Clerk lesson

This is an important lesson to understand if you want to be any good as a customer service clerk of any kind. And it is very different than the oft quoted "The customer is always right." Which should really be "The customer should be humored as much as possible when they're wrong."

Are you ready?

Are you excited?

Oh, drat. I really should learn to quit when I'm ahead. Okay. We'll go back.

Are you ready?

But wait, you said you were ready bef... oh, you're funning me.

So, the thing to remember is that, in any customer service interaction, one person is being compensated for their time and one person isn't. Any inconvenience I encounter as a clerk doing my job is compensated. I don't have to be protected from work or inconvenience. I am only being churlish when I myself try to do so.

Likewise when you, as a patron or customer, are asked to defer, to take extra steps to facilitate a customer service person's process, you are being robbed of your precious, unpaid free time.

I don't know, just, maybe, it's something to keep in mind when you're being asked for your account number for the fourteenth time, or, conversely, when you're telling a patron how we like to do things around here.