Now is the winter of my discontent.
For the last few days, a thought has been gnawing away at my mood like some demonic canker. Especially at this time of year when everyone is vomiting forth the platitudes of good cheer and charity like some jolly version of tuberculosis; all empty eyes and dying insides. Everywhere you turn there’s a bell being rung next to a cheerily red pot or a tree festooned with requests for gifts or a barrel plastered over with the pleas of some worthy charity. It’s so pervasive this time of year it just sinks into the background until on a subconscious level you feel like everyone you encounter has their hand out.
So what the tinsel-clad hell does this have to do with a clerk in a porn store? Because I’m thoroughly annoyed by the overweening sense of entitlement displayed by my fellow man.
I get customers drifting through the store who will buy a toy and then expect some sort of fawning gratitude on my part. I don’t even think they quite realize what they are doing or why they’re possibly leaving with a tinge of dissatisfaction.
This is not a matter of me being gracious or concerned with them getting adequate service. Let me sketch out a quick example. The other night, a pair of women came in. They browsed through the toy section and eventually arrived at something that suited their needs. Upon arriving at the counter and being rung up, they asked if they could get some free arcade time. When I smiled and politely informed them that wouldn’t be possible, they responded with the most popular justification known to retail, “I just spent XXX, doesn’t that count?”
First of all, their total purchase was roughly thirty bucks. That would be the equivalent of buying a numbered meal deal off some fast food chain’s garishly colored menu. They may not have just bought a condiment packet, but their purchase also was nowhere near topping the charts.
Secondly, attempting to negotiate after the initial question and refusal just annoys the bloody fuck out of me.
I’d love to know why it always comes down to some monetary value on their part. It’s never a total judged on the part of the store, the customer is always the one who assesses what the magic number that will unlock some variety of bonus. A number, I might add, that is always coincidently around the amount of their purchase.
We do not get this shit for free. Our margins are not infinite. Beyond the price we paid for the item, we’ve also got to re-coup operating costs and then whatever is left over becomes profit. Just because you just dropped two hundred bucks on a particular item, it does not automatically mean we’re making a significant profit. Depending on the item, we may just be running close to the break-even point to provide something we, as a store, feel the consumer needs to have available.
Regardless of that particular concern however, when the frothy hell was anyone entitled to more than what they bought or earned?! No, walking into a store and cracking a wallet to provide cash or a card does not count as earning. No woman appreciates a man feeling entitled to them sexually because they bought them dinner or any number of activities that require time and money. So why the bloody hell should I as an adult store employee be blasé when someone choosing to patronize my store somehow expects to get some freebie or extra consideration simply for spending money on something they wanted?
And yet they act offended when I won’t toss in some extra item that appeals to them at the moment when they ask because they spent X amount of bucks.
Fine. I’ll just toss this deluxe bedroom kit in the bag for you free of purchase. You have to give me the title to your Escalade because I’m being so damned generous.
Fuck you.
Extras are supposed to be just that; extra. If I want to go that extra mile, wonderful, but the instant that is taken for granted, it’s no longer worth it.
But going back to the holidaze, have you ever noticed how often people making donations look for some sort of credit or recognition for it? Hmmmm. Sounds like another version of the “see how much I spent/gave you, so what are you going to do to reward me?” crap. You want to be altruistic? Fantastic. You want to be charitable? Go for it. Doing it in order to net something you want for yourself is just another way of trying to weasel an undeserved perk out of life.
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