Essay 4 - Is the Customer Always Right?

“Excuse me, sir. I was wondering if I could ask you about a question about a magazine.” Of course, ma’am, I reply. Helping customers with questions is, after all, one of the reasons I’m here. “I see this issue on the shelf, but it’s a few months old. Is there a newer one?” Well, I explain, it’s difficult to tell with magazines, because we don’t list them in the computer the same way we list books, but of course I’ll try. In looking it up, it seems like there is a newer issue. Going over to the shelf, the magazine isn’t there. This is not that unusual, I explain. It may have sold out, or perhaps a few of the copies came in damaged, I explain. This seems to be a normal customer interaction, up until…now.
“Well, sir, I was wondering if there is any way I could get a discount on this issue, since it’s older.” I look at the magazine again. It is in good condition. It doesn’t look like it has ever been handled before. Excuse me, ma’am, I say. I’m not sure I follow. “Well, you said yourself that there is a newer issue out. Should I have to pay full price for this old one?” Well, I reply with growing incredulity, the magazine is still full of articles that contain useful information. The new issue would simply have different articles. I can’t really offer a discount because it isn’t the current issue. After all, it isn’t exactly going stale. Only I don’t say that last part, naturally. “Is that your store policy,” she asks. Is what our store policy? Charging the listed price on the merchandise we sell? Yes, ma’am, yes, it is. “Is there anyone else I can speak to about this?” You are welcome to speak to the store manager, though he is not in today. But yes, I would be happy to take your name and number so he can contact you about this issue.
Such is one instance in the life of a retail sales person. What is it about shopping that makes people check their brains at the door? Yes, there is an open invitation into the store. We don’t discriminate. We are a Place of Public Accommodation; however, this is no one’s home, so please don’t act as though it were. Please, put that child’s shoes back on her, and perhaps your own as well. Thanks so much. No, we are not a library, but does that conversation need to be yelled into that cell phone so loudly the entire store can hear it? Probably not, and particularly not when it sounds like an episode of some soap opera. Who is sleeping with whom? And whom else? Never mind. I don’t really want to know, and no one else does either.
It has never ceased to amaze me how little concern people show for things that are not theirs. I understand that people coming in aren’t all looking to purchase. Window shopping and browsing around are things I enjoy. We like to maintain a stock breadth commensurate with the interest of our shopping public. Yes, we have about twelve different travel guides to the state of Hawaii. Was it really necessary to take one of each over to the café to browse through? How long was it going to take to go through them all? And did the one that the coffee dripped on have to be hidden in the middle of the pile? We found it, of course. We always do.
The real estate market may be difficult outside, but inside the store, it’s an outright war. Unquestionably, one of the first customers into the store will go right to the café to pick out their preferred tables, and they will leave their belongings there and then browse around the store. Other customers stake out the comfy-chairs like homesteaders during the Oklahoma land rush. Consider this instance. “Manager to Customer Service,” the overhead said. Oh, I thought, they’re playing my song. Walking over, I see an older customer looking unhappy. In introduce myself, and ask how I may be of assistance. “I want you to call the police.” Well, ma’am, could you please give me a few more details? That isn’t something I do lightly, I explain. “I put my things down on one of the chairs over by the magazines and then went to look around, and when I came back someone had moved them and was sitting in the chair. I want you to call the police and have her arrested.” Well, ma’am, that is not exactly something I can get involved in. It doesn’t affect the store in any way, since it’s between two customers, I tell her. This is not exactly true, but this woman seems to be a few chips shy of a batch of cookies anyway, and I would simply prefer to diffuse the situation. We don’t take responsibility for items that customers leave unattended, I continue. That really is the customer’s responsibility alone. She walked away, somewhat unhappy, but calmed. If you knew how many of those we’ve thrown away because people had “accidents” in them, you probably wouldn’t want to sit there anyway. I probably should have said that, for her own sake, but I didn’t.
