Quality service

On Saturday I was out doing some early Christmas shopping in Palma, in my lunch hour, because as I have written in this space before shops in Majorca open when they want and not the other way around. But that is besides the point, I overheard a conversation between a foreign customer and one of the shop assistants which probably goes a long way to pinpointing one of the major problems involving shops in Majorca at the moment, lack of service. It turns out that this foreign lady and her son were seeking to buy a pair of trainers but the shop assistant had taken no notice. She naturally complained and enquired whether the employee was just there to make up the numbers or was she interested in actually helping would-be customers. The war of words continued for five minutes in a mixture of Spanish and English and then the foreign lady asked to see the manager. He duly appeared and she enquired why staff didn't speak English. The manager, who was obviously taking his staff member's view of the situation, said that they were a Spanish company and language was not important. He also said it in a rather round-about way. In the end she left with her son and no sale was made.