Dealing with the Customer From Hell

I work at Old Navy, a fashion-casual clothing store that caters to younger consumers. One of my co-workers was a skinny 19-year-old girl with long, dark hair. Her name was Tiffany. She looked kind of frail and we always watched out for her.

One very busy Saturday, she was checking people out, when this guy plopped down about $400 worth of denim goods on the counter. As she rang them up, he stopped her and complained about Each. And. Every. Item.

One was defective. Another was mislabeled. Another was from the clearance rack and yet she'd rung it up at full price. None of this was true, mind you. He was just playing with her head, trying to get a freebie — or at least a discount.

He was the Customer From Hell.

Whenever we get a customer like this, a secret, telepathic signal gets sent through the store. All of the sales associates gravitate to its source, which in this case was Tiffany. We all found places to quietly observe what was going on. We liked to fool ourselves into thinking that we would rush to her aid if she got into real trouble, but most of us just wanted to watch the train wreck.

Tiffany was getting rattled. Her face was whiter than usual, and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead. Her fingers were actually trembling as she removed the anti-theft tags and rang up the items.

The customer was getting louder and more belligerent. About halfway through the pile, he started yelling at her as she rang things up: "Good grief! This store is nothing but a major rip-off operation! All of your merchandise is shitty and overpriced! Your ads are deceptive! You're doing your best to rip off your customers!"

She was doing a damned good job of trying to appease the guy, but anybody could tell that she was on the verge of tears.

Then he started to insult her personally. "Goddammit, are you really this incompetent? Or are you just trying to rip me off? This was supposed to be on 30 percent discount, and you only rang it up for 20 percent! Damn, you're slow!" I really, truly, honestly saw her lower lip start to tremble.

And that's when this middle-aged man walked up to the Customer From Hell. It's as if he had also gotten the telepathic signal. This new actor looked like he was in his 50s. He still had a lot of hair, and it was mostly brown. It had some graying highlights along the temples, but that was about it. He was dressed casually, but not like a slob. His demeanor was that of a senior citizen who had wandered into the wrong store looking for gifts for his grandkids.

He tapped the Customer From Hell on the elbow and asked, "'Scuse me, sir, is there something wrong?"

The response: "Damn right there is! This store is overcharging me for shitty goods! And this worthless piece-of-shit chick is trying to rip me off!!"

Grandpa asked, "Well, maybe I can help." He turned to one of my co-workers who happened to be standing nearby, attracted to the smell of blood. "Where's your manager?"

The co-worker, suddenly fearful for his life said, "I'll go get him." And he ran off to the back of the store. Sometimes managers pick up the telepathic signal, but often they don't. Our manager was having an oblivious day.

So Grandpa, the Customer From Hell and the skinny girl all stood there, as if frozen in a tableau, waiting for the other kid to come back with the manager. The Customer rocked back and forth on his pompous, overbearing toes and heels. Tiffany was trying her hardest not to cry, but I couldn't tell if she would last. Maybe she would just pass out. And the old guy had a look of intense concentration on his face, as he carefully examined every detail on a poster on the wall, twenty feet away.

Finally, the manager came running up with the kid. He apologized for the delay. Apparently the kid had taken some extra time to explain the whole situation to him. The manager looked like a slightly paunchy Old Navy model: he was wearing a pair of Urban Pipeline jeans, and one of the top-of-the-line polo shirts that usually hangs on the back wall of the men's section. Grandpa read the manager's name off of his name tag and said, "Ah. Grant. I'm glad you're here. This gentleman seems to be having some trouble with his purchases, and  I thought that maybe I could help."

The manager, with squinting eyes and furrowed brow, looked at the old man and asked, "And who are you, sir?"

The Customer From Hell echoed, "Yeah, who the hell are you?"

The old gentleman smiled benignly and said, "I'm glad you both asked. You see, my name is Art Peck. I'm the CEO of  The Gap, Inc." (Yes, he said "Inc." Pronounced it like "ink.") "Old Navy is actually owned by The Gap."

Grant, the manager, went as white as the skinny little cashier. The Customer snorted. "Good. Now maybe I'll get some satisfaction around here."