The store also becomes a battleground between opposing political ideologies. This happens regularly. It would be impossible to stop it. It’s particularly bad during an election year, when publishers rush out any book they can dealing with the political upheavals approaching, and it manifests in two ways. Part of it stems from the customers’ unfailing belief that, even though a book is a bestseller and all their friends are talking about it, they are going to be the only person looking for it on any given day. Of course, it should be in stock, and for their convenience displayed right at the front of the store. This has the potential of happening with any book, but it’s much more fun when it happens with a political book. When it’s a political book, not having it on-hand means that we are obviously supporting the left/right-wing agenda, and are bleeding-heart liberals/neo-fascist conservatives, and so forth and so on. What customers tend to forget in these instances is that we are a business. We would sell almost anything that a customer was interested in purchasing. Actually, we don’t have the book because our initial shipment sold out faster than we could be resupplied. While we’re on the topic of political books, it does no good to hide the books written from opposing political views by covering them up with other books. Yes, there are a number of books out now with President Obama’s face on the cover. They aren’t all pro-Obama. Hiding them all behind the new Michael Savage or Bill O’Reilly book is pointless. We know we didn’t face-out those books in five different places. We will figure out what was done, and demean the culprit in absentia for doing it.
Political and social prejudices manifest themselves in other ways in the bookstore. Where books are placed in the store is very important to some customers. Also, what books are next to them becomes an issue. I will never forget the customer who was upset that the African-American Studies section was located next to the Gay & Lesbian Studies section. “Why is this section here?” she asked. We try to keep similar topics together, ma’am, and so all of the sections that deal with special-interest groups are follow one another. See, it goes from History, into Current Affairs, into Cultural Studies, African-American Studies, Gay & Lesbian Studies, Women’s Studies, Native American Studies, etc. “Well, I don’t think it should be here”, she replied, as though hers should be the final word, and walked off. Where should we put it ma’am? The back of the bus…I mean store? Of course I didn’t say that.
Returns are always an issue. Our return policy is simple: only within two weeks, only with a receipt, only in saleable condition. If all three of those conditions are not met, we are not obligated to take back a return. To be sure, we make exceptions. Life is full of circumstances, and yes, we are human. We do make the assumption that someone who shops in a bookstore has the ability to read the return policy for themselves. Some interpretations have been particularly interesting. One customer insisted that the policy was worded in such a way that she needed only to have a receipt or come in within two weeks to get the refund. When I spelled out for her exactly what the wording meant, she replied that she had a college degree, and knew that it meant what she had insisted upon. We went back and forth for several minutes as I tried to explain certain grammatical rules to her, but she insisted on her reading. Finally, I gave up. Okay ma’am, we will do this return for you, but just so you know, you are wrong. And yes, that was what really what I said.
My favorite customer interaction happened quite a while ago. This customer was pleasant, and had a simple request. She came up and asked, “Excuse me, but do you have any books on the meaning of names?” Well, yes, ma’am, we do. We have a whole section of books for baby names, I replied, and I turned to show her the way. “Well”, she continued behind me, “do you have any books with adult names?” Thankfully, I was facing away, because it was all I could do not to laugh. And for once, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Essay 4 - Rough Notes

