Hey, did you know it’s really kind of hard to write these every week? Especially when you do something stupid like say, “Thursdays are my newsletter days!” except that Wednesday nights are for watching wrestling and preparing for Thursday night tabletop RPG games.
Anyway, this one’s about another positively absurd customer from my days at Family Video, which was the larger of two video stores I worked at and also the one that seemed not to give two shits about labor laws.
You can’t really prepare for bad customers, even though you want to try.
Guertz was one of those that I wish I’d been warned about, but in hindsight I am thankful to have been working with Bruce the first time I met him. He was an overweight guy in his mid-to-late 30’s, if I had to guess, and he had a curly mullet haircut and a leather jacket straight out of the late 1980’s. Guertz was quiet at first, relatively unassuming, and I didn’t pay him any mind when he came into the store other than to note that he smelled pretty strongly of cat piss.
The first time I encountered Guertz, it was a Friday night and we were practically slammed. I think I was trying to run a stack of recently returned movies out to the floor when he cornered me.
“H-hey,” he said, “You got any Halloween movies in?”
“Uh, I can check,” I replied, gesturing to the stack of DVDs in my hand. “Just let me finish with these and I’ll look in the computer for you.”
By the time I finished running the movies out, I went up to the computers and—thankful for a lull in customers—started to look to see what was in stock. Bruce stopped me.
“Hey,” he said, Don’t waste your time. Guertz isn’t gonna rent shit.”
“What? Why?”
Bruce nudged me aside and pulled up Guertz’s info on the computer. He was a regular customer, or at least he had been, up to the point where he didn’t bring back movies totaling upwards of $90.00 for a bunch of pornography that had never been returned. And these weren’t just run-of-the-mill late fees. These were “purge” fees, dollar amounts that couldn’t be negotiated down. Not only would Guertz not be renting anything tonight, he probably wouldn’t be renting anything for the rest of his life.
“He comes in all the time and bothers us,” Bruce said. “Try not to get wrapped up in a conversation with him. It’s not worth it.”
Right on cue, Guertz approached the counter like he had business. “H-hey,” he said, “d-did you find those Halloween movies for me? I like those Halloween movies. That M-Michael Myers? He’s pure evil.”
Bruce rolled his eyes, but because we had a decent number of customers in the store there was no way he could be as short with Guertz as he wanted to be.
“Hey, man,” I said, “I don’t think we have any in stock.” I chose diplomacy, cognizant of my experiences being accused of highway robbery a week prior.
“Are y-you s-sure?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “And besides, you owe too much. You have to pay your purge fees first.”
“Th-they told me I could pay on them,” Guertz protested.
“Nah, man. Gotta pay them all at once. That’s the rule.” I was already learning the ropes. Learning how to be stern.
“That ain’t f-fair,” Guertz said. He skulked away, disappearing in between the racks. Eventually he left, but not before protesting once more and trying to strike up a conversation with another customer about the moral depravities of Michael Myers.
Bruce came up beside me and laughed. “That’s what you have to do, man. Just be a hard-ass about it.”
I’d like to think that Guertz’s decision to slink off into an emptier part of the store was a sign that he wouldn’t bother us again, but—as Bruce predicted—he came back again and again. His appearances were sporadic, but they always happened at the worst moments possible, like when we had a crowd of customers in line and couldn’t really stop to answer his inane questions. Sometimes he’d pop in about 40 minutes before close, refusing to leave until we answered why we wouldn’t let him rent, where in the store he could find his favorite movies (that we wouldn’t let him take home), and—at one occasion—if we had a favorite porn star.
This last question was particularly galling because, even if we felt like having the conversation, we sure as hell wouldn’t have it with Guertz.
One night he came in extremely close to closing time—like ten minutes prior—and just wouldn’t take the hint that we didn’t have time for his shit. He went through the normal routine, asking about Halloween, bugging the other few customers (especially some of the women), trying to surreptitiously creep back to the porn corner to ogle the uncensored covers.
Bruce nearly snapped.
“Get out,” he said. “Just get the hell out. We’re closed.”
“Wh-what? No way,” Guertz said. “I still have a few minutes!”
“You’re not gonna spend any money, get the fuck out.”
Guertz left under protest, of course. But he left just the same.
We followed this routine over and over again throughout the next couple of years until I left the company, and I am regularly thankful to not have to have interactions with him—or customers of a similar ilk—anymore.
It should be very clear that, much like Jukie, Guertz had some form of mental issues. But this is not the key reason that I did not like encountering him. His presence (unlike other customers who actually came to pose a danger to our team) was relatively benign.
He was obsessive, rarely bathed, but—by all accounts—was lucid enough to get out of the house on his own. He was persistent in his refusal to pay his fines, say inappropriate things, and to pretend that it was acceptable to try and flirt with the women who worked at our store. He was the kind of customer you did not want and who could not—or would not—understand why he was so unwelcome.
This is in stark contrast to another customer who actually developed a truly dangerous obsession with one of my coworkers, a man who referred to himself as the “Reverend Doctor Charlie Cole,” and lavished them with gifts and called to leave abusive messages on the store’s answering machine for all of us.
I think about Guertz a lot, though. More than fodder for amusing anecdotes, he was emblematic of the kinds of customers that made—and continue to make—working in retail so damned perplexing.
It’s a rule of retail, I think, that the negative experiences stick out so much more prominently in your mind. There are days that I can recall with absolute clarity the worst experiences I’ve ever had as a sales associate or manager, but far fewer where I can examine positive ones. I can materialize some names and even fewer faces, but the actual emotions those interactions conjured? Those are as fresh as the earthy scent after a spring rain. I think about the guy who refused to let me take an odometer reading for his oil change when I worked at Walmart in 2006. I distinctly recall the night a woman stayed for a half hour after close trying on dresses at Express, all without walking out with a single item—and on the night when the whole store needed to be prepared for inventory, no less.
What is it about people that seems to render them unable to be polite in the presence of customer service professionals? And yes, I’m going to bring up professionalism because despite what you may think, the people in the stores are professionals in at least some capacity. They are trained to do a job, and they know how to do that job, and they are being paid to do it. Hence: professionals. While we’re at it? They deserve a living wage, fair compensation, paid sick time, and the ability to tell a silly son of a bitch to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of the store for not abiding by policies.
I think the one thing that sums up my time in customer service is that there should be a day each year where retail employees are allowed to fight customers, which I not only endorse, but actively will evangelize.
I mean, I’m pretty sure I got fired from Fossil at least in part because I yelled after a dude and called him a “stupid cocksucker” for wanting to return a watch that he literally broke into a thousand pieces and then called defective, so maybe this is something I’ve felt in the depths of my soul for a long time.
Anyway, I don’t have a list of recommended reads or music this week because the Chiefs are playing in the Super Bowl today and I’m too excited to think about anything else, except maybe that we probably shouldn’t even be having a Super Bowl and we sure as shit should not be having one attended by fans.