Cell Phones and Know-It-Alls

This week I had the pleasure of experiencing two more of my favourite customers. However, unlike my previously-catalogued super-best-friends, these two don't benefit from occasionally pleasing me. Indeed, they fall exclusively into the latter category of my definition. In fact, they can be categorized as such rather nicely - literally and figuratively. Long ago, I resigned myself to the fact that my personality doesn't allow me to be an overt arse to my clientele. I enjoy the subtleties in life, and sticking it to lousy customers is no exception.


As an aside, I pride myself on the following:

Amusing Anecdote of the Day:
While working for my previous employer (a lesser-known photofinishing joint), I had the pleasure of being shaped into the crotchety cynic you find me as today. In fact, I can credit that job for giving me the reasons and corpus to develop and study my thesis on the different types of retail customers. On one particular eve, I had been working with an uncharacteristically large workload. The shop was ten minutes away from closing time, and I still had to shut down all our expensive cancer generators (they also happened to produce decent prints - who knew?). Alas, I was tethered to the cash counter courtesy of a woman who was unhappy with her enlargement. I had already had to endure her onslaught of complaints about how unfair a closing time of 9pm was. What a discriminatory practice that we didn't keep a light on for her 24/7 in case she decided 4:00am was an appropriate time to complain about the quality of her enlargements! Add to this the fact that it was the third reprint of this particular photo I had done and the customer was still humming and hawing with a look on her face that expressed either deep confusion or deep contemplation (unlikely the latter). I was tired. I wanted to go home. So when she started to tell me how the print was still no good and it must be my fault since she had Photoshop* and wanted me to reprint it darker for her, I expressed my sentiments thusly:

"No."

I told her to take her pick of one of the three she had. She reluctantly did. Then came the part where I could actually feel the parts of my brain responsible for higher-level thought liquefy:

"What are you going to do with the others?"

Seriously. After making me redo her print enough times that the image was seared into my retinas, she's suddenly concerned about those two copies which only seconds ago were below her 'I-own-Photoshop' standards. My reply, of course, was that I would shred them as per standard procedure. The rest proceeded as such:

She: "Well, can I have them?"
Me: "You'll have to pay for them."
She: "But they're mine."
Me: "No, they're not. You didn't want them"
She: "But if they're garbage, just give them to me."
Me: "You want them?" (As I ring her up for all of them)
She: "No, I'm not paying for them. They're no good."
Me: "ALRIGHT THEN."

So I tore them into bits in front of her.

Word to the confused: if you don't like your meal at a restaurant and want it replaced, you don't expect to eat both the unsatisfactory food and the replacement dish, while only paying for one. Same here, just less edible.

She stared mouth agape at me as I did this, then proceeded to try to berate me. I cut her off by telling her I had to close and would be more than happy to make some reprints the following day if she required more. She made threats about notifying my manager...notifying my manager that I didn't give away products for free upon request. Be my guest!

Never heard back from her.

Therefore, with the basis for this post in place and without further ado, I present the following two more Categories of Customer:

The Chatterbox
One of the worst things about the glory of technology is that its evolution always outstrips common understanding thereof. Cell phones are one of the worst offenders. Everyone has one now, but the vast majority of people haven't any more of a clue as to proper etiquette when using one than I have an idea of why Lady Gaga is at all popular. Worse yet is many care about cell phone etiquette as little as I do about what's-her-face.

I can't blame them entirely. Much of the masses are devoid of that oh-so-elusive common sense to which we often allude - enough so that I find myself more and more frequently questioning the validity of the term. Soon enough it'll be a humerously ironic phrase to throw at a friend who does something silly ("You signed the ransom note with your name and return address? Now that's common sense!"). Because of this, I can't assume that many people would realize there are differences between home phones and cell phones aside from the fact that one is portable and one isn't.

So as a lesson to these folk, let me clarify a few things in order from most to least forgivable:

1. Don't answer a call while talking to a staff member about a question you asked. You don't answer the phone in the middle of dinner with a guest you invited over. Worse yet, don't place a call.
2. Don't place or take a call while cashing out. We need to converse. I need to tell you your total, ask you how many bags you need, ask you how you're paying, and let you know if your card didn't go through. Unless of course it's fraudulent, then I hope you have your lawyer on the line.
3. When you're in the store and feel the need to convey a verbal account of the state of your surroundings and whether or not Jerome hooked up with Lupe, please do so at an acceptable volume. In language you may better understand: use your inside voice. As much as I love blog-fodder, other shoppers don't.
4. And for crying out loud, do not approach the counter yammering on your phone and expect to be served. I don't approach you blathering away on my cancer-box and pretending to help you. If you are looking to engage in a conversation, I need to know that. People who approach me on their cell phones are left alone by me to continue their conversations until such time as they see fit to let me know they're serious about talking to me by hanging up the phone and talking to me.

