When you work in retail, you make a lot of snap judgments about people, even if you don’t mean to. Everyday you’re faced with hundreds of customers in all shapes and sizes, customers who can either make or break your day. When they exit the doors of your store, they likely have very complex private lives that indicate their identities as multi-faceted human beings. But when all you know about them is the way they treat you in the span of a few minutes, it’s difficult not to make judgments about who they are. As an employee at a local gift store, I was certain I had a knack for understanding who my customers really were. I didn’t realize how wrong I was until the day I was faced with someone whose story disagreed with mine, despite the fact that we were making our judgments based on the very same information.
Our store played host to a handful of regulars, mostly older women who came in a few times a week while walking the mall. The most infamous of these regulars was Miss M, an 80-year-old woman who visited us once, sometimes twice a day EVERY SINGLE DAY of the week.
Miss M was a small woman with fragile, bone-sharp features. She had the heavy wrinkles of an elderly woman, but none of the customary fattening and softening that often comes with ages. She was thin and angular, and her dyed-brown hair was generally pulled into a tight bun and wrapped in an old-fashioned snood - a kind of fancy hairnet that held the bun in place. She wore expensive tailored blouses and pants, and several large diamonds on her fingers that she insisted on turning upside down so that they faced her palms because, as she put it, “You never know who might see it and decide to beat you up for it.” Her lips were thin and often pursed into a look of disapproval.
I was not a fan of Miss M, as you can probably tell from my description. To me, the expensive clothes and fancy rings were a means of showing off. “If she’s so afraid someone’s going to steal her ring, WHY does she WEAR IT??” I’d complain to my co-workers. “She WANTS someone to steal the damn thing, just so she can complain about it!”
But her upper-class presentation wasn’t the thing that really bothered me. I felt justified in hating Miss M because - in my eyes- she thought that she was better than us. She ordered us around and made absurd demands. On one particular occasion, she came into our store to purchase one of several glass oil lamps that we had on display in the window. She pulled me aside and told me that, while she liked the lamps we had on display, she really needed one to match her bathroom - one that came in a very specific shade of purplish-pink called “thistle.” When I explained that the lamps we had on display were the only ones available from the company, she told me that I needed to get on the phone right away and demand that they make her one in the specified color. “Miss M, I just can’t do that,” I said, trying to be polite but forceful. “They just don’t make them in any other color.”
“Just because they don’t RIGHT NOW doesn’t mean they CAN’T,” she said. “All of these lamps were clear at some point. I know how these things work. They just have to be told what to do; so call them and tell them.”
While I continued to insist that I couldn’t call the company for this special request, customers were piling up at the register and my coworker, Jenna, was motioning for me to come and help her. I tried to shoo Miss M away, but she insisted that I get her what she wanted. I told her that I would need to step into the back room and speak with the manager to see if calling the company would be possible. My plan was to gather my wits and find the best way to approach her before returning to the sales floor. But I had only been in back a few seconds when she marched through our Employees-Only door, told me she would be leaving, and that I was clearly “not in the shape to provide the best customer service” that day.
I was fuming. I ran to the front to help Jenna with customers, then reported to my manager about the situation with Miss M. “I just can’t stand her!” I whined. “She’s so demanding! She thinks she’s so much better than everyone, that we have to help her and ONLY her, not anyone else!”
Before I could finish my rant, my manager - a kindhearted woman I’d known for years - stopped me. “Sharon, she’s lonely. Haven’t you ever heard her talk about her children? She has five of them, and they’ve all moved away. Her husband died last year, and she’s clearly in the early stages of alzheimers. She just doesn’t know how to conduct herself. It isn’t badly intended. She just wants someone to pay attention to her, to talk to her for a while. And she wants to be helpful. She tells you all those things about calling the company because she really thinks she’s telling you something useful. She thinks the company SHOULD do what you’re asking. She thinks she’s helping you give better customer service.”
I was baffled. I’d spent weeks complaining to my coworkers and friends about the mean old wealthy woman who wanted nothing but to boss me around. And all that time, my manager had seen someone completely different - a helpless victim of loneliness and dementia, a fragile person who needed our help and our attention. We had been looking at the same person, had heard the same words, but had interpreted them completely differently. Through the story of Miss M, I realized how much our descriptions and stories are influenced by our opinions - and how easily those stories can be shaken by the presence of an opposing viewpoint.
No comments:
Post a Comment