The Customer Is Not Always Right

Our newest Roundtabler, Atul, has a problem. And he's not keeping it to himself anymore. He's mad as hell, and he's going to blog about it! OK, maybe not "mad" so much as "curious." What the hell is wrong with customer service these days? The phrase "it's hard to find good help these days" could apply to service professionals of all types, from coffee baristas to bookshop owners.

Nothing brings this quandry to life better than the scene in High Fidelity when an older man asks for a drippy, schmaltzy record to give to his daughter as a gift and the "too cool for school" employee (played by Jack Black who, let's face it, is too cool for school) yells at him for being an out-of-touch idiot (which, let's face it, he was).

Having worked in retail for five years myself, I can say not every customer is some innocent victim of a sales associate's vicious snobbery. People lose their temper over the most ridiculous things - there was the customer on the phone who yelled at me, then hung up on me because I wouldn't send her merchandise for free, and the one who insisted I lay out 40 different styles of aprons across the entire sales counter so she could choose which one she wanted (this was at a cooking store). When I was ringing a customer up, she told me to stop talking because she was in a hurry and then got mad when she found out I hadn't mentioned there was a sale going on. And then there was the couple that started yelling so loudly at a co-worker that another customer suggested we call the police. Over time, a worker in the retail industry could develop a hardened, blase attitude towards customers in general due to the actions of a few - how to put this delicately? - "crazies."

So grab a drink (but be nice to the bartender!) and head on over...