The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles | 
| Creator: Jeff Martin
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy New: $7.96
You Save: $4.99 (39%)
New (6) from $7.96
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 36484
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 193336890X
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.8120207
EAN: 9781933368900
ASIN: 193336890X
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081116115540T
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From mom-and-pop general stores to big-box, strip-mall chains, it is impossible to consider the American experience without thinking about the buying-and-selling retail culture: the sales and the stockrooms, the shift managers, and the clock punchers. The Customer Is Always Wrong is a tragicomic and all-too revealing collection of essays by writers who have done their time behind the counter and lived to tell their tales. Jim DeRogatis, author of Let It Blurt, for example, describes hanging out with Al himself at Al Rocky’s Music Store, while Colson Whitehead explains how three summers at a Long Island ice cream store gave him a lifelong aversion to all things dessert-like. This book not only shines a light on the absurdities of retail culture but finds the delight in it as well.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Tales of Retail Woefully Useless. November 7, 2008
Here's a compliment of quick, go-nowhere looks at the "selling" from the other side of the counter -from 20 or so obviously-bored folks who stumbled into retail sales in one way or another. The result is a tiresome, hodge-podge of observation, put-downs, name-calling, assumption and weak humor. The writers work in a worthy profession but carry an "in between-jobs" attitude -college students, the experienced, a gay guy, edgy women. We get detailed first-hand views and anecdotes on co-workers, shoppers, diners, customers in ways that suggest the authors border on: the uncaring, carefree and careless.
"To cope with needy oldsters isn't so hard if you know you're killing them off at the same time," claims one of the book's "enlightened" contributors who, writing in a streak of lame humor, works in an IHOP knock-off. -Insensitive, yes? -Amusing? No. Thick with woe-is-me,"victim"-like whining throughout, we hear from a variety of retail floor, counter and register personnel who all thought it useful to share their customer "service" anguish with us. The outcome is an uninspiring book, loaded with good writing but with lots of meaningless, downbeat, who-cares opinion.
-Overall, sounds like these writers don't much like their work, the people they work with or the public they "sell" to. So, then move on! Instead, though, they prefer the day-to-day self-flogging they undergo as lackluster sales "help," as told in page after page of confession-session-like scowling. These stories are mostly pointless...no conclusions, no solutions. They ramble. They might, though, interest others in retail who can claim similarly misplaced feelings about their own customers: as enemy, not as livelihood. -Does makes one wonder how much of the ole' under-the-counter, spit-in-the-hamburger trick is alive and well today.
"The Customer is Always Wrong"? This book is what's wrong....
 THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG ed. by Jeff Martin November 6, 2008
The Customer Is Always Wrong is a collection of essays on retail life. The book is edited by Jeff Martin, manager of a Tulsa Barnes and Noble, and features 21 anecdotes by writers you most likely will never have heard of about their own personal experiences working at a wide selection of retail jobs.
For the most part, the essays range in quality from slightly boring to fairly amusing. A highlight is Victor Gischler's tale of his time spent selling hearing aids, which made me laugh for two solid minutes.
Anybody who's worked in or shopped retail (that is, everybody) can relate to something in this book, and it's an entertaining enough read.
Essays: None horrible, none fantastic September 16, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
About: Collection of short essays penned by various writers on their experiences working retail.
Pros: Quick, easy read. Varied essays, none super-horrible. Wendy Spero's tale about selling knives door to door is a highlight.
Cons: No super great essays. I had not heard of any of the writers
 Fun Series of Essays on Life in the Retail World August 31, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Often humorous, occasionally poignant and at all times all too real, this book is a collection of essays on life in the retail world. Many of us have been there, whether as full time employees out of college or as part time slaves during our high school and college years. Any of us who have performed the retail job duties will recognize many of these stories. I was laughing much of the time; almost cried a couple of times, but I enjoyed the book completely at all times.
Don't let the fact that you have never worked in retail stop you from reading this book. You may learn a thing or two about life in the retail world and you may think twice before being snooty to those poor clerks behind the counters.
|
|
|
