When I was at University I had a job at a department store called David Jones and I had the honor of selling, but more the accepting of the return, of electrical appliances. The impressive thing about these appliances was how they were useless before they stopped working. There was one product that claimed to cook a complete roast dinner in under one hour. It looked like a fish tank, because it was almost completely made of glass and had this huge apparatus on the lid. So it looked like a filter on top of a fish tank. This stupid product claimed you could just 'pop in' all the vegetables and some meat and it would just cook it all in 'one go' and 'without fuss.' The marketing material was full of cliches. It was 'taking the world by storm' by using 'cutting edge technology' apparently. They even said that the designers were 'thinking outside the box' which wasn't very honest because it was essentially a glass box with slightly rounded edges. The only interesting aspect of my job was watching products come into the store, held tightly in the hands of angry and irrational customers who were stupid enough to buy them in the first place. The fish tank was one of the more popular items to come back. It would overheat and sometimes catch on fire. Whenever one came back, I'd try to point out how it was 'taking the world by storm' but they wouldn't listen. My estimate during my brief but eventful tenure at David Jones, was that the ratio of electrical appliances coming through the front door, as opposed to the back dock, was 3:1.
The first red flag was the job interview. The David Jones people seemed just a smidge keen to pin my name to my chest and slap me onto the sales floor. They had cash register ‘tryouts’ where you had to use said register under timed conditions. It didn't go well. I'd get my tie caught in the cash drawer and once or twice I nearly pulled the heavy contraption to the floor. I also had my housemate's shoes on, which were about three sizes too big and I kept stepping out of them all the time. This in itself was stressful because he didn't know I had them and if I stepped out of them and left them behind, he'd be pretty upset and as you have already deduced, he was a big guy. I also made the wrong change several times and kept asking if lunch was provided as part of our training and when was it on? On the second day of tryouts, I put my badge on upside down. They hired me anyway and before I'd mastered the art of closing the cash drawer sans tie, I was on the sales floor dealing with the general public.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the saying: 'The customer is always right', but if you worked at David Jones it was your mantra. And the customer was, (in my humble opinion at least) clearly, demonstrably, always wrong. I’ve never met so many consistently wrong people in my life. Everybody who walked into that stupid shop was clearly wrong. It was as if The International Wrong Convention was being held there every day. In case you’re not already aware, small electrical appliances have a habit of not working – or not working well. Whatever, the point is that any other shop in the business of selling small electrical appliances, will have a largish number of returns. A related point is that any shop in the business of selling small electrical appliances would not be much of a business. But David Jones was no normal retail business. Even though they had ‘the customer is always right’ as their mantra, what they really meant was, ‘the customer is the Prime Mover, which in philosophy is the first efficient cause and the necessary foundation of contingent beings and the supreme perfection in which imperfect beings find cause. Because the unique metaphysical compound of fuckwit and Prime Mover could only exist within the confines of an Australian department store, this meant anything could be returned. I had a customer bring in a toaster that was no longer working. When I pointed out that we did not sell that particular brand of toaster, he insisted he’d bought it at our store; when I pointed out that this brand did not distribute toasters in Australia and New Zealand and that his toaster was likely about twenty years old, he continued insisting. When I pointed to the United Kingdom plug on the end of the cord, he still insisted the toaster had been purchased from our store only three months previously. I asked my boss, who was mental, and he said that the store’s policy was not to ask questions. He said, "Look, just give him a store credit and get him out of here." The manager then went on to tell me that when a customer is given exactly what they want, they feel ‘good vibes’ towards the store and will come back. He actually used the phrase ‘good vibes’ about four times. But I must say I agree, such a customer will always come back, you know, to return something else that was made in Latvia and sold in Sweden with a Lithuanian plug on the end. ‘Good vibes’ is apparently defined as the feeling you share when you rip somebody off and when you come back to do it again and again because after all, they’re ‘good vibes’.
The area I worked in was relatively small, A kind of horseshoe shaped glass cabinet with two cash registers and a bunch of sleepy-eyed students with bed heads and wrinkled shirts. The cabinet displayed electric shavers, nose hair trimmers and spare parts. I had another customer who returned a nose hair trimmer. He was clearly embarrassed because he was returning a delicate item of a personal grooming nature, so when he rocked up and said it wasn’t working, I immediately sensed the awkwardness in the air and kindly tried to break some ice by assuring him that I ‘totally’ believed him because it looked like he had two cats shoved up his nose. Some people just don’t have a sense of humor. ‘Nostrils’ complained to management about my remark and I was told to go and see the lady in personnel. I decided to save time by entering her office and knocking on the door at the same time and there she was, shoes off, feet on the desk, gawking at a Playgirl magazine. So Nostrils’ complaint was therefore not upheld because I had stumbled into not just an office but a situation that guaranteed future job security. And as you can imagine, the prospect of future job security at this place was pretty disappointing. As I walked out I sighed when I realised just how hard I’d have to work to get myself fired. And for some reason, over the Christmas shopping period that year foot spas and electric woks were all the rage. People would come in and ask all about foot spas and electric woks as if they were investing in real estate or buying a business. I had one customer spend about two hours looking at foot spas, asking questions, requesting demonstrations, taking measurements. He made me call a sales representative to get answers to questions about safety and how much the spare parts cost. The customer finally purchased the foot spa of his dreams, only to return the next day because he’d changed his mind (after using it of course). I had another customer bring back an electric blanket to be repaired, that’s right, not returned, but repaired. How on earth do you fix an electric blanket? He told me that it ‘wasn’t as warm as it used to be’ or something. When I asked how warm he thought it should be, he replied ‘very warm’ and then told me it was now only ‘warm’. I told him the electric blanket repairman was busy on another job where he was fixing a king size electric blanky that was freezing people to death and that he should come back when I’m not working at David Jones anymore.
