Sweet Things
Before I knew it, I was "nice" all the time!
It seems somewhat bona fide, or at least we'd like to think she's honestly concerned with our thirst. Let's be real. It's merely an affectation of sincerity. But hey: If it gives the customer the warm-and-fuzzies, why not?
I hadn't considered the "surface sweetness" that is customer service a habit until reading Rhetoric, more than a year after I had stopped working in the food service industry. "Habit," Aristotle writes, "whether acquired by mere familiarity or by effort, belongs to the class of pleasant things, for there are many actions not naturally pleasant which men perform with pleasure, once they have become used to them."
Or as the more contemporary philosopher Ronald McDonald might say, "We love to see you smile." If their workers smile enough, it becomes habit, and therefore pleasant. Regardless of whether or not the smile is genuine or reflexive, they're pleased because you're pleased due to their pleasant habit. Everybody wins.
When I was in high school, I worked the 8 a.m. weekend shift at a German bakery that hadn’t changed much in its 60 years of existence The lighting: dim and yellowish. The paneling: dark and fading. The food signs: tacky, with swirly red and green writing accompanied by season-appropriate drawings cleared by rubbing butter on the cellophane. Snowmen. Hearts. A gourd. Most of the “baked fresh this morning,” cookies were at least a month old and the discounted “day old” pastries were verging on a week.
Before my time at the old bakery, I'd considered myself a pleasant and put-together individual. I was no cheerleader or motivational speaker, but I was the neighborhood babysitter and had friends. I was no Susie Sunshine, but I also didn't wear aggressive studded necklaces or dress only in black. I would have totally admitted to a customer that the coffee was stale and the creamer warm, yet I wouldn't have seen it as "something I shouldn't say," being a storeworker and all. I had no cruel intentions.
And I didn't think my boss did either, when I first met her. I walked into the bakery and was greeted with a "Hi there! How are you?" and a warm smile. She gave me an application and asked me a few questions. She seemed like a token very-chubby, happy-go-lucky baker's wife. I got the job and looked forward to working with her.
And then I actually started working with her. The obese, blond-ponytailed, lipstick-wearing and mole-covered woman who hired me was actually the owner’s miserable, 30-something and single daughter. She’d sit in the room between the kitchen and the store decorating cakes, occasionally coming out to help with customers when we got busy. She would bitch and moan about her lack of success on eHarmony.com and scream things like, "MY FEET HURT!" or "KILL ME!" and "UGHHH NO! ANOTHER PENIS CAKE!" This made me uncomfortable at first, but before long I started finding some sort of pleasure in her ridiculousness and would laugh under my breath.
Having no real training, I did what I thought a counter girl should do. I stood behind the counter, and listened to the terrible music geared to middle-aged people. I'd look at the customers and wait until they picked something, at which point I would box it or bag it for them without much comment. I'd take their money, and give them change. And I might mumble, "Thanks, bye."
When people asked, "Were these baked fresh today?" I'd mumble, "Yeah," but would privately chuckle to myself. "Come on, people, put two and two together," I'd think. "Do you really believe that by 8:07 a.m. on a weekend morning the old man has really baked 5,000 cookies, 29 cakes, eight dozen cinnamon buns, 44 Danish and 32 apricot hamentashen? Do you notice they were all arranged the exact same way yesterday?"
I'd smirk insolently every time a patron would pick up any of the "day olds" sitting on the counter near the cash register. They'd feel one plastic-wrapped section of three cinnamon buns, put it back. Fondle some dry and crumbling cupcakes, put them back. Squeeze another set of cinnamon buns topped with walnuts. They would hold them, gazing at an indistinct point on the wall, connecting the sensation of staleness in their hand with what their brains said they should expect to feel from one-day-old pastries. Too bad their internalization was bullshit. They'd suddenly realize 20 seconds had passed and would hand the day-olds to me with a self-conscious smile.
After a week of this indifference, I finally got a lesson in customer service. The big boss called me into the middle room, inhaled deeply and spoke for the entire exhale: "Don't say "Yeah, " don't slouch. Smile even when the customer isn't looking at you. Don't put the coins on top of the bills when you hand change to a customer — coins first. And lift your voice. This place," she motioned with her hands, "is a choir, so be the Goddamn soprano. Got it?"
She breathed. "Now get out there and act like somebody shoved sunshine up your ass."
A single ray of sunshine creeped up there. I stopped exhaling loudly when I'd fill a box with cookies and the old woman would change her mind and want danish instead. I would smile gleamingly when people fondled the day-olds, anxious to see which they'd pick. "Nuke 'em for 30 seconds," I'd tell them, "good as new!" Total lie — I hadn't even attempted my suggestion — but they'd smile confidently and maybe even buy another package. I'd offer to write the little girl or boy's initials in icing on the yellow star cookies. Seeing how people reacted when I was nice versus when I was just, there, made my mundane and menial task-filled job a little more interesting.
