Why, you might legitimately ask, do I have so many problems with retail salespeople?
Is it because of the not-always sunny look on my face? My impatience? My impossibly high standards of customer service?
I think the answer is none of the above. The problem is karma.
My first job was as a video store clerk. I was 16 or so and had a lot of attitude. It wasn’t good attitude, either. It wasn’t positive attitude. It was Do-you-mind-I’m-trying-to-watch-The-Breakfast-Club-here kind of attitude.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Clerks you’ll have some kind of idea what a charmer I was behind the counter of that video store. I hated my customers and for no good reason other than they insisted on coming in and trying to rent videos. The nerve! Here I was, just trying to collect my minimum wage while watching teen cinema classics such as Porky’s, and these people refused to let me alone.
“Excuse me? But do you have that Woody Allen movie with Mia Farrow?”
(Sigh) “Which one?”
“The one where she has some sisters.”
“Hannah and her Sisters.”
“That’s it!”
(Bored) “It’s over there.”
I never got off my stool unless there was a good reason, such as it was on fire. I only recommended movies I liked. When the 65 year old couple came in looking for something for their 5 year old grandchild I had no trouble recommending Heathers.
And I was particularly intolerant of the WWF and kung fu crowds.
“You got that one where Bruce Lee kicks rocks?”
“How about that one where that guy jumps on that other guy and like, knocks him down?”
“No. We don’t have it.”
“Are you sure? Cause I think I saw it in here before.”
“No.”
The turning point at that job came for me when a man came in shortly before closing one night. Oh, how I hated the last-minute renters! Any luckless person who had the misfortune to come in in the last 30 minutes of business hours was treated to a particularly poor shopping experience. I was giving him my usual monosyllabic answers, dripping with barely concealed hostility, when he said, “Is there something wrong with you?”
“—?”
“Seriously. You’re really rude. Do you hate this job?”
“—!”
And that’s all it took. I was so embarrassed I GOT OFF MY STOOL and HELPED HIM FIND A MOVIE! And from that day forward I was a reformed retail worker. Okay, well, I was still a bit rude, intermittently, you know, depending on how my romantic life was going etc. But overall, I was much improved.
So here’s what I’ve realized about people like that charmless girl who works at the garden centre and refuses to answer my questions:
1. My questions are dumb.
2. She is just karmic payback in human form.
3. If she keeps it up I would be doing her a favour by saying:
“Is there something wrong? Because by god, you are intolerably rude…”