The other Side of the Counter

I posted this on our company website a while ago. That site has since been taken down, so why not recycle rather than let my inane monologue go to waste?

It’s ironic in a way that I ended up as a Creative Director in an advertising agency that handles a big retail brand. Before I entered the wonderful world of media, I had a lot of practical experience in retail at a very different level: on the shop floor.

Yes, that’s right; my secret is finally out. It is cathartic to come out into the open with it. It wasn’t always the champagne and oysters (yeah right) of the advertising industry for me. It was once beer and hotdogs. It’s true. I was once a retail sales person.

“May I Help You?”

Retail is hard. It rarely sleeps, is open seven days a week for your convenience and requires a lot of humility and patience from its staff members. In my seven plus years as a retail salesman, I was a workhorse, a verbal punching bag, a selling machine and a frustrated artist.

I can’t fault retail for what it gave me, though; patience, the ability to relate to just about anyone, a lesson in the true value of hard work and a whole lot of empathy for others who do the same thing every day just so that they can pay the bills.

The most interesting part of manning the trenches in a retail store, however, is the people that walk through the doors every day. I could write a novel about my colleagues and the customers I dealt with. A novel is perhaps a little ambitious right now, though, so I’ll start with this short article.

My experience in retail was primarily in audio-visual and electronics stores. We sold hi-fi, TVs, computers, car radios and pretty much anything else that lit up, made a noise or plugged in.

When I entered the business I was about 20 years old and only really got into it because lying around watching TV all day wasn’t really an option (my mother insisted). My first job was in a large audio-visual store that primarily specialised in high-end hi-fi and home entertainment. Sounds like fun, right? Well, had I actually known anything about high-end hi-fi and home entertainment, it might have been. I didn’t. So there I was, a fledgling salesman (and commission based at that), thrown onto a busy retail floor having to answer in-depth technical questions thrown at me by hi-fi enthusiasts and techno boffins. My answers, at first, were somewhat creative, and I was often told in no uncertain terms that I should rather “call someone who knows what they’re talking about”.

It got better. I spent those quiet hours during which the shop floor was dead going around the store and playing with the equipment; familiarising myself with instruction manuals and all the technical stuff. I soon discovered that the best way to sell a piece of audio visual or electronic equipment was to just subtly read all the specifications off the packaging (in my own words, of course) – no more studying manuals for me.

One of the things about selling hi-fi equipment was always that you had to have the right demo disk to play. It had to be a high quality audio disk that highlighted the performance of the hi-fi. Sadly, high quality disks seemed few and far between. This is the reason I can no longer listen to The Eagles’ “When Hell Freezes Over”. It was the only demo disk we had, playing solidly in rotation all day for about two years. To this day I still cringe when I hear “Hotel California”. Customers loved it, though. The number of times I heard that old chestnut, “if I buy the system will you throw in the disk too…” (followed by a chuckle or a wry grin), are too numerous to count. In my mind, I was saying, “please, take it! Take every copy we have and never return!”

I never got into audio-visual sales because I thought it would be a career. I was going to be the next great author, comic artist, movie director, pop culture icon. I did, however, work with some people who took it very seriously. They would stand at the counter on quiet days reading audio-visual industry magazines and get really excited about Nad’s new amplifier that put out 150W RMS (not going to explain that here) over 5.1 channels. They would test out the focus on Sony’s new digital video camera by holding a banknote up against the lens and marvel at how quickly it focused (this was a trick I picked up and used on customers – it sold me many cameras). They would have in-depth discussions about which speakers worked best with what amplifier and stare for hours at the high definition TV sets with the same scene from Toy Story played on repeat and never cease to be amazed (repeatedly) by the quality of the picture.

These were the salesmen that you would want to deal with. They really believed in what they were selling you, me not so much. I always resorted to the classic sales mainstays like, “I have one of these myself and it’s great” or “you know, I got my mom one of these for Christmas and she loves it”. Not the most ethical of tactics, I’ll admit, but I worked on commission. I had to pull out all the stops.

Now customers, that’s another story entirely.

“Do You Do Lay Byes?”

There are certain regulars in establishments like audio-visual stores that one might dub the “denizens of the sales floor”. They would come in at least weekly, corner a salesman and question him at length about a product that they had read about or that a friend had purchased or that they had simply zoned in on in the store. They would always come back but they would never buy. Once they’d made a few visits to the store, salesmen became familiar with them, and would generally dive for cover – burying their heads in paperwork, rushing to assist any other available customers or sprinting to the far end of the store. There was even a term coined for customers (or non-customers) of this nature. It is one that is probably still quite widely used today. Having worked in four audio-visual stores throughout the years, it was a term that was widely recognised and widely used: “FTW”.

I won’t discuss here what the fist letter stands for. The grown-ups in the audience can figure that one out. The last two letters, however, stand for “Time Waster”.

These people were generally retired, self-employed, unemployed or simply suffering from “ennui”. They had far more time on their hands than most of us do, and spent a large portion of this time interrogating hapless retail sales people.

Then there were the dreamers. I really felt for these visitors to the battlefront. Audio-visual and electronic equipment, remember, is a luxury, one which many are unable to afford. Many of the people who walked through the shop doors were not in the position to hand out in excess of 10 000 on their dream home entertainment system, but “a guy can dream”. These dreamers generally didn’t demand much of my time. They already knew what they wanted, how it worked and what the exact specifications were. They would come in with a friend or partner in tow, gaze longingly at the displays and leave the store in a state of melancholy uttering things along the lines of, “one day…”

The serious enthusiasts were often the hardest to deal with. They could often be mistaken for the aforementioned FTWs as they visited the store frequently without buying. They were tricky to identify but one could normally make the distinction between them and the FTWs when they always insisted on dealing with the same sales person. It could take weeks, even months to make a sale because these people researched everything, and made you do the same. You came to know them on a first name basis and generally, after much hard work and difficult questions, the enthusiast would walk out with the item he or she had been agonizing over.

The worst people in my experience to deal with on the shop floor, though, were those who were lacking in that most sacred of all virtues – patience. These are the types who make cashiers cry, yell at bank tellers, insist on speaking to the Manager, demand refunds and occasionally throw four letter words at whoever happens to be in their path. These creatures cannot be tamed. They do not like being cornered and you can’t even poke them with a big stick. I once approached a gentleman in store, blissfully unaware that he was one of the species. Unassumingly, I opened with my standard line, “May I help you?” He promptly snapped back, “Did I ask for your help??!” There’s nothing you can say to placate these people. They are sent by the unseen Gods of the retail arena to test you. The best thing to do is simply make a quiet exit.

The specific individuals I met during my tenure in retail are a story for another time. Names will be changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent. Look out for part two of “the Other Side of the Counter” coming soon. This is a story that needs to be broken up into episodes. I will close this episode off by saying, next time you find yourself wanting to make a snide comment at the cashier who does not greet you with a smile or the salesman who is not present when you are looking for a particular lightbulb, pause for a moment. Retail people are people too. Perhaps your arrival was preceded by a visit from an FTW or worse, an impatient passer-by. Have a care. Your purchase is important to us.