Things I still don't get about Australia - No. 12

Aside from supermarkets, which are little more than smile-g'day swipeBEEP swipeBEEP swipeBEEP, there are two types of customer service here - there's incredibly good service that I wish I'd experienced far more often before I left the UK just so I'd know my own countrymen could do it too. There are lots of small companies and franchises here and both, perhaps a little less with the franchises, tend to be friendly without being obsequious and very helpful. They give you business cards and you often find you're dealing with and first naming the owner. Sometimes you pay a little more, but sometimes they're actually slightly cheaper. These guys need to look after people and as a result they're usually a pleasure to do business with, especially the ones who put their name above the door.

And then there's service so shit it makes you wish the person serving you would get several unpleasantly large electric shocks to the eyeballs shortly before the entire building implodes removing every trace of the wretched company from the Earth. The large chains tend to be like this. By no means all of the big companies and by no means all the staff, but every time I get crappy, don't really give a toss, don't listen to what the customer is saying, this-would-be-a-better-place-to-work-if-pricks-like-this-didn't-keep-coming-in-and-trying-to-buy-stuff style service it's been at one of the big companies. their prices aren' always that competitive either, and as a result I try to buy from small businesses and teh interwebs*.

Yes, I've had some crap service this morning but why is it normally great or dire and rarely anything in between? I've no idea.

* Things I still don't get about Australia No. 12¹/₂ is why so many of the big names also have shit websites that don't show all their stock and can't take orders for what they do show, leaving you no option but to drive to the nearest store and deal with the bastards that you were trying to avoid by going online in the first place.