It is not always easy to make the right decisions when faced with somebody who has a penchant for self-importance. It is even harder when that person is a customer, and you are wanting to give them the best service possible.
When being taken advantage of, one has to ensure that assertiveness doesn’t not overflow into rudeness. I think we handled difficult situations well, but sometimes things went awry.
Local Talent
Of all the unpublished, unrecognised authors in the world, I think that poets are the majority.
Whatever the style, there are probably as many self-published collections of poetry in the world as there are grains of sand.
Sadly, we were not able to accept all the poetry books sent to us by individual authors. The famous Helen Steiner Rice had even lost her popularity and most of her collections were already out of print.
Neverthless, writers sent us their books without even bothering to place a covering letter inside the package to explain who they were and what their request was. Those who did include letters, ususally insisted that we accept a whole box of their books, claiming we could deal with them on a sale-or-return basis. One such person even boasted that their book contained beautiful images. On inspection, we discovered that it was just littered with printouts from Clipart.
Local singers were also keen to request a spot on our shelves and because we had a listening post, it was more hopeful for them that we could help sell their items. Customers loved spending time sampling our music, so we did not mind too much when we were approached by an eager musician clutching a few CDs.
The main problem was where to put them, because our music section did not have much spare space and we were always being sent new titles from our warehouse which had to be on prominent display.
The atmosphere changed one day when a young lady marched in demanding to see the manager. When Casper arrived, she did not ask him if he would kindly take on some of her CDs, she told him to. At first, he was calm and hid the irritation caused by her discourtesy. As her importunity increased, Casper graciously explained that we only had room to display one. This was not good enough for her and she insisted that he accepted all the copies she was holding in a box.
After several declarations from the young lady that we must do as she says, Casper could bear it no longer.
“If you’re going to be like that,” he said, “you can take the whole lot back!”
This was justified. Her manner was that of disrespect and arrogance. However, when a person is of that ilk, they cannot cope with rejection easily and pride gets in the way of rationality. We’ve all been there at some time or another – knocked back for being too big for our boots.
She stormed out and went home to empty her fury onto her computer. A complaint was penned and sent to Head Office, who in turn passed it onto the area manager, Archie, to sort out.
Poor Casper had no defence because Archie was desperate to keep the peace. So, he ordered Casper to apologise to the angry singer and eat humble pie by accepting the whole box of CDs.
She came back in a few days later, with a big grin on her face. We placed one CD on the front row of the gospel section and another on the listening post, promising to re-stock as soon as any copies were sold.
Regular visits were made by the girl to check that her CDs were still there on display. Owing to the fact that customers often failed to place goods back in the correct place, CDs would inadvertently end up hidden, so we would panic if we saw her entering the shop.
There would be whispers of,
“Where’s the CD? Have we sold one? Oh no, she’s coming! Quick, search for it!”
I don’t remember if any copies were ever sold; as far as I remember, we didn’t sell any. What I do know for certain is, I was happy that I wasn’t the one who had to hand the rest of them back.
Bargains
One of the managers from our head office contacted Casper to inform him that we would be getting a brand-new addition to the shop. A bargain basement!
This was exciting because our lower floor was large and could hold plenty of stock. New shelves were put in all around the walls and a few tables in the middle. We were then sent monthly bundles of stock and a price list indicating what we were to sell each item for. It was shockingly amazing! Genuine leather bibles worth £80 were priced at £19.99. Large hardback books worth £12.99 were priced at £3. Expensive bible bags were just £1 and children’s books were as cheap as 20 pence. Most of the other books we were sent were also under a £1 and so it gave customers the opportunity to bulk buy without breaking the bank.
I personally procured a porcelain nativity set complete with a large wooden stable for just £5 and it still graces my coffee table every Christmas.
People would come up from the basement with 25 books in their hands and when we added them up the total would be £4.50.
This, however, was not sufficient for some people. One day a man fell onto the side of the counter with his chest banging into the wooden surface. Many books that he had piled up in his arms, spilled out onto the top. There must have been about 30 items. I had never seen this man before, so he was definitely not one of our regulars.
Yet he raised his chin at me and said,
“I am a pastor of a very big church.”
There was silence as he paused for me to take this in.
“I am well respected in my community and I preach regularly. So…what extra discount are you going to give me because of this?”
I smiled at him as sweetly as I could.
“Well Sir, with all due respect, if we are to give you any further discount, you may as well be getting the whole lot for free. And if we let every customer walk out of here with 30 books they’ve not paid for, we will not stay in business for very long. Is that what you want to happen to us Sir?”
His face flushed and he stuttered with embarrassment.
“Well no. No, I er… wouldn’t want that to happen to you at all. I suppose these books are already knocked down to an exceptionally low price and I am grateful for that.”
He paid for the items without giving me any further eye contact and left, never to be seen again.
Last year I was having a great chat with Sophie, reminiscing some of the funny incidents we could remember from our time working at the shop and she told me of a similar story involving Casper.
Apparently, somebody else had come to the counter with a large pile of books, expecting a bigger discount.
Casper had looked them in the eye and said,
“So, 90% off is not good enough for you is it?”
I roared with laughter, wondering how many other tales I was unaware of. Maybe one day, one of my colleagues will have the inspiration to write a “Volume Two”.