I can't even really call this a draft.  It's barely anything at the moment.  But here it is, a beginning, and maybe something like a conclusion.

...
The sounds of simmering coming from the pot on the stove are a welcome, restful sound.  It is a sound that recalls a mother's (or father's) cooking dinner, holiday gatherings, the communion of friends and family.  This recipe, for Chai-Spiced Stone-Fruit Chutney, is not one that appears in my family's repertoire.  Time alone will tell if it becomes a part of mine.

The time is long past when recipes were learned solely by watching and learning from a parent - a mother, most likely.  This recipe came from a cookbook, Five Ingredients of Less, which is not unusual.  Cookbooks have been around for ages, and in widely published forms for over a century.  But this cookbook is based not on any family collection or cultural adaptation, but on a program of the same name that airs on the Food Network.

...
Finished, the chutney smells spicy sweet.  It thickens as it cooks, and the little remaining juice becomes like jelly around the chopped fruit.  It tastes much like it smells: spiced from the chai tea, slightly sour and tart from cherries and pomegranate juice, and sweet from the apricots.  Paired with a leftover roasted chicken, it revitalizes the dish.  It breathes new life into the meat, warming it in a way the oven can't even match. 

Descriptive Scene

This is the descriptive writing for the class:

The brown-and-orange tablecloth bunches in undulating waves against the weight of the basket that dominates the table.  These waves – the wake of something larger, perhaps - carry with them papers, letters, a coaster, and the odd magazine - Saveur, some catalogs – all are borne along on the cresting cloth.  The basket, full of plastic-and-cloth flowers, is largely unmoved though it has been pushed slightly askew from the centered position it would normally hold.  The wooden surface is unchanged by the drama that is playing out across its surface, though it is not entirely unaffected.  The faintest traces remain of the energy that propelled the cloth and the flowers. This evidence sits on the edge, balancing precariously between stability and descent: a small, cotton-like tuft of something.  It quivers in a breeze nothing else seems to feel.  Is the momentum that created it still, somehow, trapped within?  The cause of this disorder peeks her whiskered face innocently from around the corner of the table, unaware of the effect the force of her passage has had, as the tuft of her fur tries to decide its fate one foot above.

Essay 3. No idea what to call it.

            The Rio Grande is the way in.  Not to Mexico; this Rio Grande is not a river between the nations.  This one is Rio Grande Ave, the thoroughfare between mainland New Jersey and the Wildwoods, the collection of communities that comprises one of the state’s most popular vacation destinations.  It’s actually an interesting inverse.  Instead of being a river of water between two nations of land, it’s a narrow channel of road between the ocean and the bay.  It is the gateway to vacation.  From Rio Grande Ave, one can access the four major roads that run the length of the island of Wildwood: the Atlantic, Pacific, Ocean, and Seaview Avenues. 

            It’s a familiar trip.  I’ve made it almost every year that I can remember, and I apparently made it for a number of years that I can’t remember.  There are photos as evidence that I was there, in the case of the years I can’t remember personally.  In fact, given that I was born in September, right after the summer vacation season, I can safely say that I was there before I was even born.  After so many trips, I can almost recite the path.  I know it by the sights, which remain largely the same, and by the smell of the brackish water, which Rio Grande passes beside and over as it bridges land and island. 

            One of the first landmarks that will be visible is the Boathouse restaurant, which will appear on the right of someone coming over the bridge into Wildwood.  Behind it, slightly, is the dock where the Silver Bullet speedboat picks up the passengers for the high-speed tour it offers.  Just across the street is Urie’s, a restaurant whose continued popularity and, in fact, existence are a source of wonder for me every time I see it.  Cconsidering the unfortunate dining experiences we’ve had there, I wonder how it can be anyone’s favorite.    

            Our favorite restaurant was probably Johnson’s Family Restaurant.  That was our first choice when we were children.  Or that was our parent’s choice for us, but whichever, we were happy with it.  We were always there for the early bird specials.  I remember the kids menu, where names like “The Cowboy” or “The Giraffe” would be a turkey dinner, or spaghetti and meatballs, or whatever.  I remember the fish tank in the center, with the live lobsters.  We never ordered lobster.  I don’t actually remember anyone ever ordering lobster, actually.  Perhaps this wasn’t the kind of restaurant where lobster eaters went.  The tank may have been there for entertaining the children who came to dine.  It was a staple of our summer vacation until the year we went out to eat there and found it closed, after a kitchen fire.  It never reopened.  Now the building houses an Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, a shore chain which, while good, is hardly the same.  They do still have the Johnson’s sign though, hanging inside.  It is a nice link for people like us who remember the former restaurant. 

            Driving down Rio Grande Ave this year, we noticed that something had changed.  The Harley-Davidson dealership, in a distinctive doo-wop style building had closed and reopened as Wildwood Cycles.  The dealership had been there for 35 years, longer than I had been around to see it.  Pictures of it were features in a book on Wildwood that was published earlier this year.  And while it may be the same family that owns it, it is just another item on the list of things that is different.

            Every year for the last few years, I’ve been on the lookout for things that are different.  Last year, we drove out to find the miniature golf and ice cream shop combination that we had been going to for at least ten years.  We drove around, and then around again, thinking perhaps we had missed it or forgotten the address.  We hadn’t; there was a drugstore where it had been.  We drove back to the motel.  There wasn’t anything else we felt like doing.