This last point is head and shoulders above the others. Too many people will approach a staff member either on their handset or headset and do one of two things: attempt to mime their request while continuing their conversation (i.e. point at their watch, point in the lab, or make a camera action with their hands). Some will simply stand at the counter and make eerie eye contact while doing nothing. I reply in kind. It's even better if I'm having a conversation with a coworker, as I'll continue to keep eye contact with the Chatterbox.

Alternatively (and more commonly), a Chatterbox will approach and without warning address me in the exact same tone and volume as they are addressing their familiar on the other end of the tube. As a fun exercise, let me recreate a common occurrence of this:

"Yeah. Yeah. No, I told him. Yeah, I told him that was a stupid thing to do. Seriously. Well what do you expect? Are they ready? Well, good. He can sleep on the curb for all I care."

Did you spot it? If you said, "Are they ready," good for you!

Notice how this is a question which requires a response - or in this case, since I have no clue who you are (because you're the type of person who assumes you were the only person to develop photos all day, so yeah we'll remember you), this is a question which requires a question. Now, I'm expected to somehow slot that reply in to your one-sided conversation and then wait patiently until my timeslice rolls around so you can throw another camouflaged set of words at me?

Forget it. You get one of two reactions:

A) I continue to keep my mouth shut you until you make an effort to pretend you're talking to me.
B) I declare war on the fact that you're on the phone and ask as many questions as I can in an effort to derail your conversation.

Exceptions to my rage: those who apologise. If you show an effort that you're wrapping up the call and then apologise for it, I love you. Let's do lunch. You have successfully applied common sense to cell phone conversations. +1 social skills.

The Quizmaster
Easily one of the most frustrating types of people anyone can encouter anywhere. I guarantee you hospitals double the dose of magic gas as soon as one of these is recognized - which is not hard, mind you. And for that, I'm thankful.

Quizmasters are almost always alone, unless they're trying to show off their "skills" on a doomed date. They always advertise an air of confidence smugness while examining any products on display. These types of customers are usually found wandering the aisles of high-tech retail operations, because furniture store stock doesn't exactly beg a whole lot of questions.

Quizmasters will never initiate contact. They will wait until a staff member approaches them. They will then open with an innocuous comment like, "I was just browsing this high-end camera." Before the staff member has a moment to acknowledge this and ask if they need help (or more likely escape, since any self-respecting retail worker will have recognized a Quizmaster by this point), out come the big guns in the form of either very complex questions ("I know that cameras of this class tend to have a very high pixel density due to the small sensor size found in chassis of these dimensions. What is the chromatic aberration like on the 1/2.3" CCDs?"), or a statement about the item's features that has clumsily been reworded into a question ("This camera has nineteen different shooting modes. Do you find that's the case as well?").

If you've ever heard a fire alarm go off at a store without seeing any fire, this is the reason why.

Seasoned employees will recognize these types of customers and realize that they're only there to display their ability to memorize vast quantities of useless garbage and seem smart about it. Seasoned employees will answer one question and in the same breath excuse themselves to do something else, knowing full well that Quizmaster never, ever buy anything. Those poor retail larvae, however, often get trapped answering question after question, nodding and affirming this person's infinite knowledge of minutae. Some people even claim to be able to see the soul being sucked out of the employee.

Falling loosely under this category, one can also find simple contrarians - usually teenagers who have had their first drink from the Well of Infinite Knowledge (the Internet to most of us). Despite the fact that I am trained and paid to know about the products I sell, I evidently don't know as much as someone who just got AOL.

Kids these days.

Quote of the day:
Clerk: "Your photos will be ready in a couple of hours."
Customer: "How many is 'a couple?'"
Clerk: (slight pause) "...Traditionally, two."
Customer: "What?! That many?!"
Clerk: [Facepalm]

*Equivalent argument: I own a turntable, therefore I am an amazing DJ.