Please Stop Your Customer Service. It’s Frightening.

There’s such a thing as too much customer service, and Cold Stone Creamery really scoops it out.

Their strange service rituals strikes us as the most unsettling of all the examples given in the Wall Street Journal’s recent article (no sub required to read, btw, because we hook you up like that).

“At Cold Stone Creamery ice-cream shops, young employees scooping ice cream into dishes labeled “like it,” “love it” and “gotta have it” …are expected to sing in unison whenever a patron drops a tip into a cup near the register.

But it just gave the creeps to Jason Feifer, a 26-year-old free-lance writer in Cambridge, Mass….

“It’s unsettling,” he says.

…On a return trip to Cold Stone, he says, he told the cashier that he was going to tip her, but she didn’t have to sing. She thanked him, and he turned away, relieved for a moment. Then the singing started up again. “I’m sure the company thinks it encourages tipping, but I would dispute that,” Mr. Feifer says.

We’d dispute it too, had we had any idea it existed. Either the people at the Cold Stone on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn aren’t co-operating with the policy, or we are cheap bastards. We can’t recall which.

Which over-the-top customer service habits annoy you? We can’t stand the strangers at the powder counter. Leave us alone and let us look at the damn makeup. Do not talk about our skin with us.

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