            The motel we’ve stayed at for the last few years is the Imperial 500.  This is a more recent development in our vacationing history.  For many years, we stayed at a motel called the Nomad.  I remember the sign had something round that was either a compass or a ship’s wheel.  I accepted the name without question for years, until one day it struck me that it probably meant something.  I remember thinking how appropriate a name it was when I learned the definition.  The motel itself was nice.  It had a pool with a waterslide, and a laundry/gaming room where I used to spend time and quarters when I was a child.  It once had a little diner facing the shore, but that was closed up years ago.  I remember it being open, and getting egg and cheese sandwiches, and chocolate milk, and my father getting coffee. 

            We would have been staying there still, except that the motel was sold to developers several years ago.  We didn’t know at first.  My mother tried calling every year to make reservations, and couldn’t get through to the motel.  She thought it was a temporary phone problem, and tried again several days later, then again, until she began to get worried that she would not be able to get a reservation for the time we wanted.  She called Wildwood’s chamber of commerce, who informed her that the motel was closed.  By the time we got down there in August of that year, the building had been completely demolished.  By the next time I was there, the condominiums were already up.

            There have always been condominiums in Wildwood.  They dominated the very southern tip of the crest, past the area where we used to stay.  They were very exclusive, many of them gated.  It was something my parents dreamed of, having a permanent place down the shore.  They, like many people in the surrounding states – and Quebec – settled for weeklong vacations in the motels that lined the shore of Wildwood Crest. 

            This longstanding demographic is changing.  Over the last few years, many of the so-called Doo-Wop motels of Wildwood have been sold off to developers, and now condominiums start farther north than they did when I was a child.  This is why the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the entire area on its list of “America’s Most Endangered Places” back in 2006.  Their concern illuminated the issue, but has not stopped the sale of land and the transformation of motel properties into condominium developments.    

            Once there was an area of Wildwood where the streets were blocked off.  The sidewalks were decoratively tiled, and a number of small shops and restaurants opened.  We used to go there when I was a child.  There was a shop my sisters and I looked forward to, where they sold beach and ocean toys and other knickknacks.  There was a barbecue restaurant there, Cassidy’s, one of few on the island.  At first, every storefront was full.  Then perhaps, one or two might be empty.  Now there are only a few stores or restaurants there.  If people want to walk around small shops, they go into Cape May and hobnob with the bed-and-breakfast crowd. 

            Even the Boardwalk, the most popular group of attractions in Wildwood, has not emerged unscathed.  There was once a pier on the boardwalk that had small shops, but now it is gone.  Our favorite candy shop, Douglass, is still there, but the Atlantic Bookstore that was a popular stop is not.  Each year, it seems like more and more goes away.  The condo owners require fewer restaurants, and less entertainment; consequently, they feed less money into the local economy, and businesses close.  As developments take over more of the island, the change in demographics will undoubtedly force many more of our favorites to close down. 

Further Thoughts on Essay 3

The real problem is, I don't actually have much in the way of thoughts on essay 3.  I am still thinking about doing something about cooking.  The problem is that I don't know what exactly to say about cooking.  Actually, the problem is that we've done so much work on "I" essays, I am thinking only in terms of topics and their relation to me.  From the "eye" essays we have read, it seems like the idea should be more externally related.  I could do something about the "foodie" revolution.  I've been a fan of the Food Network since its inception, before Rachael Ray, Emeril, and Iron Chef.  In the beginning it was David Rosengarten, Two Hot Tamales, and a cooking game show, the name of which I can no longer remember.  That was probably fourteen or more years ago now - yes, really that long.  It's amazing to see how far that little channel based on cooking has come.  Now their chefs are celebrities and have brands based on them.  The Food Network even publishes a monthly magazine.  So, maybe this revolution would be something to write about.  I've participated in it on various levels.  Does that make me a participant observer?

