"Ugly goes clean to the bone"

 No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. Oscar Wilde


I am spitting proverbial chips.


We have in our little friendly town a  healthclub.  The constant push for new members displayed on banners outside is testament to the fact that healthclubs and recessions are not the best bedfellows; indeed, it seems to have met the economic downturn in the fashion of Oops-We're-Getting-A-Bit-Grotty. Still, the posters insist all is, apparently, Better Now.  The swimming pool has had a lick of paint. They've removed the lacerating tiles from the showers.  That sort of thing. Lovely.

However.

I was given, for my birthday, a voucher to use in the spa.  Now, it is not the useful kind of spa, where you can have fun in mud and plunge daringly into icy pools, but a beauty spa.  Where they paint your nails and rip your hair out and stuff. I am not really a beauty spa kind of person, surprising at that might seem to those of you who know me for my dedication to glamorous grooming (lets be clear - I write this in jeans and welly socks, with compost streaks across my hands and no doubt under my nails too and it genuinely doesn't bother me that much, really). And my beauty-spa-reluctance is not not just for financial reasons (how MUCH to rub salt into me?) but also because I find it somewhat eerie to spend an hour to the soundtrack of something panpipey. On top of that, you know, they actually do scare me a bit, these places. So I find I approach them with the same trepidation that I approach mechanics; knowing with dread that they are going to ask me something I absolutely don't understand  and roll their eyes, ever so faintly, at my ignorance.

But finally, (I shouldn't say it, I know, but I can't resist) in the case of this particular spa, I baulk somewhat at putting my appearance into the hands of "experts" who squint blankly at you from behind orangey skintones and clumpy eyelashes and tappy nails.  As a composite whole, it does not, I feel, bode well. A bit akin to a restaurant trying to attract custom by advertising rotten food. Or me trying to encourage my students by speaking to them in, say, Turkish. Miaow, I know, and, before anyone says it,  since my nails are now having a gleeful and unexpected outing,  it's almost a shame they are not manicured. But, anyway,  I digress.

I received a voucher for my birthday for said spa and I DID have every intention of using it.  After all, it would be something a bit different and for every panpipe moment you are in there, it is a moment you are not being shrieked upon and that, in itself, should make for a rather super hour.

I dug out said voucher today and noticed, horror of horrors, that it expired yesterday.  I thought it was 6 months from my birthday but no.  Yesterday.  "Don't worry," R said "You're a member who's spent a small fortune in there over the past 6 years.  They'll understand. It's only a day."

Of course they would, I thought, sensibly and gave them a call.

I got a receptionist.  She sighed.  "It's past its date, " she said.  "It's expired, like."

I was polite.  "It only expired yesterday and to be honest, we've had a few tricky months. And I am a member.  Is there anything you can do?"

I got sighed at again.  And then silence. I waited.

She eventually said, after another sigh, that she'd Ask the Spa Directly.  She Asked the Spa Directly and came back to tell me the Spa Said No, Directly.  I said, still politely, that I'd rather like to Ask the Spa Directly too, and received my 4th sigh. 

But she did at least put me through.  Where I got puffing sigh number 5.

"It's past its date," said Spa Manager, after I'd explained that it was, er, past its date.

"I understand that, but I thought it was six months from my birthday so..."

"It's past its date." (How does one write accent in Roman?  "Spast its dai'"  Like that, anyhow)

"Well only by a day. Is there nothing you can do?"


Sigh.  Tut.

"What's the reference number?"


I checked.  "There isn't one.  It's been left blank."

"SO 'ow do I know when it's been bought then?  If you 'aven't got a reference?"

"Sorry, do you mean it's ME that should have written a reference on this voucher when I, er, received it as a present?  A reference for your records?"

Tut.  And huff.  And another sigh



Patient Voice.  "Look. It's past its date.  If you take a voucher up Tescos and its past its date, you wouldn't get anyfink so why should we give you it?"

I pointed out that I do not actually pay Tesco 50 pounds a month; that I have not spent a small fortune over the past 6 years on creche and coffees, personal training and swimming lessons.  I have not recommended friends to spend THEIR money in Tesco and I am not someone Tesco should be keen to hang on to, while they sweat out a period of time when people really have no cash for their particular luxury.

"All right, Debenhams then."

I'm sorry?

I could go on here, but there's no point - the rest of the conversation continued in the same vein, with Spa lady being rigidly unhelpful and me scratching my head trying to understand WHY anyone would treat any customer with such blatant, basic derision.

Because it WASN'T the words she used or her bizarre comparisons to Tesco/Debenhams that made me so spikey under the collar.

It was the tone of sneering boredom. The agressive choice of "Look" as a sentence adverbial.  The tuts.  The sighs.  The slowing of speech in implication of my thickness. The fact that she made no apology for inflexibility and not one jot of effort to be friendly.  And, with my own tone of somewhat dumbstruck politeness maintained throughout, I hadn't even been rude.  Grrr to the woman.  Really.



I know we are not, as a nation, famed for our customer service, although granted, that depends on where you come from: I have American friends who despair of our unhelpfulness and Turkmen friends who profess themselves delighted by our eagerness to please. (Note to self - ask Turkmen friends where on earth they go shopping and go there myself)  But on a personal level at least, shouldn't one be ashamed to be so, well, bloody horrible?

"If we did it for you, we 'ave to do it for everyone" was her final unconsidered response.

Dear girl. I urge you.  DO, please do.  Do to everyone what you did to me.  Speak to all your customers like that. Treat them all as committed cretins on the scrounge for a free deal.  Huff and puff and tut and sigh at them, as you have just done to me.

Because there's a lovely little place in Virginia Water called TOTAL BLISS.  (2 The Parade
Trumpsgreen Rd, Virginia Water GU25 4EH 01344 842643) They are terribly nice in there, they don't sigh at you and I've never yet heard a panpipe.

You would, I'm sure, be doing them a great favour. And it's good to be kind to people.  ISN'T it?

Afterthought
GOOD Golly.  Fancy ME recommending a Beauty Salon.  Who'd have thought.