Something happens to me nearly every day that I have learned not to take for granted, or to even expect in Vancouver: I get very good customer service.
The coffee kiosk outside the CBC building where I work is staffed by three or four twentysomethings. I'd call them hipsters, if it weren't derogatory.
They do look the part: toques, printed T-shirts or pearl-buttoned plaid, various tattoos and facial piercings and those hoops the size of quarters that you somehow insert into your earlobes. (What happens when you take those out, by the way?) They're smart, funny, personable, generally efficient, and calm under pressure when the lineup snakes across the plaza. They know my name, and what I drink. They are minor experts in the products they sell, they get legitimately excited when they have something new for me to sample. Also, the coffee is excellent.
This puts the lie to my familiar refrain about the lousy customer service in this city - in particular where the staff is made up of twentysomething hipsters.
When I complain to my co-workers about this, the response goes something like: "Well what do you expect?" I'm reminded that those service workers are minimum-wage or near-minimum-wage employees who aren't exactly living out their career fantasies.
Still, they could at least pretend to almost care. I'm tired of handing my hard-earned money to the slack-jawed who stand behind the till apparently convinced that if they can summon enough disdain into a single facial expression I'll just go away.
It's not just the cable or cellphone companies, department stores or our national airline, from whom we've been conditioned to expect next to nothing.
No, this black hole of customer service extends to bakeries, pizza joints, certain government run-liquor stores and the Kitsilano outlet of the beloved Canadian coffee chain where inevitably my request to not toast a baked good that is routinely toasted results in mass confusion and the meltdown of their entire computer system which has not been programmed with such a variable in mind.
Then there's my local video store, where I feel judged by the sighs and eye-rolling of the employees every time I rent something that's not up to their standards. Okay, the dogs get good service; at least they get snacks.
The people at my little coffee kiosk, though, have convinced me that it can, and should, be otherwise.
The kiosk is owned by John Neate, who has a total of 10 JJ Bean outlets across the Lower Mainland. His grandfather started Neate's Coffee in Vancouver in 1945. Mr. Neate got into the business in 1979.
For him it begins with being careful about who he hires. He wants twentysomethings who need jobs, who have rent to make, and prefers people who want to work full time.
He looks for people who have a passion for something: art, music, surfing - just something. He wants employees who will stick around longer than three or four months.
He trains his workers, and expects them to buy into the simple philosophy that he would like to run the best coffee shops in the city.
For this they are paid relatively well. After eight months on he job, he says most will earn $13 per hour. They have an extended medical and dental plan, bonuses based on regular audits, retreats, parties and other team-building exercises. But never once, I'm thrilled to point out, does he use the phrase "team building."
John doesn't go in for the sort of regimented corporate training programs that churn out clusters of uniformed replicants.
He is in fact fiercely anti-uniform. He thinks neckties are demeaning and puts them into the same category as fast-food-chain paper hats. He wants his staff to be neat and clean and presentable, but he wants their individuality to shine through. He says he would rather deal with the exceptions than stifle creativity.
He wants employees to be engaged and interested in the customers.
Is it all slightly cultish? Maybe. New-agey? Sure. But it's also old-fashioned.
And I can think of a lot of businesses in this city that could learn a lesson from him.
Stephen Quinn is the host of On the Coast on CBC Radio One.88.1 FM and 690 AM