Customer Service, Painting, Free Refills and the Amazon Lottery

11-20

A few months ago my entire thought process about customer service was different than it is now. I believed that you tried your best to help your customers and made their needs a priority. Yesterday I realized how all of those expectations have changed in my mind. Two perfect examples happened right in front of me this weekend. We were in Bethel for our monthly administrators’ conference. On Friday afternoon I was in the a store with a friend. I checked out and was waiting by the door. He was in line behind a young mother with two toddlers. I couldn’t hear the conversation completely but I did catch a part of it and Bill explained what happened while we were walking down the road. The mother was buying milk, juice and cereal for the kids. She was trying to pay with her EBT card. When the total came up she was $63 over her limit. Bill looked at the situation and said just put that on my total and I’ll pay for it. The clerk was shocked and didn’t know what to do. He ended up canceling the woman’s order then scanning her items again and holding out the things that Bill was going to buy. He tried to talk Bill out of doing it but Bill was determined to pay for this mother’s groceries. As he told me, she was trying to feed her kids not buy luxury items. As it turned out, the clerk had mistakenly charged her double for most of her order. She was barely over her limit. Regardless Bill bought the groceries for her and she was able to better feed her kids. The second customer service experience happened to a fellow administrator who was in line in front of me at the flight check in. She was heading back to a coastal village. If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears I don’t know that I would’ve believed. We were all supposed to check in for our flights before 3PM. It was 2:40PM at this time. We were early… so you would think. She steps up and gives her name and where she is headed. The clerk looks at her and says you’re too late. The flight has already left. Remember it was 20 minutes before a 3PM check in for a 4PM flight. She asks what do you mean I’ve missed it? I’m early. The clerk looks her dead in the eye and says yeah but we changed it. You’re now too late. Best we can do is get you out Monday. I turned to Bill and asked if he heard that? He asked what I was talking about and I told him what they said. We both broke up laughing. We agreed that it was the most Alaska thing we had heard. Then we realized just how much our expectations have changed and that became a good topic of discussion for us while we waited on our flight.

There is a new restaurant in Bethel. They serve burgers, deli sandwiches and pizza. But they don’t serve pizza yet because the pizza ingredients haven’t made it to Bethel yet. The food was great by Bethel standards. The most shocking thing was… they had a coke fountain drink machine and offered free refills. It’s the only place in southwestern Alaska that does. I saw it and did a double take. I told Bill they had one and he almost broke his neck turning around to look at it. He said that I could’ve said there was a leprechaun behind him and he wouldn’t have been more surprised.

The Amazon lottery is a real thing here. It works like this… you buy something on Amazon using your Prime account. It has a guaranteed arrival time. Once that time passes Amazon will adjust the arrival time by about three days. Then when that time passes you have the option of requesting a refund. Some times the item that is late or lost will still show up. This happens so regularly here that it’s almost expected that your items will arrive past the deadline.

12-5

Wanda is still here. She was supposed to go home Saturday. The weather and airplane support did not cooperate.  Right now the charter services make a lot more money carrying cargo. It’s hard to get a flight out of the village. Usually by this time the ice road is open down the river.

The weekend of Nov 20th the ice was thick enough on the river to drive to Bethel by snowmobile. We drove across the river on a snowmobile while we were out riding and a few of the braver souls made it all the way down there. By mid week the temps were up and the river ice was weaker. No one is willing to take a chance on that trip now. As one person told me when I asked about getting Wanda to Bethel for her flight, I could try it but we better wear life vests because the ice is not to be trusted right now. We wanted to reschedule her to the soonest flight available but that turned out to be a solid week later. The flight from Anchorage to Bethel last night had to turn back because of high winds. We had students going to Anchorage yesterday but they are coming back today if we can get them a flight back to the village.

Currently the stores are stocked with groceries. This is the first time that has happened in a couple of months. Imagine going to the store for over two months and there not being any bread and few other items. We mainly rely on Amazon orders and what we get from people sending us. We cook moose on the weekend with dried potatoes or rice and beans of some sort.

We have been to a couple of feasts in the last couple of weeks. The last was this past Friday. We both had roasted beaver for the first time. It reminded me a lot of a pot roast from the crockpot. It was a lot better than I expected it to be and I will definitely have it again if it prepared the same way.

So far the coldest it has been is -7 degrees F with a wind chill of -19. It has been cold enough to freeze the swampy area that I normally walk around to make the walk to school. Now I can cut across the swamp. It has turned into an ice field. There is a trail across it used by 4 wheelers, snowmobiles and foot traffic. It cuts at least 5 minutes off of my trip.

Thanksgiving dinner was with a staff gathering. It was a potluck with the usual Thanksgiving foods. We had a great time eating, socializing and watching the egg bowl.

Wanda has struck up a relationship with a young girl that is our neighbor. She is 12 and in the 6th grade. Her house is small and she lives there with five of her brothers and sisters. She is the youngest. They have  an old car outside that a couple of the boys will sleep in occasionally. It’s tough when the temps are subzero. We bring her in and feed her and let her stay with us to stay warm until bedtime. She has started playing darts and watching movies with us.

This past Friday we had a bear sighting. A female with four cubs was seen in the village near the school in the afternoon. We had to delay our release for a short time and almost had to call off the school dance while the village safety officers scared it away. It and the cubs were last seen heading east towards the mountains.

Mostly, there is a great deal of boredom without much to write about. Wanda has made the time go better by decorating and painting the apartment. It looks much neater and cleaner thanks to her efforts. I’ll try to make my next post happen sooner rather than later.