A lovely day at work, circa 2003.
Dec. 2nd, 2008 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wileypeterAs more than a few of you may remember, I used to work in a record store. The collected staff could crush pretty much any team you'd assemble for a trivia contest, and we were good with the customer service as well. I overstayed my time there by a few years, but the people there kept me sane despite my burnout.
On the other hand, some of the customers drove me as close as I have ever come to snapping, and I mean snapping in an astoundingly wide variety of ways.
We had Robert Fuentes, a severely developmentally disabled guy whose great joys in life were collecting quarters by returning the self-service carts at the airport and bugging us. He could be fun, but he also liked getting out of hand, and we had to threaten him with "the 86" if he didn't settle down. Many employees tried to ignore him, since once he had a name for you he never stopped using it. "Hey, uh, uh, what's you're name?" No response and eventually he'd go away. I ignored him until one day he asked a coworker what my name was and the guy replied, "His name is Pez." How do you not reply to "Pez?" From that day forward I was a target for chats about "the articulated two heads of Pink Floyd," the inappropriateness of "the lin-guh-ree," and such. You could tell how he was doing on any given day from how much he was chewing his hand. If his meds were working he was harmless.
Another guy, whose name I never got, bugged the hell out of me. He'd bring in a crapload of, well, crap to sell us, and we'd sift through it. Then he'd take 80% with him. Copped an attitude I find difficult to assign a single word. Always smiling, always smug, always acting like he knew more about the music than you. This was an attitude he even copped about Bill Wyman's solo album with my coworker Craig, who'd played sax on the album. He was a real jackass. Tall guy, maybe 6'-2", with short, extremely curly black hair and a long black beard, and he looked vaguely like a figure from old greek pottery.
So one night this jackass came in and decided I was his entertainment for the evening. Specifically, watching me deal with a string of difficult customers. The worst of them was a really, really annoying woman who had brought in a stack of yesterday's hit CDs. When she'd purchased the Third Eye Blind, Smashmouth, Black Crowes, etc., they'd been hugely popular and cost $15.99 new (or, if she'd been smart, $13.99 at our store). Now, however the public had moved on to the latest Pink CD or some such thing, and the crap she was selling we sold used for $5.95. And we had more than a few of each. The most I could offer her was $1 a CD, and this, as you might expect, wasn't making her very happy.
We started out with her yelling at me that I was a money-grubbing asshole. And by yelling I mean she was audible throughout a large store, roughly 50' by 100'. This immediately attracted the jackass.
I talked her through the entire economic process of supply and demand, how the position of an album on the charts isn't a permanent thing, how we had six copies of Amorica and were selling two a week, meaning we had enough for close to a month. I showed her all of the backstock and the sales figures on which I based her cash and trade value. I managed to hold it together for more than fifteen minutes as I laid out our entire business model.
Frankly I'd rather she had left but customers get into a mindset of selling their stuff to us and, while my life would have improved greatly if she'd just stormed out in a huff, she was bound and determined to get what she deserved. (What she thought she deserved, anyway. You can imagine what *I* thought she deserved.) I'd recently had a customer complain that I told him he might as well leave because the offer was only going to get worse, and while my manager supported me, she did ask that I wait a week or two before saying that sort of thing again, which until this particular night seemed like a reasonable request.
My task was made no more pleasant by the smirking schmuck lurking behind her. He repeatedly came up to the counter ostensibly to check his trade, but really to eavesdrop.
Eventually I managed to get her calmed down enough to start contemplating her trade-or-cash options. While she did this the jackass decided to check out. He had a glint in his eye that promised nothing good, but I still managed to remain pleasant and professional.
I should give you an idea as to the layout of the store here. The Buy Counter faced the front door and formed a sharp triangle with the Trade Checkout Counter, so when you used your store credit we would ring you up at one counter, have you walk around the main register (in a huge concrete circle at the apex of the aforementioned triangle), through the security beepers and over to the Buy Counter, where we'd hand you any purchases and rejects.
So jackass walks around the register and comes to the counter to get his purchase, obviously bursting at the seams with incendiary comments.
Please, just leave. Take your crappy music and leave.
No such luck. He looks across the counters at the woman, looks at me, looks over at her again to make sure she's paying attention, and says, "You, sir, are the most patient man on Earth."
Looks at her again, smiles at both of us, then leaves.
Bastard set her off again, and it took me another seven minutes to calm her down.
I do not miss customer service.
On the other hand, some of the customers drove me as close as I have ever come to snapping, and I mean snapping in an astoundingly wide variety of ways.
