It's never a good sign when customers are lined up outside the door when I unlock it at 9a.
Father Tom used to tell me that he loved doing 7a weekday mass a million times more than he liked any version of Sunday Mass. I'll never forget his littlle ritual before Sunday mass. We'd be in the back sacresty, suited up and ready to do a Sunday Mass. He'd stand there, snaking the cords of his lapel mike through the various folds of his vestments so they wouldn't show, saying, "I'd never say mass on Sundays if I could help it. But I'll always be up for a 7a weekday Mass. Those are my people, those are the true believers. They're not here to show off to their neighbors, they're here to pray. Nenie, I really Fucking hate Sundays...OK, let's go." Then he'd switch on the mike, welcome the congregation and roll out onto the floor, ready to say mass.
I'm not saying that people that are there when The Minuteman opens up are akin to the most devout of Catholics, but there is something to these folks. Something that speaks to the nature of customers in our world today. These early shoppers have some things in common with each other; these are the faithful, the truly devoted, the incredibly hurried. They're really all very nice. Hell, aas a random sample, they're probably nicer than the average group of Minuteman patrons, but with their percieved time constraints being what they are, there's very little room for error on my part. These people are nice, happy to make small talk, or hear my educated opinion on the products they're considering...unless you miskey something, or mishear their Texas/Boston/New York drawls. You do that and you'd best be prepared ofr an onslaught of abuse. And once a customer tears into you, the rest of the group smells blood in the water and they're on you like white people on land.
That's the trick to working retail, really. If you can keep one person from tearing into you, you can stop them all. But if you let one slip, they'll all turn on you, having seen or heard the abuse they'll feel like they have license to do likewise to you. Most of the time, this is a fairly easy thing to do, when it gets hard is when you have an individual that's come into the store for the sole purpose of embarrassing someone. They may not know it, but something's gone wrong with their day/week/life and they've decided to take it out on the first wage slave they can find, which a lot of times, happens to be me.
When this happens, the important thing to do is to take the abuse as best you can, to remember that for some reason this person has decided to take their frustrations out on someone who they perceive as being beneath them. It's not you personally, it's the role you play. You're a wage slave, you supposedly have no education and you deserve to take this abuse because you didn't work hard enough in school. Part of taking the abuse as best you can is to remember that 1) you aren't beneath them and 2) no, they don't pay you to put up with this.
With these two thoughts in mind, you can safely do everything you can to be polite and make the encounter as brief as possible. Civility here is the key, if you can be civil here, you just make the abuser look like that much more of an asshole, which comes in handy when it's time for phase two- scoring as many points as possible on the asshole in question, as quickly as you can.
Case in point. I was on register 4 the other day, watching over Bambi's as he struggled to keep his head above water a few feet away from me on register 2. Things were going as well as could be expected on a beautiful weekday afternoon; there was a short line of customers waiting to check out, and we were doing our best to keep them moving while keeping the mood light. Out of nowhere comes this asshole out of towner who was pissed that his Yankees choked like Mama Cass at a Mongolian BBQ. At that moment in time I was faced with two options, either speed up and take him on myself, sparing Bambi, or doing things at a normal pace and see what Bambi did when faced with a customer hell-bent on embarrassing a sub-human wage slave.
I really should change Bambi's nickname to Mama Cass.
The guy is abusive to Bambi from the start, making demands and generally refusing to acknowledge that there was a human being in front of him. Bambi was doing well enough, but I could tell that he was gonna sink before too much longer. This guy was baiting a trap for Bambi and before I could decide whether or not to warn him, he fell into it. Steinbrenner had neglected to bring any coupons with him, but here he was demanding that Bambi double his non-existant coupons, essentially giving him a discount for being George F. Steinbrenner. When Bambi, belatedly, attempted to hold his ground this guy started reaming him out, eventually throwing his merchandise to the floor before storming out of The Minuteman.
When something like this happens, you have to think fast. It was a weekday afternoon so there were about a dozen or so customers who saw this transaction. They saw Bambi sitting there shellshocked and scared and they all smelled the blood in the water. I had to think fast, because if they turned on Bambi, they'd turn on me by proxy and next thing you know the whole freakin' store would be going down for the rest of the day. So, I did what I had to do. Once Steinbrenner was out of earshot, I stage whispered a few jokes to Bambi about the guy's hairline and radioed for more cashiers and a double G&T for Bambi. When the gawkers overheard my order of a stiff drink for Bambi they all started to laugh at Steinbrenner's display. The tide had been turned, I'd scored enough points off of Steinbrenner to save our necks for a few more hours.
When you have a line when you unlock the doors the risk of running into someone like Steinbrenner goes up exponentially. On top of the fact that this crowd is full of regulars who, by virtue of their status as regulars feel, justly or un, that they deserve, no are entitled to a greater level of service than the average Minuteman customer you have to deal with people who feel that their time is much scarcer and more precious than that of the average person. When you're dealing with a population like this and you've been robbed of the luxury of warming up one customer at a time...it's a recipe for disaster.
Had Steinbrenner showed up as part of an opening minute rush, this story would have a very different ending. Had he shown up as part of a mass rush when I unlocked the doors there'd have been no quick quip, no turning of the tide. Nope, we'd've been screwed all day long. 9 hours of abuse...it makes for a long day.