| Next Saturday night will be my official swan song at the liquor store.?After seven months straight of six day work weeks and busting my ass for minimum wage, I'm throwing in the towel and saying "sianora" to the headache.?I've been in customer service for some seventeen odd years now (in some way, shape, or form), and it never ceases to amaze me what an absolutely THANKLESS JOB it can be.?You see, it doesn't matter to most people that you are serving them, so long as you are serving them with a smile and kissing their ass in the process.?It doesn't matter how many times you have smiled and kissed ass, either.?The minute that your disposition is something less than giggles and fairy farts when dealing with the general public, not only is it noticed, but it is brought to the attention of your BOSS.Two weeks ago, I worked my happy Saturday night shift in immense pain.?I was not all giggles and fairy farts that night, I'm sorry to say.?My spine had twisted itself into something resembling a freak trapezoid, and trying to slug full cases of beer to customers who parked unreasonable distances away from the drive up window was a less than pleasant experience.?Nay... service with a smile was not in my repertoire that evening.?Service with a painful grimace and a few unintelligible grunts, yes, but alas, that was all I was capable of.I am only human, after all.Go figure.In any event, a sixty dollar visit to my chiropractor later that week remedied the situation.You know it was bad when you get in your car after having your spine re-aligned and you have to readjust your rear view mirror in order to be able to see.?However, my pain was obviously not noticed or sympathized with.?Oh no.?I was referred to as "less than pleasant" by several regular customers, apparently.?I am terribly sorry to have inconvenienced the local drunks who visit me on Saturday nights with unfailing regularity with my own personal pain.?How unbelievably rude of me not to smile as I heaved that 30 pack of cheap beer out the window to the asshole who managed to leave a five foot gap between me and his beat up pick up truck.?How thoughtless of me not to appreciate being hit on by the sleazy redneck who thought that complimenting me on my choice of dress might get him a discount.?How ignorant of me to forget to give the carload full of screaming kids in the backseat of the mini-van lollipops for enduring their shrieking while I waited on their mother who talked on her cell phone the entire time that I waited on her.Tonight, however, I was all smiles, even as a man who had no business stepping foot in the store stumbled drunkenly into a display full of shooters and almost knocked it headlong into a cooler.?I grinned from ear to ear at the asshat who was too impatient for me to close out the sale on my register before I bagged his booze.?I even had a pleasant conversation with the drunken town cripple in the wheelchair, who only a few short weeks ago scared the living bejeezus out of me after I had closed the store for the evening and I had to call the cops.Because, you see, after next weekend, I won't have to do any of it ever again.I will never understand how it has come to be in our capitalist pig society that the most labor intensive and difficult jobs (i.e. public relations) are often the ones that only pay minimum wage.?Having sat on both sides of the fence, I am at least human enough to recognize the fact that someone is have a less than good day but they still have to come to work and earn a paycheck.It may be unrealistic of me to think that I will never work in some line of customer service that pays for shit again, but at least I know how to be sympathetic, smile, and tell whoever is waiting on me to have a better day when I am on the customer side of the counter.Have I added you to my Preferred List yet?Blogs like this one are becoming risky business for me to leave public.?Let me know if you would like to be added to the list. |
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