Although I was trained as a salesman back in the ’80s when the mantra was and still is, the customer is always right, it’s a device used in rigorous sales training in order to allow the customer to think they are right. This is much like the old joke when we blokes like to banter in the pub about wives enjoying the spectacle of their husbands thinking that they are right all the time, in order to keep the peace. Hence the yes, darling when we come up with a bright idea, for example!
My sales training back then was intense – first in shipping and later in sales insurance – with the latter being a baptism of fire and I was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public as a lethal weapon. However, whether the customer is always right is very subjective, in my opinion.
I clearly remember selling a whole life insurance policy to a young couple who clearly couldn’t afford it, so I used the guilt card by asking the husband how his wife would feel if he died, leaving her with a financial burden. His honest reply was that all he cared about was if she had enough cash for a simple wooden box in the event of his demise. Needless to say, I didn’t get the sale or the commission, but was the customer right?
Mrs. Angry
As reported in A Day in The Life of a PC Technician – Day 7 I had an encounter with the original Mrs Angry back in 2016 after formatting her netbook – one of the most awful and useless devices known to man – and unintentionally filling it with viruses. When attempting to explain to said woman that it wasn’t my usual modus operandi, my words fell on deaf ears, and a look that I can only describe as hell hath no fury. I would consider this as a prime example of the customer not being right by a long shot and it was all I could do to not pull out the Anglo-Saxon phrases that I knew she wouldn’t have understood anyway.
VHS Is Not Digital
As reported in numerous articles here at DCT, I convert VHS tapes to MP4 files and it’s surprising how many customers have yet to grasp the fact that tapes are just that – tapes on spools that require many physical mechanisms to read said tape for the duration of the recorded video. On many occasions, I’ve been questioned along these lines:
Customer: How quickly can you convert these 40 VHS tapes for me?
Me: (after a quick mental calculation based on an average of 90 minutes per tape) About 60 hours.
Customer: That’s ridiculous! Can’t you do it faster than that?
Me: How fast would you like me to convert the tapes? (inward chuckle)
Customer: Tomorrow morning?
I then go on to explain how this would be impossible unless I could bend time and finally the penny drops.
These are only some isolated tales from my numerous interactions with the general public and one has to be prepared for any eventuality. The concept of the customer always being right is an illusion, in the same way that a politician uses smoke and mirrors to pull those rabbits out of the hat and that’s being polite. But sometimes customers need to be shown the error of their ways, but in the nicest possible way of course.
The sock salesman is a good example of me being right when he tried to sell me some beautiful socks. Having informed him that I had drawers full of socks, some being unused Christmas presents, he insisted that I needed more socks. In the end, I took pity on him and bought a pair.
Anyway, I’m rambling now, so I’ll leave the question – is the customer always right?
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