The Many Habits of Succesful Customers

If you are like me, which I believe you are, then going shopping can be quite the traumatic experience. There's the crowds, the piteously evil sales clerks, the uncontrollable crying fits, and a myriad of other unpleasant obstacles waiting for you. Yes shopping is truly terrible, and incites fear in the most stalwart of hearts.

No need to fear though, because I have for several years been working on the inside of the retail world, facing almost certain death or insanity, observing the many habits of successful customers and the habits of the devious "clerk".  My latest incursion into the frightening retail industry has been the particularly perilous "grocery store", which I like to call Dens of Lies (Oh you'll see why).

And for the first time ever I will share these habits with you in the form of easy to understand tips. Get ready to be educated!

Habit Number 1

"I the successful customer am always right, therefore I can ignore all common courtesy and common sense."

Successful customer pictured above.

This is not so much a habit of successful customers more than an outlook, a state of mind if you will, that helps to shield the successful consumer from any harmful realities that will prevent them from getting what they want, when they want it.

It is a outlook that helps the successful customer ignore the screams of the less successful customers as he runs them down in his motorized mobility scooter of death. Or to yell at them because one of their bloody molars managed to lodge itself into his rear tire after he backed up over the poor sod's face, multiple times.

It is an outlook that helps the successful customer see right through the obvious lies of the devious dairy clerk (the most devious of clerks) when he is told that there is no longer anymore Balkan Style 2% yogurt, which is oh so creamy.

It is the outlook that you need to adopt every time you go shopping, lest you die cold and forgotten in the middle of the bulk isle at your local Den of Lies.

Habit Number 2

Never trust a word any clerk says, they have more bananas in the back. In fact they have a whole tree.

They have more in the back.

All clerks are pathological liars, down to the bone, and they can't be trusted. If the successful customer is told there is no more Apple Cinnamon Cheerios in stock, the successful customer will insist that the clerk (that dastardly clerk) should check in the back. If the clerk returns and still refuses to reveal the location of the hidden Cheerios then the successful customer will demand, as gruffly as possible, to see the manager. If the manager proves immovable then the successful customer will move on to Habit Number 4.

Note: During the execution of Habit Number 2 the successful customer will be sure to take up as much time as possible, because along with being horrid liars clerks also never have anything better to do than wait on the successful customer hand and foot.

Habit Number 3

Expect perfection, every time, all the time, especially 15 minutes before the store closes.  

Earlier model of Japanese produce clerk.

It is a little known fact that most grocery store employees are cybernetic organisms, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. As such they should always be accomplishing their tasks in a perfect machine like fashion. If they don't then they are clearly faulty and the successful customer will yell at them to initiate the automatic repair sequence built into each and every single one of those horrid clockwork contraptions.

What is this perfection that we should all expect though? Well it can be quite hard to tell since most of you out there are probably used to shopping at the smaller family grocery stores that utilize cyborgs, a disgusting melding of man and machine, which tend to suffer from many of the foibles of their more squishy side.

To know what perfection is we need to look again to the successful customer. Let's say the successful customer makes his way over to the seafood department and he finds that all of the halibut fillets on display are too large for his consumption because he has trouble pooping or something like that. The successful customer won't just ask the seafood robot to cut one of the pieces smaller, no he'll ask that the automaton cut it to exactly 218.52 grams. If the unfeeling machine refuses the successful customer will notice that the robot is clearly being rebellious, and fearing a machine uprising, will ask for the manager. If the manager concurs with his fellow mechanical abomination then the successful customer will proceed to yell at them both to initiate their repair function, if this fails the successful customer will move to Habit Number 4.

Habit Number 4

Always go shopping well armed, and take no prisoners. 

If nothing else works, the successful customer will pull out all the stops. Pulling out the stops can include but are not limited to,

This is the minimum.

• Throwing a fit like a child
• Threatening to never shop there again
• Using insults against employees, "soulless goddamned machine", and "lobotomized monkey" are good ones
• Writing a firmly worded letter to the CEO, or threatening to do so

And when all that fails the successful customer will actually go shopping well armed and start blowing the shit out of everything in sight.

  

More to come later as I help you be a more successful customer. You're welcome.