Art Peck asked the Customer, "And what's your name?"

He told him his name. Then Peck asked him, "So that we may handle your complaint properly, may I please see your driver's license?"

The customer smirked, pulled out his wallet, removed his license and handed it over to Peck. "Now we're getting somewhere," he sneered.

Peck pulled out his smartphone and took a picture of the driver's license, then gave it back to the guy. With a smile, he said, "I was here the day Tiffany was hired. She has always been a model employee. I can personally vouch for her integrity."

Tiffany, the skinny girl, stared at him with her mouth slightly open. Her watery eyes were now wide open and focused tightly on Peck.

Peck continued, "While it is true that we buy most of our clothing from Asian manufacturers, it is of the highest quality. It must meet MY standards before we're allowed to sell it. And our returns policy is one of the fairest you will find."

The Customer From Hell started shifting from one foot to the other. He was getting impatient. "So, how are you going to make things right by me?"

Peck's smile faded a bit. His eyes became slightly less friendly. He looked like a bird of prey surveying its next meal.

He said, "We keep our checkstands under constant video surveillance. This is to protect you, the customer ..." and the Customer smirked yet again.

"... but it is also to protect our employees. I have this entire transaction on video, and I will be using it in a training video for our new hires. Now," and he called the customer by name, as his smile turned to a ferocious glare, "I will send a copy of the video, AND your driver's license, to every one of our one-thousand-plus stores in the United States. I will see to it that you never shop in an Old Navy store again. Now," and his voice turned to cold steel, "get out of my store."

The Customer From Hell froze. This wasn't what he had expected, and he didn't know how to react. The skinny cashier froze. This was the last thing in the world she was expecting, too. Actually, all of us froze in total disbelief. The only person who moved was Mr. Peck.

He stepped directly in front of the Customer From Hell, their noses almost touching. With a voice like a Marine drill sergeant, he barked, "I said, get the hell out of my store!"

The Customer From Hell took a small step backward, and stammered, "You — you can't —"

Peck got into his face again and yelled, "NOW, ASSHOLE! NOW-NOW-NOW!" And he actually stomped his foot for emphasis on that last "now". I didn't think people really did that.

The next thing that happened, well, it was so fast, it takes longer to tell than it did to happen. The Customer From Hell turned even whiter than Grant had. Then he turned as purple as a beet. Mr. Peck clenched his fists at his sides and leaned forwards onto the tips of his toes. I kid you not, they almost touched noses. The Customer looked like he was going to shit his pants. Then he just turned and ran out of the store.

You know how, in the old Road Runner cartoons, the coyote runs away so fast that he vanishes with a zip, leaving a coyote-shaped cloud of dust where he was standing? Yeah. Well, it seemed like the Customer From Hell disappeared that fast. I'm surprised he didn't leave a customer-shaped hole in the glass door on his way out.

Then Tiffany did start crying. But she quickly composed herself, grabbed a couple of Kleenex, and set about drying her eyes and her nose. The rest of us exhaled, probably for the first time in five minutes. The manager walked up to Peck, grabbed his hand and started shaking it vigorously. "Mr. Peck, thank you for intervening. I had NO IDEA you would be here today. I would have cleaned the place up if I'd known you were coming."

He started to make more excuses, but Peck cut him off with a wave of his free hand and said, "There's no need, Grant, I've been checking this place out for the last half hour and it looks just fine. You can go back to your office. I'd like to have a little talk with Tiffany here." Peck watched as Grant walked back into his office at the back of the store. Then he went to the counter, dramatically pushed the $400 worth of denim out of the way, and laid down an assortment of toddler's and little kids' gear.

"These are for the grandkids," he explained. Hey! He really was a grandpa!

With several curious glances at him, the cashier rang up his purchases. He swiped his credit card and signed on the touch-sensitive screen. The cashier read the name on her display and said, "Wait a minute, you're not Art Peck!"

He winked at her. "Never met him in my life. But I did see his name in the Wall Street Journal this morning."

On making observations out loud

We are constantly making observations about our fellow travelers on this rocky orb, Sometimes we impulsively blurt those observations out loud. The words we choose to articulate our observations matter more than we think.

