oregonnerd: differing views

The Customer As An Idiot

July 25, 2008 at 8:29 pm Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking about this off and on for weeks, under various titles.  For now, we’ll confine it to this.

I seem to remember a time, not too long past, when I was actually treated as a valuable resource.  I’m scruffy, although I do have a tendency to bathe quite regularly (by scruffy I mean I resent having to dress beyond jeans and I will occasionally wear shirts with holes.  they are perfectly good shirts, after all).  I actually don’t dress that differently from most of the residents of the Rogue Valley.  More than that, the people behind the counters live in the Rogue Valley.  You don’t make twelve bucks an hour and commute forty miles one way too handily.  Especially when it’s a valley, so beyond a certain distance it’s up.  It’s like the SUV drivers confronted with pedestrians.  Those bastards walk too.

Then there was this strange trend that began pretty quickly and then infected everything.  At work, we were supposed to be polite but impersonal to the customers; it was quite analagous to the non-transference dictum of various disciplines.  The checker became a little more distant; it was a little more common to bag things yourself.  The ridiculous (at first) commercials about cash disturbing the flow of credit cards became more numerous.  The other person in the store, for that matter, became less possibly a source of anything but impedance and irritation.

And now it’s today.  The customer has become the necessary irritation (if only they could be dispensed with! think of the profits!)–or the fellow idiot in the aisles, blocking the way.  Which occasionally turns out to be my reflection, by the way.  At the checkout, you get nervous if you hit a wrong number on the PIN or god forbid pick the wrong option.  That last might back up the whole U.S. for days, you know.

–Glenn

Entry filed under: computers/tech, writing and thought. Tags: consideration, customer, customer as idiot, customer service, irritation, satire.