How to be a Customer: Lesson 5

It's really bloody late, and I should have gone to bed instead of playing a certain video game and making dinner. (Actually, what I really shouldn't have done was make the mixed cocktail that involved an energy drink... but they are so tasty...)

Hrm. Time for the final lesson, though it'll end up being the second. Nevermind. Huttah!

Lesson #5: No, that is not in stock... or even in print.

Remember how I mentioned, many days ago (all two both of them), that the customer should be able to ask any question, within reason? Well, welcome to the lesson that tells you to avoid the gray area between the reasonable and the un-. So, really, maybe the lesson title should be Stop asking me a slew of stupid freakin' time-consuming questions! That might get it across better.

Then again, maybe not. You are free to ask stupid questions. Hey, I have days where my brain goes numb. Usually they occur when there's a deadline, or when inane customers make me jam the pens into my ear... just to ease the pain...

Anyway. It's not the dumb or thoughtless questions that will anger the workers and throw a dead monkey into the gears of retail. It's the questions that you don't want answered. Oh, maybe you do want it answered, in theory... but your subconscious has already answered it for you. Any deviation from that desired answer results in the strange necessity to prove us wrong. Which, in turn, leads to us sawing off your foot in order to jam it down your throat.

This goes hand-in-hand with the first lesson. This time, it's not a matter of shooting the messenger, it's trying the tell the messenger he/she's wrong. It's like the citizens of the Exodus telling Moses that he must have gotten one or two of the Commandments wrong. We aren't the authority, ladies and gentlemen, we're just the intermediary.

Lesson #5 gets broken more than you might imagine. It happens when someone tells us that a game is already out (No, it doesn't even have a release date, and no, your cousin doesn't have it). It happens when we sell out of a hot new release (Weren't you the one who got annoyed when we mentioned reserving it?). It happens when customers ask for some no-name title that they saw on some local cable station when they were visiting their distant cousins five years ago, AND they only want it on VHS.

If you think we are mistaken, feel free to question us. But when we provide supporting examples to reinforce our assertion, don't think that your unbroken record of "never" being wrong is going to trump logic. If all else fails, we can all pitch in for a lobotomy. Maybe if you (surgically) forget that you're an arrogant asshole, the world will become that much better.

Today's Example: The subject for this lesson stopped into a retail store. After a number of minutes spent in fruitless search, he/she asked the employee for a certain movie title. The employee inquired as to the genre of this movie, since he/she had never come across it. Ever. After an indignant pause, the subject informed the employee that this great, wonderful, popular movie was a horror title, and he/she had seen it years ago, and it was great.

When the employee dutifully searched the database for said movie, he/she came across the title... which was long out of print (in either DVD/VHS). After an angry denial, the employee checked again. Again, he/she found that it was not something that was available for order, and it was definitely not in stock.

To this reveleation the customer threw up his/her hands, and started yelling in disbelief. How could such a store even call itself a movie place if it didn't have this obscure title on tape! After a few minutes of verbal degredation, the subject left the store, only to rant to anyone who might come within earshot. It's at that point that the employee believed in the Retail Fairy, in the vain hope that he/she might find a sawed-off shotgun beneath the counter.

Then again, this alleged customer doesn't come off nearly so stupid as the man who violently argued that, yes, there was a sequel to Patton. Meanwhile, the customer behind him is remembering Patton, especially the part where Gen. Patton dies. This waiting customer looks at the retail associate, and non-verbally expresses sympathy for the hapless associate.

Thank God for that customer.

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That's it. Final lesson done, missive over. I am so heading to bed.