Part 247: Her Royal Majesty

RECORD STORE TALES Part 247:  Her Royal Majesty

I never forgot this one, but I’ll let my journal tell the story from the perspective of “then”…

Date: 2004/08/12 21:36

Today sucked ass.

First of all, they installed this router at work, so we can’t use anything but the 10 sites they prescribe.  Everything else is off limits.  So, no more Google at work.  Fuckers.

OH!  By the way, I’m in a real bad mood.

This girl comes in.  Friend of Matt’s.  She’s a totally unpleasant human being.  She wanted to exchange a Deftones import she bought a month ago.  [The CD was Deftones Live (1998) which was pretty rare.]  Our exchange policy is seven days, it says so on the receipt.  We’ll stretch it to 14 without a hassle, but not over a month, even if you’re the friggin’ Pope.

She gave me a real hard time about this.  I’m thinking, “what, you live in Asia?  You can’t get here, or even call here, within seven days?  You bought a CD you didn’t like, so suck it up.  You even previewed it before you bought it (don’t think I forgot that tried it out, at length, in the store beforehand), and you still bought it.  THEN you decided you didn’t like it.  Fuck you.”  That’s what I’m thinking.  What I’m saying is something completely different, about how I can’t really accept a return after this length of time under these circumstances.

She said, “Do you treat everyone this way?”

Yes, I treat everyone the same:  by the fucking rules.  I don’t give anyone special treatment, especially when they try to push me around, like you are doing.

You know, I’m getting so pissed, I can’t even finish.

I can finish now, though.  I remember the very next thing she said was, “When is Matt working?”  In other words, I’ll return this CD when my friend is working, not you.  I explained to her that Matt wouldn’t exchange the CD, because I was Matt’s boss.  She was with her mom, and even her mom told her to drop it and accept the situation.

I also remember that she never came in again, which in my view was a good thing.  She rarely bought anything that she didn’t return, and she made us run around like chickens with our heads cut off, serving her Royal Majesty.  Yeah, I didn’t miss her at all.  In fact I even pre-emptively went to my bosses and said, “If you get a phone call complaining about me, this is what happened.”  I explained what I did and why I did it and for once, they actually took my side.

Her Royal Majesty was just reason #10,137 for me to move on from retail.

22 comments

  1. You could browse the Internet? Lucky!! When I was inventory I had my own private (well semi private anyone could go in if they had the key. I was one of the 2 people with the key) space. It was actually a room with three walls and the door was an actual metal cage. It was freakin cool. Anyway they company had an Intranet, I couldn’t even go on yahoo. If they did I would have been on that thing. A lot. It was all command line interface. Anyway, I knew several people like this, just because you know someone who works there don’t think you could just charge in and do whatever frick you want. Oh is so and so here today? No. GTFO! Also please don’t just stand there at the info counter when your friend is working and wait and only talk to them. These people have work to do too.

    I remember this one dude, apparently he’s a venture capitalist with a ton of $$. He would bring his little schnauzer in the store. This is not a wussy little guy, he’s pretty big and everyone would just be fawning over this dog and kissing up to this dude cuz he’s rich. Well we do serve food in our cafe and he can’t bring the dog into the store. He’s obviously not blind or otherwise (physically) handicapped. I tell his this and he can’t have the dog in the store. Everyone else lets me, oh then I suppose it’s f*cking ok. Everyone is looking at me like I’m the asshole.

    No I won’t! ;)

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    1. Hah! We have schnauzers too!

      Yeah we had internet access for a little while. They had software and passwords installed, but what they didn’t know is that this guy named Dave watched the IT guy type in the password (which never changed) and he told somebody who told everybody.

      I would have sided with you on the dog thing. The rules are there so we all get treated the same! (and you serve food!)

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  3. What a witch! I was so hoping
    you would say exactly what you
    were thinking earlier but you
    showed great restraint.You told
    her Real good & any normal
    person would have skulked away after that.
    Selfish & Rude
    that one.

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    2. I was also thinkin this.Kate the
      Duchess would never be rude
      like that & she would never
      have returned that Deftones
      CD in the first place.Prince
      William & Kate probably partied to it in their younger
      days.

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  5. I think everyone in retail (or any sort of customer service) has an endless supply of stories like these. Some customers are just jerks. It doesn’t always help to try to think of them as decent people who are just having a bad day. Anger is always just fear hiding behind hostility. She was likely upset about something else (in specific or in general), unable to express it where she needed to, and was being dumb in your face because she wasn’t in control of herself. There’s no amount of telling her that that would have helped. You did the right thing, especially if this dragged on a long time (you story doesn’t indicate duration of her display). Rules are rules. Why not just go home and enjoy the frickin’ DEFTOMES, lady?!?!?

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