"Whoa! You're cold!" is, at its core, a value judgment, or at least the announcement of a defect in the other person. It states the obvious, and it does nothing to help the cold person feel better (or warmer). Implied in the observation is the smug, self-satisfied other shoe: "... but I'm not."

On the other hand, "Whoa! I need to warm you up or something!" is at once an expression of concern, an offer to serve, and an invitation to play. It proposes a solution to the obvious problem, and it offers the hope of making the cold person feel better. It is absolutely selfless.

"Whoa! You're beautiful!" also states the obvious, but sometimes the beauty is not obvious to the beautiful person, and the statement always makes the beautiful person feel good. Therefore, it's okay to say this, over and over and over again.

We often blurt out these "Whoa! You're ..." observations. Ugly, cute, sleepy, tired, fat, skinny, white, tanned, Chinese, covered with freckles, grumpy, well-fed, well-mannered, ill-mannered ... and the list goes on and on. Why? Why do we even bother?

I wish I'd figured this out years ago.

The next time you can't help yourself and you blurt out an observation like that, reflect on your words. Ask yourself why you said that out loud, and what its purpose was. Figure out whether you should have said it at all (and if not, I hope you feel fucking stupid), or whether you could have chosen different words for a different purpose. Resolve to do better next time.

Choose your words carefully. You have NO IDEA how much power they have. One of my friends put this on his Facebook page: "Words have power. They have the power to build and to destroy, to hurt and to heal. Those who do not understand this concept should not be allowed to use them."

The Woman That I Married ...

(This is a temporary whine. I will delete it when I'm feeling better.)

The woman that I married ...

I wish she would hold onto a hug for longer than a few seconds. I'm not just a social acquaintance.

I wish she would reach out and pull me in for another hug, as if one wasn't enough.

I wish she would spontaneously kiss me, instead of just accepting my kisses all the time.

And if not that, then I wish I could stop trying to kiss her.

I wish she would come and snuggle up to me on the couch and say "whatcha doin'?" instead of spending all evening on the phone or disappearing into her craft room until one or both of us goes to bed.

I wish she would go to bed at the same time as me, and fall asleep drooling on my shoulder.

I wish she would really listen to me when I talked, and not argue, or put me down, or correct me, or give me advice, or mostly ignore me.

I wish she would tell me she loved me.

I wish I knew what I had done, all those years ago, to make her act this way.

I wish I knew a way to undo whatever it was that I did.

I wish I had never gotten married.

I wish that, rather than hide my pain, or choke it down, I could just make it go away. I wish I didn't need the love of a woman in my life, as achingly badly as I do.

A new rule - don't complain about your fat

I'm going to make a new rule in my house. Nobody - NOBODY - is allowed to complain about being fat, or about their belly being bigger than they want it, unless they're willing to do something about it.

I'm going to extend this rule to parks, restaurants, meeting rooms, and anywhere else that I have to be with people. I am sick and tired of people saying "I'm so fat" or words like that, acting disgusted with themselves, and staying fat.

I really don't mind your being fat; you do. But if you're not going to put out the effort to get skinny, then stop talking about the fat.

The Great Mistletoe Catastrophe

This is the story of the Great Mistletoe Catastrophe.

Do you know what a catastrophe is? Well, you need to look up some of the more obscure meanings of the word "catastrophe." Because this didn't happen with a roar or a bang. It didn't even happen with a whimper. It happened even more quietly than snuffing a candle. But it was still a catastrophe.

When our children were very little, my wife and I were decorating the house for Christmas. For the kids, it was a fun and exciting event. For me, well, I was trying to make it fun and exciting for them - and for all of us. But for my wife, it was just one more chore, one more checkbox on her list of things to do.

In the middle of it all, I realized that we didn't have any mistletoe. I said, "We should go buy some mistletoe, and hang it somewhere!"

She replied, "Why?"

The tone of that "Why" was exactly the same tone she would have used if she had said "No." Not just any "No," but a "this is final, no more discussion, and I don't want to hear another word about it," one-word sentence, "No."

Try it. Practice saying "No" like that a few times. Now, use exactly the same inflection, and say "Why" instead. That was her reply.