Thoughts on Essay 3

     So, this is supposed to be an "eye" essay, which means I need to find something outside that relates to me somehow. In class we brainstormed a list and I have a few things from it that might make a good essay.
One of these is cooking. I'm not exactly a gourmet, but I do like to cook and bake. And maybe I'm just a little bit of a foodie. I read all kinds of cooking magazines and I'm constantly looking through cookbooks at work. I also watch my mother frequently. I have since I was little, and our whole family has looked to her for baked goods. I think that I could do something about that.
     Another topic is more of a travel essay. I've gone to Wildwood every year for about along as I remember. Apparently, I was even there in utero. Over the years, I've racked up all kinds of memories about our vacations there. In the last few years, things have really changed. Many of the 1950s-era motels that were a permanent presence down there have closed, including the one I stayed at for most of my life. In their place, condos are being put up. The typical condo owner doesn't spend in the same way as a one-week vacationer though, and the shift is having some pretty far reaching effects. That's something I would definitely like to write about.
     I also have learned about healthy eating and exercise in the last few years.  I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life overweight and hating myself for it. It took quite a while, but eventually I decided that I needed to do something about it.  I stopped eating fast-food almost completely, and with my increased interest in cooking began making my own meals whenever I can.  Learning to exercise properly has been an ongoing process. So this is also a potential topic, that I have invested time working on already.
     As always, the issue is trying to figure out what each of these topics will actually be about. I could relate the cooking to family history, or some other family related topic. The healthy eating/exercise topic could be a self-esteem idea, or related to ideas about life and aging. I could tie so much to Wildwood: family, aging, growth, money, economics, etc. So the real question is, which of these do I pick?

Gaming and me

            Gaming, especially the role-playing kind, has become one of the rituals of my life.  In high school, it ruled every Friday afternoon from the time school ended until perhaps seven in the evening.  For those four hours each week, we got to pretend to be all kinds of different people.  It was where my closest friendships in high school came from, which is interesting, because we forged those friendships not as ourselves but as a variety of characters. 

            Actually, thinking back on it, my love of playing someone else began earlier.  I gloss over video games too easily here, but they were my first experience in gaming, and they have maintained a place in my life even now.  I may have asked my parents, back when, for the system that had Mario, meaning in my childish, brand-addled way Nintendo, but my desire for Mario ended as soon as I encountered Link at my cousins’ house.  I became enamored of the Legend of Zelda, so much so that when my copy stopped working (even when I blew into both the cartridge and the game unit) I had to have another one.  And despite some disappointment in Legend of Zelda 2: Link’s Awakening, that series has remained one of my favorite of all time. 

            I don’t remember being particularly unsatisfied with my childhood.  I think I played these games, which despite the inability to modify the characters are still role-playing games, out of simple enjoyment.  It was easy to love.  The character has an easily defined quest to complete, usually before some great evil takes over, and a sword and other tools with which to complete that quest.  Along the way are any number of baddies trying to stop him, and he can defeat them with a little deduction and practice. 

            Such easily defined goals had immense appeal to me.  As I got older, and began to interact with my classmates at a more adult level, I began to realize that there were things that were different about the way I viewed things.  I was raised in a religious household, and the restrictive views of my parents and church kept me from many of the things that could have formed the basis for forming friendships.  I had never been allowed to participate in sports activities, for example, because these were usually held on weekends, and I would not have been able to miss church on Sunday mornings.  Or Sunday nights, for that matter.  Or any of the other times that a child should be there, participating in church activities.  Not being able to discuss sports presented a real roadblock to popularity, and so I felt set apart.  There were other reasons as well, that would become even more significant as I got older, but those were not apparent yet.  At least, not to me. 

            These challenges were beyond me at this stage; but, where I lacked skill in the actual world, I was still able to overcome challenges and finish quests in the virtual worlds.  These virtual worlds became even more of a draw for me, and I remember spending hours playing the original Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Crystalis games for the Nintendo.  Super Nintendo brought me such gems as Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasy II (IV), which is still one of my all-time favorites.  Games like these got me through some awkward transitional years.  I had questions about sexuality, what mine was, and whether it fit in with both popular opinion and religious belief.  I didn’t like the thought that I might be different, and turned to video games as  a means of avoiding, or at least postponing the questions. 

