A Place In Hell

Last night, as I was cleaning up the mess made by a tornado of customers looking for Christmas gifts, I had to skirt one corner of the store where a man was sitting with a gigantic pile of books. This man was not a customer, he never buys anything in the store. He uses us as a library, and if we dare to question that, he complains to management. He knows we can't stop him from what he wants to do, so he builds a pile of books 40 deep and sits there among them until 1 minute before closing, then saunters out.

As a co-worker and I attacked his pawed-over pile, I remarked, “There's a place in hell for people like that.” She laughed. She works in the cafe, and has her own brand of monsters-pretending-to-be-customers to deal with. In the cafe, people sit down with magazines and books they haven't paid for (and spill coffee on them). They conduct loud, obnoxious phone conversations, eat most of the food they ordered and then demand a refund because it wasn't prepared to their satisfaction, steal tips out of the jar when the barista's back is turned, reach over the counter and grab pastries under the same circumstances – the list goes on and on.

My husband seems to attract a particular type of monster where he works. He calls them Little Old Ladies From Hell. They are the ones who want to tell you their whole life stories while you try to help them find books that are no longer in print. They stand in front of a long line of people and count the money out in dimes, nickels, pennies – then just as they're about to leave, remember that they haven't used their frequent shopper's card and want to return the purchase and start all over. And isn't there a coupon? But young man, my printer doesn't work. I'm sure the coupon was for 50% off. You say this week's coupon is 30%? Oh no, I'm sure mine was 50%.

And while we're on the subject of coupons, what about the lady in the mink coat who printed out 10 copies of the coupon that specifically says 1 item, 1 per customer, and wants to do 10 separate transactions? Or the guy with the expired coupon who says, “Are you trying to tell me you can't override that and just give me the damned coupon?” Or the Little Old Lady From Hell (with her piles of pennies) who bursts into tears because she can't use the expired 40% coupon on the $2.99 sale book she wants. And you twist yourself into knots trying to help her because you assume she must be living on Social Security. And you help her out to her car (because she bought 20 sale books with 20 1-use-only coupons), expecting that she must drive some aging wreck, and you discover that she's driving a brand-new Hummer. And she clips your car as she drives away.

These are the monsters who should be bound for hell, where they will suffer for eternity for their crimes against humanity. Yet when I try to imagine their punishments, I find myself pitying the devil. Because he will strive mightily to show them the error of their ways, and they won't get it. They will thwart his rules just as skillfully as they thwart ours. No coupon he devises will phase them. He may design a corner with a chair full of spikes, in a cloud of unbearable stench, stocked with books covered in slime and feces, and the freebee-reader guy will plant himself there and read until 1-minute before hell is supposed to close.

It won't be long before the devil realizes that he shouldn't punish these folks. He should hire them. Of COURSE there's a place in hell for these monsters – they're FROM hell. No one is more talented at torment than they are. They exist to remind us that life is full of prickles. By their example, we learn how NOT to behave.

So I clean up the pile of books and put them away. I patiently work my way through 10 transactions so the rich lady can get 40% off everything. I listen to the Little Old Lady From Hell as she tells me that the out-of-print book she wants just has to be available, because every book that was ever published is still out there, and I can order it for her if I just look long enough. It's not up to me to punish these folks, or point out to them that they're rotten. I'm not getting paid very much, but I am getting paid. If my company is willing to let these folks waste their resources and time, so be it.

I'll do my job. The devil is going have to look after his own.

Whoda Thunkit

When the bean counters at the brick & mortar retail giants look at data in order to decide what customer service protocol ought to be, there’s something they always fail to factor in. I’ll call it the Overly Helpful Approach. It’s a side effect of the slavish concept that the customer is always right, an attitude that seems logical on its face until you really examine the consequences of that approach. When you believe the customer is always right, you feel compelled to do everything that customer asks you to do. Once again, this seems logical. But in the field, here are a couple of things that happen.

Thing One: the customer wants everything for free. In the book biz, that means the customer returns everything she buys after she’s read it. Or she complains that she’s been mistreated, and therefore should get an item for free (which she will later return for credit). Or she’ll run your sales staff ragged finding books she wants and then sit down with them and jot notes or read novels all day, then leave them in an untidy pile for them to re-shelve. This is a common thing, and there is an equation to account for the losses caused by this behavior, but those actual losses are hard to track. No one is counting the loss of wages paid helping people who have no intention of buying, or the wear & tear of the particular books used and then ultimately returned as "damaged," or the loss of sales of items that might be purchased by other customers if someone weren’t reading them in a corner.

