Annals of a Bookstore Manager

My Four Pet Peeves

Retail is both an easy job and a difficult one. In order to maximize profit, most managements will expect a constant growth in sales (partially due to inflation, partially due to squeezing every drop of money out of the market), often a minimal number of hours from the staff (I have yet to met the manager who wants to give out hours as opposed to taking the them away), and they want you to be happy about being underpaid and overworked. This is not accurate in all cases, mind you, even if I pretend it is, but it is not a bad rough guideline as to where the new paradigms are shifting. Managers aren't bad people, but money has very strict rules it likes to play by.

If I were to say that 99% of customers are nice, reasonable, and a pleasure to work with; I would probably be underestimating the number. The problem with retail, and where most ultimately fail, is that portion of a percent that is above and beyond the call of duty to work with. These are people who want you to open your store early, or reopen after close. These are people who demand returns for reasons of "I paid too much for it, then wore it, and didn't like". Most of the time, it is not what they are asking for, exceptions exist for every rule as a retailer you have to learn how to overcome these exceptions, but the way they ask for it. If a customer is going to be a complete ass, chances are they are not going to start out pleasant. They are going to come in screaming. Sometimes they will insult you right off the bat, slam things, threaten you with Better Business Bureau. You will have them say things like "Give the number for your regional manager in case you don't do what I want..." and you are expected to work with them. These "worst" customers are paranoid, oppurtunistic, will try for any and all loopholes, and luckily rare.

But anyone can complain about the assholes of the world. It is like starting an organization who wants to let the world know that killing random people is wrong. Most agree with you without even needing to be told. This article is not to enlighten you to how bad the "worst" can be. This is to talk about those customers who are normally quite reasonable, but occasionally do things that drive me nuts. Some of these things are "unfair" for me to say, but that is the nature of webpages, eh?

Pet Peeve #1: The Penny Counter

Somedays, I'll say to myself "I swear, the next old lady who hands me a dime and twenty-six pennies is going to get my metal...". And it usually is old ladies, who, based on my experiences, carry about eight pounds of spare copper in their purse. My mom can attest to this. Some of my earliest memories are a purse full of pennies and lint, with the faint smell of menthol cigarettes. I have no idea if they save them up specifically for me, or it just feels like it, but just about every day there will be two who will take five minutes to count out some enormous number of pennies. Pennies are legal tender, and they often don't do it if there is a line, but somehow it just feels annoying. This one I admit I should grow up on, a little.

Pet Peeve #2: The No Touchie Money Transfer

Not "no touchie" per se, but this is probably one of the most common things. People hand checks to you. They hand credit cards to you. They place cash on the counter, sometimes kind of far away. I do not kow if this is because they have seen gangster movies where you money is sat down and walked away from. I do not know if they are afraid of spilling it. But, nine times on the ten, they are not going to hand you cash or coins. They are going to lay it down and then step back from it.

You are not allowed to do the same thing in return. You should not event THINK about doing the same thing. They will get angry. They want the money to be placed in their hand (in a twist, when you return credit cards, they often don't mind if you sit that down in front of them instead of handing it directly).

The strangest thing is how common this is. The vast majority of customers play by this rule. Even if you reach for the money they will move it back (at least some of them have). They want to lay it down before you can get to it.

It adds time to the transaction, often requires some degree of fingernail to pick up the coins, and feels a little dehumanizing. And, it seems really, really pointless.

Pet Peeve #3: The Pushy Starters

Stereotypically, you hear of people who don't want to leave when the store is closed. These CAN be annoying, but it seems to me that most people who participate in such behavior tend to only do it when enabled by the store. Stores that have to enforce a fairly strict closing time (such as mall stores) have the problem much less than those who grill their workers with "never ask a customer to leave".

For me, strangely, the opposite is true. What honestly bugs me is when the person pushes past me while I am trying to open the front of store. Partially, it just seems really rude to shove someone to the side while they are placing displays or moving tables into place. Partially, it is due to the inevitable "last checklist" that you have to go through and are denied when someone starts this behavior. Mostly, I think it has to do with the fact that these people are always looking to return something or looking for something that we invariably do not carry.

There have been several mornings where I have been shoved into a table just to tell someone "no, the hardcover title coming out next week is not out in paperback, yet".

Pet Peeve #4: The Customer Is Always Right

As a retail worker, my job is not essential. People ultimately could make their own or do without. My job is to offer a convenience and a service to people. This means, most of the time, and within reason, my job is to make people want to buy things from me that they could get elsewhere. Part of it is my style of handling peole. Part of it is the nature of my business (discount, independent bookstore).

But what I cannot stand is the use of the phrase "the customer is always right". I have yet to see it by a person that actually was right, and I think this is why they use it. They pull it out like a trump card. "Oh, I'm being an asshole and misunderstood the posted rules, well, the customer is always right, aHA!" In fact, most complaints I have seen have been due to a misunderstanding, or a expectation that was unjustified.

Besides the ironic usage, I think it honestly annoys me because there is a general trend to treat retail workers as low level service personnel. Frankly, most of the time, a good retail work can do a lot of good to help you where you need, and will be something of an expert. Despite this, I see my fellow retail workers get called liars, told they have no idea what something is (when they were in the right), and shouted out to "use the computer because you don't know what you are talking about". I have seen people smirk when they are greeted, and then go out of their way to not return a greeting. And it seems, despite the fact that retail work still stands as some of the best, most available and flexible work for high school and college students, that people are treating it more and more like a second tier job. How a person who sits around and answers the phone and puts off important decisions is inherently better, I do not know.

But, mark my words, retailers are soon to be grouped in with "fast food workers" and "janitors" as quasi-essential jobs that people try to pretend are not doing them any good.

By the way, I could write an entire article on this last peeve alone, but I will let that stay for another day, and end this here.