            In high school, I joined the Science Fiction & Fantasy Club, which was really a euphemism for the role-playing game club.  The school wouldn’t allow a club with that exact premise though, so it had to be hidden under the semi-educational guise of a club for readers of those genres.  This was perfectly acceptable to the club members, for whom playing characters became second nature.  This was the first real gaming ritual I had, and I loved it.  I had enough friends to get by, and could ignore the taunts of other classmates, secure enough that I had a place.  And for four hours a week, I could be almost anything.  My first character was an elven cleric, who could heal, and who wielded a halberd even though the rules prevented it because we were all still learning the game.  I think he blew up after drinking an unlabeled potion.  Hey, I was still new to role-playing, and I didn’t know any better. 

            It was easier to recover from mistakes in role-playing.  If something fatal happened, a new character was some dice rolling and chart consulting away.  If I wasn’t doing as well in the real world, I decided that I didn’t care.  I had something else to turn to. 

            The real problem began when I got out of high school.  The people with whom I had been playing went off to college, and I stayed local, and then started working.  Somewhere along the way I stopped playing games.  I stopped role-playing because I couldn’t find a group of people to play with, and I stopped playing video games because I was working and trying to save money for school.  I don’t want to give the impression that I was alone and lonesome; I had friends, and had an entirely too active social life.  But it was a life that I absorbed from the friends I was hanging around with at the time.  I went clubbing frequently, and as one of my best friends loved movies, I saw almost every movie that came out in theaters. 

            It took a long time for me to realize that I wasn’t happy.  I am somewhat ashamed to say I took it out on my friends in ways I didn’t even realize were unhappiness.  Looking back at this time, I realize that I didn’t really have anything in common with this particular group of people.  I didn’t listen to the same music they did.  They weren’t big readers like I was.  I had some common ground with video games, but only with a few of them, and none at all really with my “best” friend.  I wonder now if I was myself at all with them.  I think this is also when I started having outbursts and mood swings, which turned out to be signs of a larger problem than I realized at first.  My relationships grew strained, and then, out of convenience and mutual desire, ended.  

            There came a period when I wasn’t really hanging out with anyone.  By merest chance, this period of exile ended at work one day when a coworker noticed me reading through a role-playing game manual that had come in.  I hadn’t played anything in years, and in the time I had been away the game had changed greatly.  I don’t even remember why I was reading this particular manual.  I think it was simply to have something to read on a break.  My coworker noticed and asked me if I played, and I replied that I had in high school.  From then on, she tried on numerous occasions to get me to come over to her gaming group.  For whatever reason, I resisted, until a particular event made it too convenient to ignore.

            In many ways, I owe my current group of friends to J.K. Rowling.  I was managing a bookstore, and the release of the fifth book meant that I had to work all weekend, instead of having Sundays off as I normally would.  Sundays were when this particular gaming group met to play, and as I was going to be in the area anyway, I said I would come by and meet everyone.  And I did.  And I kept coming, and still have almost every Sunday since. 

            This group of people was a revelation in many ways.  They were adults, raised largely in an urban area, and as capable of navigating their actual environment as they were the imagined environments we shared.  They weren’t socially inept or introverted; they didn’t stay holed up in their rooms unless they wanted to be.  They accepted me not just because of my interest in playing, but because that is the kind of people they are, and we’ve grown together over the last seven or so years.    

I have a new gaming ritual now, in the Sunday night sessions that began long before I even met this group of friends.  Interestingly enough, we aim for four hours at a time, which must be a magic number for role-playing games.  Perhaps the various games I’ve played are practice sessions where I try out different methods of interacting with people.  Perhaps I was just waiting for the right group of people to come along.  I certainly feel more comfortable in this group of friends than in almost any other group of people I’ve known before. 

More than simply being myself, I think my friendship with these people has helped me to define myself, to become myself  Over the last few years, I’ve developed some concrete goals about what I want to do with my life.  I’ve taken trips to places I would not have gone before, in real and imagined worlds.  It seems strange, looking back at years of playing games that I should find myself most fully realized through the act of pretending to be someone else.