Reps
We had frequent visits from sales reps who were desperate to flog us CDs from artists who had published new releases.
Casper gave me the responsibility of greeting the reps and spending time with them, listening to their sales pitches. I then had to make a decision about what to buy and what to reject.
I dreaded these visits because I knew that much of what was being advertised from month to month, would not sell in our shop. Because I was passionate about Christian music, I had no reservations about marketing and promoting our wares; but because of this, I also knew about the general musical tastes of our customers.
There was one rep, Larry, who I loved dearly because he understood our plight and having been an area sales manager for our parent company, he knew the importance of not being over-stocked with merchandise that nobody wants to buy. He worked for Authentic Media and did them proud because unlike the others, he was not pushy and did not use tactics to try to sway my decisions. He always wore a jovial smile and his demeanour never altered according to how many products we purchased from him.
The others, I embraced with less fervour than a trip to the dentist. Firstly, I had to tend to them in between serving customers, and I don’t multi-task very well. Secondly, I felt awkward whenever they would talk excitedly about a new release and play samples of the tracks. They would place a CD into their laptop then glare at me, awaiting a look of delight.
Apologies for repeating myself, but I instinctively knew what would be embraced by our clientele and what wouldn’t. All consumers are selective. Our customers were no different and very often the music buyers were finickity when it came to what they desired to see in their collection.
To give you a quick example of this, one of our most frequent gospel music buyers was Paul. We had a new CD that was released by a singer called Bryan Duncan called, “Joyride”. He was white, but the songs were of a black gospel style – an epic album of holy, happy-clappyness – so I placed a copy alongside the coloured folks.
Paul would tutt at me and say,
“Why do you keep putting this man here?”
I would reply,
“He may be white, but this is a black gospel album. Have you listened it any of it yet? Let me play a track for you.”
“Huh!”
He stared at the Caucasian man on the back cover and plonked the CD back on the shelf. In the wrong place.
“Paul, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The first track is called, “I’d Like to Thank you Jesus” and if you close your eyes, you wouldn’t even know he was w…”
“No thanks. I haven’t got time. My lunch break’s almost over and I’ve got to get back to the timber yard.”
Undoubtedly, trying to persuade our music lovers to step out of their comfort zone, usually didn’t work.
So, here I would be, stuck with a salesman who has music blaring out of his laptop and is staring at me intently.
“Shall I order you a few then?”
I would groan inwardly and try to put on my most compliant expression:
“Er, not at the moment, thank you. Yes, she has a nice voice and…”
“So, l can pop four on your order form?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Three then?”
“Erm…you know…it looks like a great album but…”
“Two? Come on, you’ve gotta have at least two. This album is ace!”
“None.”
“What was that? Did you say, one?”
“I don’t think it will…how many more have you got to show me?”
“Ah, just wait until you hear this! If you take three of these, I’ll give you a freebie you can take home for yourself and…”
“Er… didn’t you say this would only take forty-five minutes? Couldn’t you just leave a load of samples and I can phone my orders through later on this week? I’ll give the freebies away to the customers and if any of them like them, they’ll buy some more as gifts, won’t they?”
“I’ve only got 5 more to show you. So, you’ll have three of these then?”
This kind of conversation went on every month and apart from the ones with Larry, I ended up feeling guilty and mean.
When the reps first began visiting, I would be savaged by intimidation and relent. They would act like they were going to be hung at dawn if they didn’t make significant sales from each branch. Feeling awkward, I would say,
“Oh, go on then. I’ll have one, okay, two.”
Being only too happy to offload their stock onto us, we then ended up with CDs that people ignored.
One salesman in particular, irritated Casper and I, because he would try every trick in the book to get us to purchase goods from him. One day, he arrived when it was extremely busy, and I was occupied with a customer.
He took out his mobile phone and went towards the main window. Like the crazy character whom Dom Joly plays in “Trigger Happy TV”, he began speaking at an exaggerated volume so that everyone could hear his voice:
“Well last week I was in the States and caught up with Staccie Orrico and her crew. Yes, I had a good chat with Stacie. Yea, over lunch. She’s very busy of course with all her upcoming concerts, but Stace and I…” he bellowed.
I rolled my eyes and smiled. Nobody was planning to mob him for signed copies of Miss Orrico’s work that he may have had lying inside his briefcase. She was a teenage singer who had been discovered at the age of 12 and had been rushed into churning out many albums in the hope she would become as popular as Amy Grant. No disrespect to the pretty young lady, but she was not. Across the Atlantic, a sales assistant may have been suitably impressed by his dalliance with the singer and subsequently purchased every CD on his hit list. She indeed was popular in the USA and had the support of her parents who helped with the management side of her early career. But three copies of her first album “Genuine”, was still sitting on our shelves after 26 months, and I genuinely hoped he didn’t have more in his bag.
Repentance Review
The reps probably had targets to meet and therefore pressure from their managers to sell as much as possible. I imagine that it is not an easy job, and to go from store to store being constantly knocked back, must have at times, felt demoralising.
All in all, in the shop, difficult choices had to be made and saying no to customers sometimes landed us in hot water, but thankfully, saying no to reps, didn’t.
