Tuesday, August 01, 2006
More about customers
Most of my customers, as I've said before this, are delightful, quiet, intelligent people who feel the need to buy books from time to time. Bless them. The tarnished side of the coin, however, is the rest of the buying (or not-buying, more likely) public. I've just had a slightly exhausting morning listening to the bombast of two people who felt the need to sound off about the various political issues of our day. Which do concern me, but. The first person is slightly unhinged but stable, and she always buys a lot of books when she comes in. The second (they came in back to back, lucky me) is a retired teacher, and in his own words, "I have to get out and talk to people, since I've retired and don't have a captive audience anymore in the classroom." The problem with this type of customer is that I become the captive audience. It's wearying, after a time, being lectured to. I enjoy conversation, give and take, dialogue - although I actually prefer being left in peace... I don't want to whine or rant, because I dislike that form of communication, and that's what these folks presented to me this morning and I don't want to pass it on to any stray blog-readers, so please consider this an anti-rant. In any form of retail there exists the good, the bad, and the ugly. Ex-clerks the world over know this. It helps dispel the idealism that people who haven't worked in retail seem to retain about the glories of running a bookshop. Most days, glory. Some days, not.
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a couple weeks ago I had a scientist come in the store, browse the books for about five minutes, and then proceed to talk to me for the next four hours about his conspiracy theories, his fossils, and every so often a sentence or two about books.
Four hours, oh dear... I had a guy talk at me for an hour or so recently, then he said "I would never presume to talk to people this way at some other store - a *real* store - because those people are working for someone else, getting paid by the hour. But here, it's just you, so it's fine!" I was dumbstruck. Shouldn't people be even more aware that time is money, to put it bluntly, to those of us who run our own businesses? Certainly a chat is fine. It's the lecture that makes my eyes narrow and my toes curl up - the money is incidental, it's the assumption that I must listen that galls me. There's no easy way to say, "Well, I've got some work to do..." - although that does work if you can squeeze it in somehow.
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