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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2rsOqzq:dotsandfoxes replied to your post “I got yet another Hot Business Tip here on phone etiquette– if you get…”
Ohhhh, those calls are the worst. The “life story in lieu of actually explaining what you want and/or listening to me when I tell you why what you want is not possible” thing happens to me all the time when I’m working reference at the library too.
Calls, or in-person, it’s hard to say. We used to have a higher percentage of regulars who were into that. For a while one of the women who worked here was… I don’t know how to put it, but she was like, Constitutionally Unable not to have two-hour conversations with people, and she drew in the worst people who wanted to come in and talk to her for hours and basically get therapy from her and it was always ostensibly about photography in some way but really, mostly, it wasn’t? And it was fucking awful. She had stalkers. I mean for real, stalkers. It was bad. People would look for her car, would call just to see if she picked up (so we had to answer the phone for her, that kind of thing, sometimes we had to hide her in the back room and lie and say her car was here because her boyfriend had picked her up to take her out for lunch, that kind of shit).
And she could never ever ever ever ever even say something like “my shift was over like an hour ago and i have to go” or “if I do not go do some work I will get fired” or “I promised i’d print an order by now so I have to go do it for when that customer gets back” or “I have to cover my coworker’s break now can we talk some other time” or, for the love of god, “it is inappropriate for you, a relative stranger, to tell me such things in a workplace environment” or “for the love of god, you should consult a professional therapist or possibly a priest about that, not a retail clerk”– she couldn’t even … like… look disinterested, or anything, she couldn’t do it, she had to appear genuinely engaged all the time no matter what, it was fucking horrible, she was like, actively encouraging these people, even though the instant they were gone she was like fuck what a waste of my life and said horrible things about them. It gave me a Complex, I tell you what. (I absolutely know she did the same thing to me, feigned interest and encouraged me in conversation only to later tell others what a boring piece of shit I was– I have receipts.)
She went nuts (when i say I have receipts…) and quit a few years back though, and so slowly most of those people have drifted away. Some of them continued to stalk her, though, which was goddamn terrifying.
anyway.
One of the services we offer, there’s another local shop that does just that– as it happens, 8mm film to DVD. And when I say local, I mean, like, a half a mile down the road. For years, we just outsourced ours to him, and marked it up, and it was fine and dandy and this was great, because as a more generalist shop we had a big market, and so he didn’t have to market much. But he got increasingly unstable and unreliable and would yell at us and just generally be really scary (oh, he stalked the woman I discussed above too, but only briefly, I’d forgotten about that). So we finally just bought our own machine and learned to do it, because we literally couldn’t rely on this guy and sort of feared for our lives, he was so extremely eccentric.
He’s still there. (He might be a money laundering operation of some kind because AFAIK nobody actually goes there. Occasionally a customer stumbles in and is like “who is that dude” and we’re like, sorry, don’t take it personally, we’ll just do the job, don’t worry.) His marketing materials– he has a flyer he hands out, and right on it, in bold font, is emblazoned, “NO STORIES”. It says, and this isn’t a direct quote but I swear this is what it says, “just drop your shit off and don’t tell me about it! Just leave it, and I’ll get it done for you fast and cheap! But don’t fucking tell me about it! Tell me a story and I’ll throw you out, I mean it!”
It’s not in those words but it is, I’m not lying, that exact sentiment. And NO STORIES is a direct quote. (And the customers who stumble into us usually do have stories, and usually were actually thrown out for telling them, so it’s not hyperbole, he means it. He told one sweet old lady whose photos I’ve been printing for years to, verbatim, “go fuck herself”, which shocked her quite badly and I had to console her. She just wanted to know what kind of process he used! I was like, ma’am, I would fight him for you, but the law frowns on it. I mean it, she’s a harmless sweet old lady whose photos I’ve printed for years and she has never breathed an unkind thought in her life. She was delighted to discover this was a service we now offered.)
So, sometimes, as customers are talking, the others of us will mutter “No stories!” under our breath.
This is why machines can’t take our jobs. Machines won’t listen to Mrs. Hattenschweiler’s fucking stories. Until they teach the machines to pretend (convincingly) to care, there will still be room for a few retail stores.
