Tag Archives: good customers

Hello New People

Two things occurred to me recently:

1. I need to write a new blog entry, but I don’t want to do a lot of work.

2. I know of at least a couple of people that just started reading my blog and who are new to the wonder that is my writing.

An idea struck! I should do a “Best of the Blog” blog entry! Minimal work for me, maximum enjoyment for you! Win-win! Plus, this way I don’t have to talk about the Superbowl. Goddamn Giants.

So, in no order, some of my favorite blog entries:

A Mopsy Proposal: This is one of the highest viewed entries on my site for some truly terrible reasons. I get a lot of people searching for pet rabbit related information (“bunny habitat” being a popular search term) and then stumbling across this post. Probably not my best foot forward for gaining new fans.

Quittin’ Time: I wrote this blog entry ten days after I quit smoking and I was feelin’ it at that point. A huge part of why I even wrote the entry was to help keep me on track. So yay to not smoking.

Retail Employee’s Lament: I wrote this during a dark time in my life. I had transferred to Borders Downtown Crossing after closing the Back Bay Borders (which was the second store I closed) and I was dangerously close to burning out. I think a few weeks AFTER this post, I found out that the whole company was going down and I would be closing my third and final Borders store. Please be nice to retail, you have no idea what they’ve been through.

Isolated Moments on a Long Road: This is probably one of my favorite blog entries, because it came the closest to what I had in my head and it was especially important that I got it right.

Don’t Know the Words: Another popular blog entry. I was really bummed out when I wrote this, as you can probably tell. It still drives me crazy that I’m better with words when I’m writing than when I’m talking.

In Defense of Eve: I rarely write about religion, but I had a bee in my bonnet about this. Eve is awesome. If you don’t agree, read my blog post.

A Long Walk: Last entry, written when I worked at the Borders at Chestnut Hill during the snowiest winter in years. Good times.

I hope you new people enjoy the entries. Those are among the best ones I wrote and cover a wide range of hilarious to insightful to hilariously insightful.

Dylan Charles

Addendum: This took as long to write as a real blog entry. Hell’s bells.

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Filed under Everyday Stuff

Reverse the Polarity

After working in retail for almost a year now, I’ve become drawn to those websites that are about bitter, awful customer experiences. I read Not Always Right and Clients from Hell daily. Each story I read confirms my belief that at least 60% of all customers are completely and utterly unaware that retail employees are human. They forget common courtesies like “please” and “thank you”. They lose their temper and insult the staff, while we have to bite our tongues and offer our apologies about the situation. They want everything their way and heaven help you if you’re standing in the way.

All I’m doing is feeding the bitterness about how my co-workers and I have been treated. It’s an unhealthy attitude to have, but a hard one to break since it’s reinforced every day.

I recently added Waiter Rant to my list of websites I read to build up my rage. But there’s a difference between his blog and the other rant sites. While Not Always Right and Clients from Hell focus exclusively on negative experiences, Waiter talks about every experience that happens to interest him. He talks about the conversations between himself and his co-workers. He talks about the positive interactions with customers. He talks about the negative interactions that ended well, simply because he kept his cool and the customer realized they were in the wrong.

And I’ve found myself, more and more, looking forward to the entries that talk about when things go right. Instead of reading his blog expecting to fuel my self-righteous rage about how the entire service industry is treated, I’m reading it for those little moments where all is right in the world. I’m reading it to verify that, really, most people aren’t monstrous assholes hell-bent on ruining someone’s day. Most people are decent or, at the worst, having their own version of my bad day.

So, thank you Waiter Rant, for giving me perspective on my own (sometimes) awful job.

Dylan Charles

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Filed under Everyday Stuff