Adam Selzer: King of the Wild Frontier - Tales From the Retail Wasteland

Tis the season to treat retail workers like pond scum. That's all year, but the real jerks tend to come out of the woodwork around the holidays.

Now that I'm safely back in Atlanta, I can recount my favorite tale of holiday triumph this year...


...I was going in to do some Mattel work at a Toys R Us. WHen I went to the counter to sign in, a fellow was absolutely berating the woman behind the desk. Apparently, he'd been on the phone with someone who was less than helpful, and was demanding that the person on the phone by reprimanded/fired, but he didn't know who the person was.

As I came in, he was doing some shouting, and she was trying to answer the customer service phone, which had been ringing for some time.

"Don't you DARE pick that up!" he shouted.

"Sir," she said, "I have no way of knowing who you talked to on the phone."

"well," he sneered, "why don't you just go find out?"

"Because," the woman behind the counter calmly said, "it could have been any of about seventeen people. There's no way to find out who it was, and if you don't know, I can't really help you."


"That," he growled, "is because you don't care about the customers. If you people were professional, she would have given me her name on the phone."

Not having my nametag out yet, I was technically a customer myself.

"You know sir," I interjected, "for obvious reasons, most people working phones who have to talk to jerks like you don't WANT to give out their names."

He just sort of grumbled, clearly surprised that the other customers weren't ready to join an army and lay siege to the help desk.

If there's one thing I simply can't stand, it's rude customers who treat retail workers like third-class citizens - especially the ones who feel entitled to work lectures and personal critique into their whining. If it seems like the clerks don't care, it's because they don't. I've always worked by the rule that customers deserve to have their problems fixed, but if they have to act like an unreasonable dick, they waive that right, and, as soon as one cuss word or personal insult comes out of their mouth, they've waived the right to be treated nicely at all. Most people in retail make about $7 an hour, and if some jerk has a problem, they really couldn't care less - in fact, when a customer is being THAT big of a jerk, it's a pretty good sign that they're not even people with genuine complaints, just scammers trying to take you for a few bucks. When I'm dealing with a jerk, the idea that they walk out happy is positively repellant to me. I don't know what wacko came up with the idea that the customer is always right, but whoever it was clearly never worked customer service. And, when I'm in civilian mode and see a person being unreasonable with a retail worker/waiter/etc, I will not hesitate to publicly humiliate them. Hell, I'll try my best to do it when the nametag is on! The best thing I can do to calm myself down when dealing with these folks is to remind myself that, if this is what they're always like, they've probably had boogers in a great many of their meals over the years.

One of my favorite retail workers that I meet on my rounds for Mattel is an elderly greeter who works at a Wal-Mart.
"Another day in paradise, eh?" We'll say as we walk in.
"Another day in the shithole," she'll grumble, as she passes us a printout about the latest Wal-Mart lawsuit. She wears her nametag backwards because, as she puts it, "I don't want these bastards to know who I am!"


My finests similar moment in retail:
A starbucks customer slammed his cup on the counter in front of me and said "this latte tastes like shit. make me another one."
I raised an eyebrow. "It tastes like shit, so you want another?"
"That's right."
"Okay," I called to the bar. "One grande shit latte, please. This gentleman just can't get enough of the sweet, crappy taste!"

That was a bit rude, perhaps, but the meanest thing I ever said was right after 9-11. We had a largely ethnic crowd in my Starbucks, and it came out in the paper that Muhammed Atta, the guy who flew the plane into the south tower, had been a more-or-less regular customer over the summer. Unfortunately, this news brought in a whole slew of self-styled vigilantes who would come in to hassle any customer who looked foreign, and I was pretty merciless to these guys. One guy held up a picture of Atta (and of his cohorts, who was also in town) and moaned "I saw him one time... and I let him slip through my fingers!" ("You can tell me," I said, leaning in and whispering. "Are you Batman?")

The worst, however, was a guy who came in, pointed at some middle eastern fellows (who were there every day and rather friendly) at an outside table. "You've got a bunch of terrorists in here, you know," he grunted. "I'm gonna go outside and get all of their drivers licenses, so when THEY blow up a building, I can sell my story to TV! I don't know why you still let 'em in here!"
"I'm sorry sir," I said, "but we're not profiling againt middle eastern customers. But we are protesting against idiots, so I'm afraid you'll have to leave."
I then refused to serve him, and he eventually left (I noticed he didn't bug any of the others on his way out - I'd've called the cops if he did). It was a mean thing to say.
But I'm glad I said it, and I'd say it again.