The Budget Friendly Customer

Although there are jobs with commission–with customers who have admittedly deep-pockets–and other jobs which congratulate or reward employees with huge sales, there is an underlying truth which isn’t always discussed. You see, greeting customers is a random process, not as hard as winning the lottery, but roughly the same idea. You don’t know, when you walk up to a customer if they’re going to be rude, crude, and brusque–well sometimes you actually do. In any case, you also don’t know when you walk up to a customer if they’ll be money-bags or moth-balls–well sometimes you actually do.

So what’s the point? Even if you are a great salesperson, and you get a customer to spend their entire budget–let’s use percentiles–so 100% of their available budget. If the customer has $1000 to spend, than you’ve made some good money.  (Of course, if you make 3% commission on a $1000 sale, that’ s just $30, so you better get on with the selling!) Yet, if a customer only has a budget of $200, then you may or may not consider them cheap compared to the $1000 customer. If their budget is less than $100, then surely you’d be silently spitting upon them, right? This is the point, you can’t gauge the budget of a customer, you don’t know how much money they actually have to spend. So when you pat yourself on the back because you were able to make the customer spend $500, is that because of your skill or because it’s well within their budget?

I think it would make more sense if you consider a customer’s total budget, and how far into that budget you’re able to hit. because you can’t get a customer to spend $500 if they only have $200. If you get a customer with a budget of $1000 to spend $500, and you get a customer with $200 to spend the entire $200–which customer have you truly capitalized upon? Although I believe acknowledging sellers who hit high numbers, I also think we need to take into consideration if they just randomly hit the jackpot, or just ran into a customer who had a lot of money, and they just barely skimmed the edge of that budget.

I bring this up because of the power of money in retail. It makes the customers look at salespeople like they’re only worth as much as money is spent, but the same can be said about salespeople towards customers. In all reality, there is some respect to be found. There are some salespeople who find out how much their customers are able to spend, and help them work through that amount. This definitely takes a great deal of skill, because can you really help a customer find an outfit for less than $100? It’s ridiculously easy if they’re willing to spend $500. So just where does your skill really lay? Does it matter you can make huge sales? Or are you just ‘lucky’?

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Manual Labor

A woman and her husband have a credit card strip which doesn’t work–its been de-magnetized–so I have to input it manually and then slide it through a machine which makes a physical copy of the credit card number. (It basically rubs a receipt against the credit card.) I tell them I’m doing this.

The guy laughs, replying, “Manual labor?! Ha-ha! How terrible for you!”

I just replied, “Yeah… Ha-ha… Thanks a lot…” I wanted to slap him in the face with the credit swipe machine.

You know what’s manual labor? Turning over that card and calling the number on the back to request a card that actually works! Compare that to the amount of time each cashier has to take manually entering your number and verifying it, times by each time you use that card–and you see how many people’s lives you’re wasting in addition to your own, because of your blatant, haughty laziness. This is the difference between members of society whom are progressive, and those who are backward-moving donkeys that ensure our social evolution is slow and tedious. Manual labor is obviously lost on you, but capitalism is not.

Customer Types: Capitalist

One Button to Take a Number Two

I’m standing near the restrooms, mainly because I need to pee and I see a woman rush in. Our restrooms have lights which turn-on automatically when you walk in, and turn-off when there is no movement for a long time. This must be something revolutionary for some people, basically a way to save electricity and not kill the planet so quickly–every place should have some. Anyhow, the woman half-opens the door, not seeing light presses the button inside, which basically turns off the auto-switch. Now, the light will not turn on at all. So she enters and there’s darkness, but she closes the door behind her.

I’m standing there in the distance, confused as to what you can actually do in total darkness other than possibly washing your hands–I imagine a very wet toilet-seat. Soon, I see her open the door slightly, using her shopping bags to prop it open. Okay, I have no idea what she wants to do, but our restroom is small–there is only one toilet and one sink. There are no stalls, it is just a room. I’m standing there, my bladder is quite ready to burst, and I realize either she’s doing her make-up in that darkness or taking a rather long poop.

Either way, I can’t take it anymore. I ask one of my co-workers, a girl, to just go over there and you know, pretend she needs to pee, and act all surprised when she opens the door in case there’s too much to see–i.e. legs in the air or panties to the floor. So I back away a little and hide behind a fixture.

I hear knocking. “Oh, is someone in here?”
“SOMEONE IS IN HERE!” I hear a very angry voice, yelling at her.
“But the light is off…”
“YOUR LIGHT DOESN’T WORK!” She screams back. “I’M USING THE BATHROOM!”
“You just press the button,” and my co-worker blindly tries to find the button. I see her covering her face, looking away. When she does press it, the lights turn on, and my co-worker runs away. Thankfully, I can’t see anything from my angle.
A few moments later, the bags disappear and the door slams (yes, angrily), then the lock turns with equal aggression.

My co-worker comes up to me saying, “She was taking number two! It smelled so bad! It smelled so bad! I can’t believe she was on the toilet in the dark!” My co-worker starts to laugh, walking away.

I, on the other hand, still have to pee, and definitely do not enjoy peeing right after someone else drops the bomb. I’m forced to go elsewhere, mildly amused with the situation.