Whatever happened to good customer service?

This question occurred to me recently on an outing with a friend as I had what seems to be an ever-increasing experience with bad customer service. We were at a juice place and I ordered a smoothie that was called "tropical strawberry". I guess the worker heard strawberry something else, because she proceeded to make a drink that didn't include the ingredients that were listed under the "tropical strawberry" smoothie. So I repeated my order and she tersely replied that I said strawberry. Then she shook her head in disgust and when I tried to pay with my credit card she told me I had to get into another line because they didn't take credit cards at that counter. So, already annoyed, I entered the other line and when I got to this next worker, she snatched the credit card out of my hand and didn't say a single word during the transaction. Needless to say, I left the place extremely unsatisfied, and yes, the smoothie sucked as well.

Come on people, I know that most people don't like their jobs, but don't take it out on innocent customers. Why can't people live by the golden rule? Treat others how you want to be treated, seems so simple to me.

So I guess I now want to give a shout-out to a couple of companies that do provide excellent customer service. Amazon is definitely high on my list. They always respond quickly to my e-mails. This is rare even from a lot of other big name companies. Amazon also consistently offers the best price on a lot of different merchandise. They also provide free shipping on orders of at least 25$, even to Hawaii.

Another company I want to mention is Discover credit card. They also respond quickly to all my e-mail inquiries. They even saved me from getting ripped off. I had ordered about 150$ worth of merchandise from an online company and never received the merchandise. I tried e-mailing this company and got no response. So I then reported this to Discover. They told me that they would start an investigation and get back to me as soon as possible. Probably within a few weeks, I finally received the merchandise I ordered. It's no surprise that Discover is a leader in customer loyalty.