres”.

Now I’m sure that Homebase suffers from people trying to walk out of their store without paying for some items but I can think of more valuable things that two metres of Bubble Wrap!

“But I only want three” I protested. She turned to the manager and shouted “He says he only wants three, can we call Fred to recut it”. Having originally waited five minutes for Fred to arrive to cut the original amount I could see this taking more valuable minutes and hold up an ever increasing number of annoyed people in the line behind me. “I’ll take it” I said in frustration. The bubble wrap was passed over to me to refold with a look of “I knew you were trying it on” from the lady and probably by others in the line behind me.

Can I suggest that Homebase could save time, misunderstanding and embarrasment when their shop assistants cut lengths of bubble wrap, or anything else for that matter, that the customer is given a note to show at the pay counter as proof of the amount requested. Self cut lengths could then be measured in the usual manner. Then I would suggest Homebase train the cutters in measuring a metre length. Until then my award medal for poor shopping experience goes to Homebase in Bridgend, South Wales.