Connect
Sponsors
Currently Reading
-
Terms
The Book Lady's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviews and articles posted here are property of The Book Lady's Blog and are not to be posted elsewhere without permission. Please contact me if you wish to post any of my work, or any excerpt thereof, in any other location or format.
Miscellaneous
Meet Bookrageous!
Technical Stuff
Design Credits
Dec
22
Book Review: The Customer is Always Wrong edited by Jeff Martin
2008 at 9am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
If you’ve ever worked retail, wondered what it would be like to work retail, felt sorry for the poor sales person dealing with a horrible customer, been the horrible customer yourself, or enjoyed my Adventures in Bookselling series, The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles is for you. Editor Jeff Martin brings us a hilarious collection of essays by writers who “have done their time behind the counter and lived to tell their tales.”
I chuckled my way through many of these essays and found myself nodding in agreement and recognition more often than I’d like to admit. Though I do have enough crazy customer stories to go around, I’ve always thought I was lucky to work in a bookstore, in an environment where at least most of the customers have a certain level of education and intelligence and generally know how to behave in public and how to speak to other human beings. That’s a big assumption to make, and I’m often proved wrong (you know what they say about assuming….), but reading this book confirmed that I am pretty lucky as customers go.
In the introduction Martin says,
In all honesty, my retail life has been, for the most part, free of excessive humiliation and degradation (note the word excessive). But there are common threads that run throughout the industry. No matter what product you’re selling or where you happen to live, there is one aspect of retail that is the same the world over: assholes.
He couldn’t be more correct.
In “Sears, Sbarro’s, Sayonara,” Wade Rouse details his experiences working for Sears one summer during college. Though hectic, stressful, and not quite what he expected, the experience helped him develop skills that would eventually lead to a successful PR career.
Decades before the term “multitasking” was in vogue, I owned it. In retail, you see, what you are hired to do and what you actually do are two entirely different things…
I was officially hired to work in men’s wear and children’s wear, assisting customers with their purchases, helping them locate an item, working the cash register. I was not told that I would also serve as a counselor, shrink, liar, babysitter, and construction worker.
He also gives a very important bit of advice: “Don’t take your job too seriously, or you’ll go crazy.”
Elaine Viets tells us in “Minimum-Wage Drama” of the many retail jobs she’s worked as research for her Dead-End Job mystery series. Her encounters with customers, particularly during her time as a bookseller (yay!), gave her a unique perspective and occasionally caused her to examine her own behavior as a customer.
Working on the other side of the cash register gave me a different view of the world. Take the customer who said, “I’m looking for a book. I can’t remember the name. I don’t know the author. The cover was blue.”
How often had I asked for a book in that same vague way? I used to say something like, “It was a mystery, it had ‘death’ in the title, and I think the author was interviewed on NPR.”
One of the funniest pieces in the collection, “Another Day at the Video Store,” by Kevin Smokler, chronicles the author’s experiences working in a San Francisco independent video rental store. An overbearing manager who calls to check in on him (and actually asks if he’s plugged in the phone as they’re talking on it), an exhibitionist customer who wishes to make known his love of porn and “beautiful asses,” a couple battling over late fees in their divorce settlement, and vague customer requests all make life at the video store monotonous yet entertaining.
In “Not Included with Display,” Michael Beaumier describes working in the home department of a major department store and delivers an opening line that is perhaps the best description I’ve ever read of retail:
It’s been my experience that people don’t have the slightest idea what they want, and will stop at nothing to get it.
In “Other Things in Mind,” James Wagner discusses the fantasies he and his coworkers create for the elaborate ways they’d like to kill the customers at their hardware store, and he calls out the problem of “reverse parenting” caused by that popular phrase “the customer is always right.” The phrase
is well known to the public, and it is used daily. It rewards people who raise enough of a ruckus about something, no matter how asinine they are, who ask for extra favors, who expect extra favors, at almost every turn. When they don’t get their way, my colleague explained, they resort to babylike behavior, throwing fits. And then the company congratulates the fit-throwing by doing anything in its power to calm the infant-customer down, until they are satisfied. The adult customer, like the infant baby, soon learns that if he or she cries enough, he or she will get what he or she wants.
This is such a spot-on assessment of situations that happen on an almost daily basis that I had to read it several times over. It should be printed out and distributed to retail managers worldwide and used to start a revolution. It is ridiculous to reward horrible behavior with discounts and exceptions to the rule, and it’s about time we stop teaching people that it is OK to behave that way. Right on, James Wagner!
In other pieces, Victor Gischler discusses working as a hearing aid salesman, Gary Mex Glazner reveals that he once tackled a thief who stole a $15 tulip from his floral store, and Timothy Bracy writes about the introduction of a sinister new character at his muffin and coffee shop, descriping the decline of a once booming business. In “How Swede It Was,” Randall Osborne blames his family’s restaurant (and its rich, fattening foods) for the deaths of several elderly customers, saying “To cope with needy oldsters isn’t so hard if you know you’re killing them off at the same time, like we did in my parents’ euthanasia shop.” Yes, you need to be a little twisted to appreciate it, but Osborne’s story is awfully funny.
As tends to happen with collections, some of the pieces in The Customer is Always Wrong are better than others. For the most part, the essays are funny, insightful, and thoroughly enjoyable, particularly if you’ve ever worked retail or wondered what it’s like. 3.75 out of 5.
Related posts:
- Book Review—Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists edited by Courtney E. Martin & J. Courtney Sullivan
- Book Review: For Keeps edited by Victoria Zackheim
- Book Review: My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
- Book Review: The Other Woman edited by Victoria Zackheim
- Book Review: Laid edited by Shannon T. Boodram
This is a book I can relate to. It sounds hilarious.
I have worked retail so I think I would enjoy this one.
Looking forward to getting started on this – glad you liked it.
Love it. The concept of the book and the review. I worked retail for many years and can relate to anyone that has ever had to deal with the less than ideal customer.
Ah, the unsung hero that is the customer service rep! The ridiculous amounts of tears, curses, long-winded stories and stupid questions to which we must be subjected! This looks like a good one, Rebecca. My sister wanted a similar book, Waiter Rant, for the holidays — all about the author’s adventures in the restaurant/service industry. Yep, I got it for her!
I’ll probably borrow it from her when she’s finished!
Har! I don’t think I need to read it now because you summarized it so well.
You know the editor’s a CRM somewhere out in Oklahoma? Reading this one now – light reading is essential for the holidays. Hit or miss but definitely enjoyable.
This one sounds funny, and I’ll bet you can relate to it! I love your Adventures in Bookselling posts, so I might give this book a try.
I think anyone working with the public would enjoy this one! You’re right, collections can have both hits and misses; sounds like *The Customer is Always Wrong* was more up than down.
I’d love to read this one – I’ll look for it.
This looks like fabulous great fun! I worked retail for more years than I’d like to admit and I’m sure I could find a thing or two to identify with within these pages! Thanks for sharing about it. I’ll be on the lookout!
Sounds like something I need to read having been there,done that. Thanks for the review.
Robin
[...] of The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles edited by Jeff Martin and 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene [...]
[...] at the Whistle Stop Cafe)49. Book Chatter (The Rest of Her Life)50. Book Chatter (The Soloist)51. Rebecca @ The Book Lady’s Blog (The Customer is Always Wrong)52. Rebecca @ The Book Lady’s Blog (84, Charing Cross Road)53. Becky (Girl Overboard)54. [...]