We had Robert Fuentes, a severely developmentally disabled guy whose great joys in life were collecting quarters by returning the self-service carts at the airport and bugging us. He could be fun, but he also liked getting out of hand, and we had to threaten him with "the 86" if he didn't settle down. Many employees tried to ignore him, since once he had a name for you he never stopped using it. "Hey, uh, uh, what's you're name?" No response and eventually he'd go away. I ignored him until one day he asked a coworker what my name was and the guy replied, "His name is Pez." How do you not reply to "Pez?" From that day forward I was a target for chats about "the articulated two heads of Pink Floyd," the inappropriateness of "the lin-guh-ree," and such. You could tell how he was doing on any given day from how much he was chewing his hand. If his meds were working he was harmless.
Another guy, whose name I never got, bugged the hell out of me. He'd bring in a crapload of, well, crap to sell us, and we'd sift through it. Then he'd take 80% with him. Copped an attitude I find difficult to assign a single word. Always smiling, always smug, always acting like he knew more about the music than you. This was an attitude he even copped about Bill Wyman's solo album with my coworker Craig, who'd played sax on the album. He was a real jackass. Tall guy, maybe 6'-2", with short, extremely curly black hair and a long black beard, and he looked vaguely like a figure from old greek pottery.
So one night this jackass came in and decided I was his entertainment for the evening. Specifically, watching me deal with a string of difficult customers. The worst of them was a really, really annoying woman who had brought in a stack of yesterday's hit CDs. When she'd purchased the Third Eye Blind, Smashmouth, Black Crowes, etc., they'd been hugely popular and cost $15.99 new (or, if she'd been smart, $13.99 at our store). Now, however the public had moved on to the latest Pink CD or some such thing, and the crap she was selling we sold used for $5.95. And we had more than a few of each. The most I could offer her was $1 a CD, and this, as you might expect, wasn't making her very happy.
We started out with her yelling at me that I was a money-grubbing asshole. And by yelling I mean she was audible throughout a large store, roughly 50' by 100'. This immediately attracted the jackass.
I talked her through the entire economic process of supply and demand, how the position of an album on the charts isn't a permanent thing, how we had six copies of Amorica and were selling two a week, meaning we had enough for close to a month. I showed her all of the backstock and the sales figures on which I based her cash and trade value. I managed to hold it together for more than fifteen minutes as I laid out our entire business model.
Frankly I'd rather she had left but customers get into a mindset of selling their stuff to us and, while my life would have improved greatly if she'd just stormed out in a huff, she was bound and determined to get what she deserved. (What she thought she deserved, anyway. You can imagine what *I* thought she deserved.) I'd recently had a customer complain that I told him he might as well leave because the offer was only going to get worse, and while my manager supported me, she did ask that I wait a week or two before saying that sort of thing again, which until this particular night seemed like a reasonable request.
My task was made no more pleasant by the smirking schmuck lurking behind her. He repeatedly came up to the counter ostensibly to check his trade, but really to eavesdrop.
Eventually I managed to get her calmed down enough to start contemplating her trade-or-cash options. While she did this the jackass decided to check out. He had a glint in his eye that promised nothing good, but I still managed to remain pleasant and professional.
I should give you an idea as to the layout of the store here. The Buy Counter faced the front door and formed a sharp triangle with the Trade Checkout Counter, so when you used your store credit we would ring you up at one counter, have you walk around the main register (in a huge concrete circle at the apex of the aforementioned triangle), through the security beepers and over to the Buy Counter, where we'd hand you any purchases and rejects.
So jackass walks around the register and comes to the counter to get his purchase, obviously bursting at the seams with incendiary comments.
Please, just leave. Take your crappy music and leave.
No such luck. He looks across the counters at the woman, looks at me, looks over at her again to make sure she's paying attention, and says, "You, sir, are the most patient man on Earth."
Looks at her again, smiles at both of us, then leaves.
Bastard set her off again, and it took me another seven minutes to calm her down.
I do not miss customer service.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 01:59 am (UTC)my favorite moment in this world was this one major douche who came in with a stack of Celine Dion and the like.
I politely explained to him why I couldn't offer more than twenty-five cents per disc (and he brought in quite a stack) and he, quite curtly, exclaimed that my offer was "offensive".... to which I replied "No, your taste in music is offensive".
no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 04:21 am (UTC)Some great things were said in that store.
One favorite:
Customer: I'll have you know this CD was a million seller!
Buyer: Yeah, and I got a million of 'em.