As the weeks passed, my “Hi...” developed into, “Hi! How are you today, sir? Ma'am? What can I help you with? Throwing a birthday party? Bringing cookies to a friend? Looking for some after-church Danish or cinnamon buns to go with the Sunday paper?"
The rays were starting to fill my, ya know, but just because the sunshine was reproducing didn't mean my whale of a boss of backed off.
I squeezed a dollop of chocolate icing from the bag into the crater of each Thumbprint cookie. I felt her eyes burning into me from across the table as she procrastinated icing an 8-inch vanilla layer cake for pick-up at noon. “What the hell is that on your fingernails?” I hesitated to respond, my head remaining down. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t imagining such an ridiculous inquiry. I stole a glance at the tips of my phalanges to make sure I didn't have feathers or coins glued to them. Some red paint, not exactly salon quality.
“Is that polish? Cover the whole nail or take it off."
And one day I screwed up. Mike was a regular, coming in from his framing shop next door, religiously ordering a Coke and Bavarian soft pretzel. I wonder if he had picked up on my developing perkiness. “Hi, Mike! How’s it going? The usual? That’ll be $1.85.”
“Oh, really? I thought it was $1.80. It usually is so that’s all I brought.”
“No, I'm sorry” I responded with a furrowed brow, doing the math in my head. A dollar for the pretzel, 85 cents for the soda… and then the whale emerged from the middle room.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” She grabbed Mike’s money out of my hand, shaking her head and shuffling toward the cash register. I nearly climbed on the back counter to let her through. “Pretzel: a dollar. Soda: 80 cents." I watched her stubby fingers punch the buttons. "Can you not fuckin’ add?” Mike apologized and bolted for the door while she continued to bitch. "Hey," I thought, "where was her sunshine?
She did have it, but only when she was dealing with customers, of course. Her low, angry and bitter tone turned pep-talk-esque. She'd laugh and smile at things customers would say. She was a fake, and really good at it.
When I hit my six-month mark, I demanded a raise. I had become what they asked me to be. Asking customers about their day, whose birthday it was they needed a cake for, and how they enjoyed last week's dozen Danishes. I would tie the baker's knot and slap a sticker on their box with spirit and an over-the-top smile.
In part because I felt good being so "nice," but also because I wanted to minimize reasons for my boss to berate me. Either way, I no longer had to try. It was becoming a habit.
“Habit, whether acquired by mere familiarity or by effort, belongs to the class of pleasant things. " I’d have to agree with Aristotle, and in this case the acquisition was by effort. Serious effort. And I didn't even get the 25 cent an hour raise.
One morning, it was just me and the old man baking. It was August, a slower month, and so I was in charge of the store. I plugged in the lights, put the things that were actually fresh from the baker's rack out on display, and removed the plastic trash bags off the actual day-old cinnamon buns that didn't sell the day before. I'd put them on the tray of fresh goods, in the back, exposing the fresh ones to the customers.
I sent a text message to a few people, "Come visit! She isn't here — I'll hook you up goodiez!" Generosity. Isn't that nice? My habit was even benefiting my friends.
Renee and Lauren stopped in carrying big purses. For five minutes there was a mad scramble of muted shouting, grabbing, boxing, bagging, and laughing all interjected with moments of quiet and ducking when we heard the old man's footsteps. "Gimme some of those cookies!" they'd tap on the glass. "No, those ones! But some of the other ones, too. Why not?"
"What's that H-shit you always talk about?" Lauren asked. I ran around to the other counter where the hamentashen were stationed. Two of those, in the bag. I felt like Santa. "Anything else I can get for you ladies this morning? Have you tried our fresh peach cobbler?"
And then it was my turn. I hadn't brought a big bag, so I sent them home with a string-tied box of things I wanted for myself. I hadn't yet tried everything and couldn't eat at will. But that's also why I didn't look like my boss.
I was unbelievably kind to customers that weekend. "The brownies? Oh, they are FANTASTIC! You should ABSOLUTELY bring a few to the housewarming party." "For your son's fifth birthday with 30 guests? I'd go with a half-sheet cake. Does he like trucks? We could create a truck scene running along the bottom edge with blue, green, and orange icing. That would look WONDERFUL!"
Habit or not, genuine or fake, at that point I had an entire sky full of sunshine up my ass. And it didn't look like those rays were going anywhere. • 9 November 2009
Emily Callaghan's work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia magazine.
Article photo via http://www.flickr.com/photos/su-lin/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