Ohhhh, those calls are the worst. The “life story in lieu of actually explaining what you want and/or listening to me when I tell you why what you want is not possible” thing happens to me all the time when I’m working reference at the library too.
Calls, or in-person, it’s hard to say. We used to have a higher percentage of regulars who were into that. For a while one of the women who worked here was… I don’t know how to put it, but she was like, Constitutionally Unable not to have two-hour conversations with people, and she drew in the worst people who wanted to come in and talk to her for hours and basically get therapy from her and it was always ostensibly about photography in some way but really, mostly, it wasn’t? And it was fucking awful. She had stalkers. I mean for real, stalkers. It was bad. People would look for her car, would call just to see if she picked up (so we had to answer the phone for her, that kind of thing, sometimes we had to hide her in the back room and lie and say her car was here because her boyfriend had picked her up to take her out for lunch, that kind of shit).
And she could never ever ever ever ever even say something like “my shift was over like an hour ago and i have to go” or “if I do not go do some work I will get fired” or “I promised i’d print an order by now so I have to go do it for when that customer gets back” or “I have to cover my coworker’s break now can we talk some other time” or, for the love of god, “it is inappropriate for you, a relative stranger, to tell me such things in a workplace environment” or “for the love of god, you should consult a professional therapist or possibly a priest about that, not a retail clerk”– she couldn’t even … like… look disinterested, or anything, she couldn’t do it, she had to appear genuinely engaged all the time no matter what, it was fucking horrible, she was like, actively encouraging these people, even though the instant they were gone she was like fuck what a waste of my life and said horrible things about them. It gave me a Complex, I tell you what. (I absolutely know she did the same thing to me, feigned interest and encouraged me in conversation only to later tell others what a boring piece of shit I was– I have receipts.)
She went nuts (when i say I have receipts…) and quit a few years back though, and so slowly most of those people have drifted away. Some of them continued to stalk her, though, which was goddamn terrifying.
anyway.
One of the services we offer, there’s another local shop that does just that– as it happens, 8mm film to DVD. And when I say local, I mean, like, a half a mile down the road. For years, we just outsourced ours to him, and marked it up, and it was fine and dandy and this was great, because as a more generalist shop we had a big market, and so he didn’t have to market much. But he got increasingly unstable and unreliable and would yell at us and just generally be really scary (oh, he stalked the woman I discussed above too, but only briefly, I’d forgotten about that). So we finally just bought our own machine and learned to do it, because we literally couldn’t rely on this guy and sort of feared for our lives, he was so extremely eccentric.
He’s still there. (He might be a money laundering operation of some kind because AFAIK nobody actually goes there. Occasionally a customer stumbles in and is like “who is that dude” and we’re like, sorry, don’t take it personally, we’ll just do the job, don’t worry.) His marketing materials– he has a flyer he hands out, and right on it, in bold font, is emblazoned, “NO STORIES”. It says, and this isn’t a direct quote but I swear this is what it says, “just drop your shit off and don’t tell me about it! Just leave it, and I’ll get it done for you fast and cheap! But don’t fucking tell me about it! Tell me a story and I’ll throw you out, I mean it!”
It’s not in those words but it is, I’m not lying, that exact sentiment. And NO STORIES is a direct quote. (And the customers who stumble into us usually do have stories, and usually were actually thrown out for telling them, so it’s not hyperbole, he means it. He told one sweet old lady whose photos I’ve been printing for years to, verbatim, “go fuck herself”, which shocked her quite badly and I had to console her. She just wanted to know what kind of process he used! I was like, ma’am, I would fight him for you, but the law frowns on it. I mean it, she’s a harmless sweet old lady whose photos I’ve printed for years and she has never breathed an unkind thought in her life. She was delighted to discover this was a service we now offered.)
So, sometimes, as customers are talking, the others of us will mutter “No stories!” under our breath.
This is why machines can’t take our jobs. Machines won’t listen to Mrs. Hattenschweiler’s fucking stories. Until they teach the machines to pretend (convincingly) to care, there will still be room for a few retail stores.