And now that the economy isn’t doing too well, and more people are pinching pennies than ever, customers are even more likely to commit theft-of-services. Likewise managers are terrified of offending any of them, so the freeloaders are becoming more confident and outrageous than ever.

Thing Two: you have a knowledgeable, well-trained staff, and people use them to research stuff they want to buy and then buy it somewhere else. One good example of this was the Listen-On-Demand service we used to have at the book chain where I work. For years, people could come in and ask us to open CDs so they could hear them. The logic was that once people heard this wonderful music, they would buy it.

Less than 10% of them did so – at least, from us. They demanded to hear albums, sometimes they even pretended they were going to buy them (they’d be returned to me at the end of the day in recovery), but they were actually using us to preview stuff they would then buy from discount retailers. Often they would be looking for obscure songs I would help them track down, or classical music they had no knowledge of, and I would tell them what it was and what albums it was on. I did this because they pretended they were going to buy it from us. Once again, this loss was written into the equation as part of the cost of doing business. But the actual loss was hard to track.

Now that my company no longer carries much music, in stores or on its website, this doesn’t happen too much anymore. But we do plenty of research for people in books they never buy from us. I had one lady walk in recently and say, "I’m looking for books to download to my Kindle. Can you recommend anything?"

I said no. "We aren’t connected with amazon, Ma’am, I can’t advise you what to buy from them."

"Oh," she was quick to assure me, "I’m going to buy some paperbacks too."

But she dumped every paperback I handed her after taking note of the title. Now people who want advice about books they intend to download from amazon are figuring out they shouldn’t tell us so, though they’re perfectly willing to use us for information. After all, it says INFORMATION right over the desk, right? So isn’t it our job to tell them what they want to know?

Meanwhile, we’re fighting to stay afloat, and our managers are scrambling to become MORE helpful. We’re so damned helpful, we’re downright obnoxious. We’ll pounce on you the moment you walk in the door, and when you actually do buy something we’ll brow-beat you into buying an additional item. Because we want you to come back, right?

I’d like to suggest something outrageous. The customer is NOT always right. Sometimes the customer is as wrong as he can be. Even if he’s not a douchebag, a crook, or a scammer, sometimes he doesn’t have a right to get what he’s demanding. He DOES have a right to expect courtesy, patience, and your time and attention. And he deserves to have you err on the side of customer service, to expect the most liberal application of your policies. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, that he should receive the best possible service in the hope that you’ll prove it’s worth it to shop at your joint. But when he proves to you that he has no intention of ever paying you for anything, that in fact he’s going to keep costing you money, his rights run out.

There’s one last cost that’s hard to track. Right now, the bean counters are trying to figure how they can charm, chide and cajole you into buying stuff. And that’s fine, but they also need to figure how to keep you from returning what you’ve bought. And at the same time, they have to figure the cost of bugging you too much, of pouncing on you and refusing to let you go until you’ve listened to sales pitches you didn’t want to hear and had additional items suggested ad nauseam. Those of you out there who actually buy stuff and keep most of what you buy have a right to complain if this bugs you. But please, don’t yell at the sales clerk. Ask to talk to management, or call them, or write to them. Make sure you tell them the sales staff did a good job, you just don’t like the policy. Mention that you like a peaceful, low-key shopping experience, not a song-and-dance routine.

Otherwise folks – if my employer survives the plague of freebee-demanders and the wretched economy, they’re going to decide we survived because we insisted on greeting you the moment you walked in the door, and addressing you by name, and suggesting additional items, and pushing the book du jour on you (without having the slightest clue what you actually like to read), and rattling off a long, baffling speech every time you call, and god knows what else they dream up. You actually do have an effect when you give them feedback about customer service.

Unfortunately, that’s another thing the freebee demanders have figured out. They have no qualms whatsoever about making demands, or about criticizing the staff that just bent over backward to help them find something. Since they’re willing to provide the feedback, they’re the ones who have the most effect on customer service policy.

And they’re not even customers.

Count that, Bean Boys.