American Service. Getting Better?

     Page One Hundred Eighty-Nine.
     In the last few months, I've had to come to terms with a computer and phone being on hospice care simultaneously. It's always difficult when electronica is on its deathbed. Friends and family try to be supportive, but really, they don't know what to do. They bring over food. They offer to take you out... just to be among people. Your truest and dearest friends even offer to come over and keep you company while you're caring for the item in question. But ultimately, every computer and phone were made to die. The question is... when? That's just God's will.
     In my case, I had to go purchase a new computer 9 days ago and a new phone 4 days ago. I'm surprised I didn't need intensive inpatient psycho-therapy. They used to refer to it as a "nervous breakdown" but you rarely hear that term anymore. Not sure why, but I digress.
     Here's the most interesting detail of the entire experience: while purchasing the items, both sales-people tried to save me money. I went to Microcenter, showed the guy what I thought I wanted, then answered his question: "What do you really use your computer for?" After a few minutes of conversation, he said, "Get this one. It's cheaper." It was. In fact, it was $120.00 cheaper than the one I'd initially picked out. I was pleasantly surprised.
     Then, I went to T-Mobile. He also asked me what I needed from my phone. I told him. "Go to Target. They have what you're looking for cheaper than we do. Then bring it back and I'll set it up." Boy, was I shocked, as was the Target employee when I told her.
     Now, really, neither of those situations constitute a globally improved American service scene. In that, I waited in 4 different lines in Microcenter prior to exiting. Each an average of 15 minutes or so. Happily, there was no line in Target and the 2 lines in T-Mobile were each under 5 minutes. That tells me that Target and T-Mobile were staffed properly, but not so, Microcenter. I went there on President's Day and they told me that they weren't expecting any unusual crowd. They were staffed for a normal Monday. In fact, they'd been doing inventory the night before until 3AM. Subsequently, much regular staff was happily home, sound asleep, dreaming about girls, pizzas, fast cars and beaches.
     But still, I was terribly impressed by how badly those 2 guys wanted to save me money. It was like the scene in the classic Christmas movie, "Miracle on 34th Street". Except, instead of Santa telling the lady where to get the right firetruck, it was 2 guys just trying to save me some serious bucks. How glorious.