crowded and corralled, company's customers calmed, complaintless

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I am writing this story on a computer recently repaired by a company that demonstrated to me a fantastic ability to satisfy its customers.  Company A has a store open 24 hours/7 days per week.  They fixed my 3 year old MbkAir with broken hinges.  Here's what happened.

1. On lunch break on a Thursday, I first attempted to get the thing fixed at noon; I called ahead and made the appointment.  I arrived at 12:05.  They guy with the Ipd told me it would be 30 minutes, so i went to a nearby restaurant.

2. The food was great; $21 Kobe beef hamburger worth every cent, and 6 oysters which were tiny compared to what I used to get in New Orleans before BP.  Got back to the Astore at 12:45.

3. They took me off their list.  I was pissed.  I didn't bother to stay, but chose to return after work.  In the meantime, I called back the store to speak to a manager to express my disgust.  After holding 5 minutes, Cheri answered, how can I help you?  I explained that I was trained as a lean six sigma blackbelt with a Fortune 500 company, always spotting opportunities for workplace efficiencies, and I had a bunch to share; was she interested?  Yes she was.  I said, it appeared that the people running the floor at the store were more interested in making their job easier than serving my needs as a customer.  I arrived on time and am told to wait 30 minutes; although I'm late to return, why take me off a list?...could it be possible that I travelled one hour to get there and one hour to return, and am prepared to travel one hour back a few hours from now, and one hour to re-return?  Maybe keep me on the list a bit longer?  Cheri said what happened to me shouldn't have happened.  I should have been kept on the list.

4. I returned at 6 as I promised Cheri.  Crowded, corralled, confused at first, I finally got the attention of a woman no longer with an Ipd but with a computer printout with names of those with 5:40 appointments, so I said fine, a 40 minute wait.  Five other workers had similar lists.  She said wait in this general area, so I did.  I struck up a conversation with a woman to find out how long she had been waiting, and she said 30 minutes.  Then her name was called.  Workers started handing out bottled water.  Although I didn't get one, I felt better about my situation knowing that they thought enough about us to do such a nice thing.

5. at 6:35 my name was called.  Yes, mine was the first generation MbkAir with two hinges.  Three to five business days it would be fixed.

6.  While I sat there, I realized that they could have managed customer traffic by figuring out how long each person took to be served, then adjusting appointment times.  Instead, they just added more staff to assist customers.  No additional technology to solve a people problem.  It seemed to make sense to me, at first, to have customers come in on a date with a guarantee of being served within 10 minutes, rather than serve everyone without question as they did, but the well-organized staff effectively managed a potential disaster in customer relations and came out like heros.  All during that experience I noticed nobody left angry...except me a few hours before.

7. On Saturday, I checked the online repair status, it said fixed on Saturday, so with Labor Day, I figured Tuesday.  No, noon Saturday. FedEx.  Repaired.  Free.  Amazing.  Loyalty.  Unbelieveable.  Satisfied.