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10. RETAIL SERVICE (Sept. 2002)
Listen. I have the same customer service horror stories you all
have, from in-store stupidity and incompetence, rudeness and indifference, to
the hell we all go through on the phone.
But I also have another perspective.
Over the years, whatever media I've been involved with--- theater,
books and now radio and
internet--- the ground bass beneath--- or my day job as they call it--- has been
music and musical instrument retail. I've been a store manager for a
decade-and-a-half now.
Stand behind the counter with me. Ready for 8 numbing hours of
register work? Care to spend Saturday filing 20 boxes of music? It may be
Beethoven, but when you put it on the shelves you use the same muscles you use
for cans of peas.
If you're a clerk what do you get? $7 an hour? $9? $6.50? No one can
live on that. Kids who live at home or are subsidized by their parents can live
on that. $8 an hour? That's not even $17,000 a year, before taxes. No one can
live on that. Health coverage? Pensions? Sick days? Unions? What are you, a
fool? This is America, 2002.
Even if you're management, you still make less in a year than some
coke-snorting 25-year-old Wall Street hotshot pockets in 2 days.
You know it, and you seethe in frustration. You're in retail, and by
American standards you're a loser. Yet when the world comes to the register you
are expected to smile and be helpful and be ultra-competent and infinitely
patient and exquisitely polite. And, in my retail field, show knowledge on an
academic level. And then, at the end of the day drag your tired, ill-paid butt
back on the subway to your crummy little studio apartment in Queens. For which
you now pay $800 a month.
Really, all of you out there, you have your nerve to expect anything
better.
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