--- phillip holmes <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://cathead9.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-record-store-ies.html
Read Lisa's blogs about Collectors (but not out loud--not for the squeamish or the easily offended): http://cathead9.blogspot.com/2007/02/my-old-job.html
http://cathead9.blogspot.com/2007/05/son-of-record-store-ies.html
By the way, that's not a picture of her on the page. I don't know who that guy is.
Yikes! I am scandalized. At least she did not say anything about a certain collector from Fort Worth who only has but one name and who used to carry large stacks of 78 rpms in multiple trips from the back room to the front counter.
Having to deal with the general public in any job is going to result in some amusing stores - and a few horror stories as well. I can only imagine that it would be all that much more so at a used/rare/vintage record store. Record collectors are anything but average people. And when a person is not average, they are either going to be BETTER than the average or they are WORSE than the average. I have no doubt at all that plenty of both kinds walked through their doors.
Of course, the very worst sort of customer is the person who thinks that just because he has made a $25 purchase, that gives him license to be boorish, rude and make demands that his whims, however outrageous, be instantly satisfied and that everyone essentially grovel to him. You can always spot such a person as they are always quick to proclaim "the customer is always right." Well, that sure isn't the case if the employee's time is more productivly spent helping other, more profitable customers or if givng into the demands would cost more than any profits one is likely to ever make from him in the future IF he even does repeat business in the future.
I had a strange co-worker once who, first thing every day, would buy a 60 cent pack of Pop Tarts from the break room vending machine. One day one of the Pop Tarts in his package was only half covered in frosting. Apparently either the production line stopped or the frosting ran out right as that Pop Tart passed under the frosting dispenser. So he called the 800 number on the package and spent about 45 minutes on the phone raising absolute HELL with the person on the other end. He ended up being transferred to supervisors and was still unhappy because all they would give him was a coupon for a replacement pack of Pop Tarts. That simply was not good enough and he stated that he would "not go away" until he "got satisfaction."
What somebody OUGHT to have done is tell him exactly where he can take his empty Pop Tart package and shove it - though, of course, the front line employees he was dealing with would most likely not have the authority to do so. My guess is that, after all of the various hands such a product passes through before it reaches the final consumer, the profit that the manufacturer of Pop Tarts makes on a single vending machine purchase has to be in the pennies. Even if the call center was outsourced to a place such as India, the company undoubtedly spent more money on wages to handle his call that would make in year of his daily vending macine purchases.
Bottom line, "the customer is always right" is valid ONLY to the degree that the customer actually continues to be a potential VALUE to one's business. My guess is that, at a record store, the threshold of where that point is for any random person who walks in the door off the street probably is not all that high - so my guess is such antics probably don't go very far in places like that.