Wherein Bry meets a Mommie Dearest.

I see a lot of jackasses in the store. A lot of people treat the employees and their children horribly. It comes with the territory. People are assholes and the service/retail industry takes the brunt of it. But yesterday, I dealt with my worst customer yet.

I was called to the front on a supervisor call regarding the price of a book. I responded to find a tall, coltish girl with frizzy brown hair who was nervously shifting back and forth. She was on a cell phone and she had a stutter.

She bought The Great Gatsby, which we've sold a lot of because it is on the local school syllabus and the high schools in the area are broke so they require their students to buy their own books.

The website listed the book at $11, in store it is $15. The girl asked me why and I explained that our website advertises online sales we do not match in store and that it says that on the site. She handed me her cell phone and asked me to talk to her mother. Then she apologized and turned away, head bent, like an abused animal. If she had a tail, it would have been between her legs.

Her mother was a real piece of work, verbally abusing me before I could explain what happened.

She was nasty, nasty, nasty. I was horrible. We were engaging in false advertising. I have horrible customer service, blah, blah, blah.

I explained the situation, was polite and respectful. She finally said to just send her daughter home and she would deal with it. As though her daughter was now at fault.

I gave the girl the phone back, she apologized a few more times and then limped out of the store.

The yelling and complaining was nothing new. But this poor girl was an utter mess. I can imagine she is verbally abused on a daily basis.

KS told me later that when she found out how much the book actually was, the girl said she did not want a receipt because she didn't want to take the receipt home.

On a related note, I love it when customers create an utter scene and scream and yell and then tell you your customer service skills are poor.

First, good customer service begins and ends with being polite and respectful, regardless of the end result. Second, I refuse to give you what you want just because you are yelling at me.

Yes, I am just a bookseller. But I am a human and you can suck it if you think I will let you treat me differently.