What Color Are Your Skies?

There are times when I will read an article online and wonder about the tone of surprise and wonder the author is taking. I don’t mean the “product reviews” that say nice things about products made by companies that advertise heavily on that channel, or travel articles that encourage people to spend money on services provided by companies that do (or might someday) advertise on that channel. Both of those are common (if sleazy) practices that go back to the time of 1970s sitcoms, and it would actually be much more alarming if they didn’t happen. As American humorist Dave Barry points out, what travel site is going to publish an article titled “Uruguay: Don’t Bother” in the first place?

On the other side of the issue, you have people who write in breathless tones about people being rude to servers in restaurants, or flight attendants, as if no one is ever rude, arrogant, or snotty in public just because they are horrible excuses for human beings and the service workers can’t fire back. When that happens, I have to wonder if these writers have ever been to a public venue, let alone worked in a service occupation. I had a similar reaction to the Business Insider article about the top complaints that workers at Trader Joe’s markets have about the customers who patronize their locations. Have they ever been to a supermarket?

Granted that I have spent time in retail, but I’d imagine that everyone has discovered trash left on a shelf or in a shopping cart at least once, and most likely everybody has seen some really gross examples from time to time. A pet peeve of mine was finding frozen products dumped in non-refrigerated parts of the store – it’s generally disgusting, and always a cause of “shrink” (product stolen or destroyed by the public). Mercifully, I never worked in a store with a meat section; finding an ice cream bar that had been left out and was now a bulging wrapper full of rancid liquid was revolting enough. We also didn’t do product samples, but the idea that people would abuse such offers and attempt to graze on them for lunch can’t be that surprising, either…

Anyone who honestly thinks that members of the public aren’t going to be randomly horrible to service and retail employees, however, is either living in a dream world or has no idea how much their local service and retail workers would like to bury them head-first in a dumpster full of cat droppings. Let me recommend, once again, the compilation site of funny and stupid customer behaviors known as Not Always Right.com, where you can find thousands of specific examples of this principle in action. Although I must say that, after having worked in Academia for the last ten years, their affiliate site Not Always Learning.com is just as on-the-money, and possibly even more distressing…

Why does he tell us this? I hear some of you thinking. I don’t imagine that any of my readers (assuming I have readers) are planning careers in retail or service companies and are naïve enough to be unaware of these conditions. And while anyone can have an off day (and do things they would normally find repugnant), anyone who makes a habit of behaving that way is unlikely to recognize themselves in any of these stories or care if they do. I’m calling out writers who have never worked down at the sharp end for a day in their lives for their naivety, for assuming that these stories from the retail and service sectors are somehow alien or exotic. We can’t sentence everyone to work one of these jobs sometime in their lives, nor would I wish that on anyone. But with the service economy growing more important every year I think it may be time for everyone to start thinking of life in retail as being more than the question “Paper or plastic?”