I paused in my response, trying to come up with an answer. I looked at her. I said, "I thought ...," and then I stopped. I never completed the sentence. There were no words for an adequate response to her question.

Since that moment, thirty years ago, I have never uttered the word "mistletoe" - not in her presence, and not in anyone else's presence, either - and we have never had mistletoe anywhere in our house. And that, my beloved grandchildren, is the catastrophe.

I'm tired of women

I'm tired of women.

No, I'm not tired of sex. And I'm not tired of love or affection.

I'm tired of dealing with women and all of their crap.

I've got a wife who is turning meaner as she gets older. She's mean to me, to house guests, to relatives, and to anybody who doesn't match her way of thinking. She's kind to her children and their spouses, but that's about it. She's getting more like her mother every day.

I've got a 20-year-old close relative who thinks only of herself. It's as if her life is the only life in the world that matters. That's the way she was raised, and she can't understand why it should be any other way. I've tried to lovingly explain it to her, but she. Just. Doesn't. Get. It.

I've got a female friend who has horrendous mood swings. I can't tell from one day to the next how to act around her. I get it wrong every time, and I get in trouble because of it. And she won't go see a doctor or therapist about it.

And I've got another female friend whom I really care about, whom I worry about all the time, even though she hasn't really, truly communicated with me for months. I wish I could stop worrying about her.

Life would be simpler if I could just get rid of all the women in my life. I wouldn't be gay, either. That's a whole nuther set of problems. And I wouldn't get a dog. I'd just be by myself. Solitary man.

Life would be so much easier if I didn't care about all of these women. Or women in general. I wish God would take away this caring heart and replace it with a heart of stone.

YES, it makes your ass look big!

For all the centuries that women have been asking men, "Does this dress make my ass look big?" I finally have a chance to say "yes."

To scream it at the top of my lungs, even.

Except that it's not the dress. Or the pants. Or the booty shorts. It's not the yoga pants (although yes, yoga pants do make any woman's ass look big, even an ass so small that a man can hold both cheeks in one hand). No, it's something more, um, fundamental than that:

The thong.

I'm going to sidestep the whole issue about whether a thong is comfortable or sexy, or whether its ability to eliminate panty lines justifies its existence (although a whale tail is infinitely uglier than panty lines will ever be). I can spend another whole article talking about all of the reasons why I hate thongs. But today I want to focus on this one thing.

See, my lady and I just went out shopping for party dresses. She doesn't want to dress skanky, like all those college girls you see down at the club trying to impress the fratboys. So we were looking at classy party dresses. But after seeing her model a few dozen of them, and hearing this question from OVER and OVER, I finally have an answer.

Whether your thong is an undergarment, or the bottom half of a two-piece swimsuit, the simple fact is that YOUR THONG MAKES YOUR ASS LOOK LIKE TWO, TEN-POUND BAGS OF RAW SAUSAGE FILLING, PURCHASED IN BULK FROM THE LOCAL DELI AND HUNG IN YOUR FRONT WINDOW (okay, rear window) FOR DISPLAY.

That's not sexy. It's not even attractive. And it's about a thousand miles from "cute."

Granny panties (or "classic briefs," in the illustration above) make your ass look big. High-cut panties distract the attention from your ass and focus it on your hips instead. Still not a good thing.

But a thong makes your sweet little ass look FUCKING HUGE. Why don't you just do yourself a favor, live with the panty lines, and wear bikini briefs or boyshorts?

 Bikini briefs and boyshorts minimize your ass, no matter what its original size. And even if they don't minimize it, at least they don't draw attention to it.

And if you insist on wearing that thong, and you model a hot little party dress for your boy, and you ask him that immortal question, don't be surprised if he says:

"No, that dress doesn't make your ass look big. Your THONG makes your ass look big!"

An afterthought: And if you are going to wear that dress to a party, don't even think about going commando. Doing so shows enormous disrespect for the man in your life. And if you think your vajayjay is so pretty that you want to show it off to the world, well baby, I've only seen two pretty pussies in my life. Yours isn't one of them. You ain't gonna score any points by showing it to me.