Jerks

The gift that keeps on giving

It shouldn’t have to be said, but it has to be said. Most customers are nice.

A nice customer is defined as someone who conducts their transaction and leaves. That’s all that needs to be done. And that’s nice. Someone who chats about anything pleasant, like closing time, is a very nice customer. An amazing customer might be someone who practically puts on a stand up routine, with jokes and laughter. And if you’re lucky, you might get the manager of a local pizza parlor who gives you his business card with “free pizza, any size” written on it. That’s an unbelievable customer.

Then there are the jerks.

Jerks are rarely young. I don’t know why this is, but young people are usually pleasant enough. They might have more energy than you’ll ever possess again for the rest of your life, but that’s nothing to hold against them. Being a true jerk doesn’t have that kind of energy. A jerk requires a heavy world weariness that allows them to tell another exactly what they’re thinking, even if it’s a total stranger.

Jerks are the ones we all talk about. Sometimes we laugh about them, but usually we’re too angry to do that until the thirteenth or fourteenth retelling of their deeds. They’re kind of immortal, because they get talked about forever. Some people have even been known to make comic strips about them.

But, hey, jerks are the juicy part of retail stories. Any time people find out that you interact with the public for a living, that will be one of their first questions.

“Oh, you help customers? Do you get any, you know, nasty people?”

“Hahahaha!” you reply, with a low, primitive tone that comes not from your vocal cords, but emotional scarring. It’s at this point that your listener either backs away or leans in to hear more.

Psychologists will tell you that jerks are not mad at you, but at themselves. They see their own failings and imperfections around them all the time, and that pent up bitterness will escape by being nasty to the very people who are trying to help them.

And we will tell the psychologists that we are not mad at ourselves, but at the jerks.

Convincing a jerk that you are in charge is never empowering. They look you up and down as if to say, “You?” Then they proceed with a complaint so pedestrian that you wish you could farm it out to somebody who started two days ago, in case they need the practice. Most of these people are taking up valuable time when it’s busy, so the fun is in getting rid of them quickly.

That’s why every business needs a Tabby.

The art of saying nothing is essential. My greatest experience was with a man who lost his mind right at closing time and chewed us all out. He went on about how he was never wasting his time at our business ever again, and he marched off to make his dramatic exit out the door.

I said nothing.

He banged against the door because I had locked it. We were closing after all. I had to walk over and get out my keychain, look for the correct key, continue to say nothing, realize I had the wrong keychain, walk silently back to the counter, gather the correct keychain, walk back to the door, keep saying nothing, find the correct key, unlock the door, and open it so he could leave.

I ruined his dramatic exit.

Some jerks are dumb. You would think that would be a consistent theme, and it sometimes is, but usually intelligence isn’t the problem. They’re just jerks.

I’ve received a lot of phone lectures. The last guy who chided me pointed to the phone in my hand and called it “your bible”.

I told him I was reading The New Yorker.

I went on. I said that I used to get complaints for reading books or magazines, but now that they could all be on one handy device, the complaint is about the phone. I would never bring a copy of The New Yorker to work, because it would get all wrinkled. I like to keep them for the covers.

I think I completely ruined his phone rant because he just walked away.

What’s going on with the supply chain is completely out of the control of whoever is helping you but that won’t stop jerks from putting their hands on their hips and using words like “ridiculous”, or “so ridiculous”, and even “absolutely ridiculous”.

Jerks need a thesaurus.

Some jerks are able to realize that they are being jerks and posses the capability of stopping their actions. The technical name for this type of person is Self Aware Transformative Jerk.

There is a routine to addressing a jerk. There’s a mental list of things that you say, things that apply to everyone but you don’t have to say them because most people aren’t jerks, and the more quickly and professionally you go down the list, the sooner the jerk will realize that it’s over.

In most cases.

The person who is over the top crazy about something they completely misunderstand is almost relieving. There’s no residual anger that takes time to go away. You can leap right to the laughing stage when recounting the encounter. These customers should be thanked for giving us the gift of conversational material.

In many bathrooms, there’s a little sign that reads something like “If these bathrooms need attending, please tell a team member”. One regular customer at a small store I worked at took this sign to heart and would whisper to me, reciting the sign verbatim, “Your bathroom needs attending" every time she visited the store. I’d always go into the bathroom, note that it was cleaner than most public bathrooms I’ve seen, and leave. I never learned what she thought was so dirty.

A lot of people like this strip. That guy is based on a real customer and I think I have PTSD from him, because I’m going to leave it here and back away. What a jerk.