The Better Business Bureau at Vancouver gets 250 complaints a week, twice as many as five years ago. The bureau then had one complaints counselor and now has four. People complain about being insulted, having their intelligence and integrity questioned, and being threatened. One will hear about people being hauled almost bodily out the door by somebody saying things like I don't have to serve you! or this is private property, get out and don't come back!What can customers do? If the bureau's arbitration process fails to settle a dispute, a customer’s only re??course is to sue in call claims court. But because of the costs and time it takes, relatively few ever do.
There is a lot of support for the notion that service has, in part, fallen victim to generational change. Many young people regard retailing as just a bead-end job that you're just going to do temporarily on your way to a real job. Young clerks often lack both knowledge and civility. Employers have to train young people in simple manners because that is not being done at home. Salespeople today, especially the younger ones, have grown up in a television-computer society where they’ve interacted largely with machines. One of the biggest complaints from businesses about graduates is the lack of inter-personal skills.
What customers really want is access. They want to get through when they call, they don't want busy signals, they don't want interactive systems telling them to posh one for this and two for that—they don't want voice mail. And if customers do not get what they want, they defect. Some people go back to local small businesses： the Asian greengrocer, a Greek baker and a Greek fishmonger. They don't wear nametags, but one gets to know them, all by name.
21. At a business place of bad service, the worst one can get is__________
[A] indifference and rudeness
[B] naked hostility and physical violence
[C] having intelligence and integrity questioned
[D] being insulted and threatened
22. One of the reasons for such ill feeling in the marketplace is that
[A] shoppers are usually strident, frustrated and impatient
[B] shoppers often take businesses to court to settle them
[C] businesses use new technology instead of employees
[D] businesses are keen on keeping customers, not getting them
23. What has changed at Vancouver Better Service Bureau in the past five years?
[A] More effective.
[B] Less bureaucracy.
[C]More business.
[D] Better staff.
24. Young clerks often lack interpersonal skills chiefly because they_______________ .
[A] are skilled in dealing with machines not people
[B] are not trained in simple manners at home
[C] fall victims to generational change
[D] take retailing to be a temporary job
25. The author's attitude towards businesses and bad service is_______________ them.
[A] attacking [B] understanding
[C] regretting [D]warning
Text 2
The United States is the United Nations' biggest deadbeat. Conservatives in Congress, led by Senator Jessie Helms, stopped Washington from paying its dues until the UN reduced its as??sessment and made other changes. Now, thanks to the hard work Richard Holbrook, America’s UN representative, and for peacekeeping. Mr. Helms, who has praised the deal, should release the dues he has been holding hostage—$ 582 million of the $1.3 billion the UN says it is owed.
The new formula would reduce the US contribution to the general UN budget to 22 percent from the current level of 25 percent—a symbolic difference of only $ 34 million a year. Washing??ton, which has been paying just over 30 percent of the peacekeeping budget, would now pay 27 percent—a difference of $ 80 million to $ 120 million a year—and that percentage will drop fur??ther. While poor countries would not pay more, the dues of other wealthy nations would rise un??der the new system.
The agreement would probably not have been reached without the intervention of the media magnate Ted Turner, who is already contributing $ 1 billion to UN programs over 10 years. Mr. Turner gave $ 34 million to cover the one-year gap during which other nations prepare to raise their contributions. His offer should embarrass Congress, which forced diplomats to waste their influence at the UN in months of negotiations to save a sum that is modest by federal budget stan??dards.
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