Customer Reviews

The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles

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The Customer Is Always Wrong is a collection of essays on retail life. The book is edited by Jeff Martin, manager of a Tulsa Barnes and Noble, and features 21 anecdotes by writers you most likely will never have heard of about their own personal experiences working at a wide selection of retail jobs.

For the most part, the essays range in quality from slightly boring to fairly amusing. A highlight is Victor Gischler's tale of his time spent selling hearing aids, which made me laugh for two solid minutes.

Anybody who's worked in or shopped retail (that is, everybody) can relate to something in this book, and it's an entertaining enough read.

Often humorous, occasionally poignant and at all times all too real, this book is a collection of essays on life in the retail world. Many of us have been there, whether as full time employees out of college or as part time slaves during our high school and college years. Any of us who have performed the retail job duties will recognize many of these stories. I was laughing much of the time; almost cried a couple of times, but I enjoyed the book completely at all times.

Don't let the fact that you have never worked in retail stop you from reading this book. You may learn a thing or two about life in the retail world and you may think twice before being snooty to those poor clerks behind the counters.

This book is a must have for anyone who has ever worked in retail. Every story with the exception of one had me rolling over in laughter. It's also a quick read and the stories are short and to the point. It also really leaves you questioning just basic human nature and knowing that whoever you are, you're o.k. Great book to give as a gift as well.

Well this seems like an appropriate time to post this review. The countdown is on ...only twelve shopping days left until Christmas......


The Customer is Always Wrong is an eclectic collection of essays penned by writers who have done time in the retail jungle. I think most of us have "served the public" in a retail capacity at some point in our lives - your first job, putting yourself through university or an extra part time job to make ends meet. For some people it's a fantastic fit, for others - well, it's not. As Jeff Martin says in his introduction, "If this book can help shed a little more light on the often-disregarded retail experience, then we have done our job and done it well."

I was hooked from the first story - a college age student's summer job in a large department store chain, the descriptions of the rah rah manager and the attitudes and antics of the staff had me laughing out loud. The tales cover the gamut - from an upscale spa, a video store, home improvement, coffee shop, porn warehouse plus more. One of the best was Wendy Spero's tale of door to door knife sales, preying on friends and family. The saddest was the porn store, though not for the reasons you might think. The most fascinating was Elaine Viets. She writes a series called The Dead-End Job Mysteries. She actually takes on retail jobs to research her characters.

Having worked in a large retail chain for many years myself, I could appreciate many of the crazy, imperious and downright odd demands made by customers. I often said to the staff that we could write a book based on the almost daily occurrence. However there was good as well, but there aren't that many of those stories in The Customer is Always Wrong. My only complaint - it wasn't long enough! I devoured it in one sitting. Martin himself works in a bookstore - I'm sure that that's a book waiting to be written.......

I've been in retail more years than I care to remember, so I received this book from a fellow Paperback Swap member with a great deal of interest. How many essays in this book about retail experiences would strike a chord in me? The answer is: about a third.

Granted, retail is one of those occupations that can stretch credulity some days. Hospital emergency rooms, policemen, firemen and other emergency services pros don't own the monopoly on strange encounters of the human kind. Anyone who deals with the public knows the perils of full moons and the first of the month. Opportunities are ripe for looking at a co-worker and saying, "We should write a book." It's that very thing that editor Jeff Martin tries to cover with his selection of essays in The Customer Is Always Wrong, and the results are rather uneven.

The low point of the book for me was Anita Liberty's essay entitled "No Good Deed...." For the life of me I don't know if the piece was honestly supposed to be funny and completely missed the boat, or if there was a layer of irony and sarcasm woven through the lines and I'm the one left standing at the pier.

The high points of the book were the essays written by James Wagner ("Other Things in Mind") and Elaine Viets ("Minimum-Wage Drama"). For me, those two essays spoke the truth of my own experience. Wagner brings up the phrase "the customer is always right," correctly pointing out that this is

"...a theory drummed up by an owner who didn't have to deal with the day-to-day public, who only had to take in their money and then spend it on cars, stocks, and vacations, the likes of which the people who did deal with the public would never see."


For anyone not familiar with Elaine Viets, she is the author of the Dead End Job mystery series. She's gone out and worked each of the jobs covered in her series, so she's been on more than one front line. Some of her observations are short and to the point: "The first rule of retail is that everyone wants to check out at once" and "Working retail is like going to the theater-- except you get paid to watch the show. Also, your feet hurt."

Although the choice of essays in the book is uneven, the book is more than worth reading for Wagner and Viets alone. If you've ever been on the other side of the counter, the book will have you reliving some of your own "glory days". If you've never worked on the other side of the counter, you should read this book. Unless you're totally self-absorbed, you'll learn a thing or two.

Working retail is often thankless, and you can be subject to tremendous mood swings. But in amongst the days that make you worry about your sanity are the ones that make you smile, make you laugh, and make you put on your comfy shoes and head in to another day with the Public. Because....Steinbeck rules! (Right, Elaine?)

I actually bought this book to read on breaks at work. Easy to stop and start reading again, and it's always nice to know I'm not the only one who has to deal with people like this. Mostly funny, some good other reading might come from the authors in this book.

I thought the idea of a collection of tales from retail hell sounded like a fun read, but this book was fairly disappointing. It wasn't especially well-written or well-edited, and it was just plain boring. I now keep this book in my bathroom.

It was too bad. It started out great. I loved it at first but all of the stories ended up either being the same or not really about retail. This book was also poorly edited. It is worth a skim and find the stories that you would like to read, I just didn't feel like all of the short stories were very relevant. I would like to see them take another shot at this.

About: Collection of short essays penned by various writers on their experiences working retail.

Pros: Quick, easy read. Varied essays, none super-horrible. Wendy Spero's tale about selling knives door to door is a highlight.

Cons: No super great essays. I had not heard of any of the writers

Can't say I recommend this book because I found it to be a bit of a rant...I had a hard time unearthing the positives and while rarely, I fall into the glass half empty sort of philosophy, I hadn't realized what that really meant until I read this glass totally empty book. I guess I'm too much of an optimist....I know retail can be hard...the hours, the moods of every single person affected by the tides and the moons and well, HORMONES...but, still...in every job there is a silver lining. These horrifying retail chronicles were a collection of many story tellers from all walks of character, life and career...but they just didn't have enough positive spin for me. Maybe I'm a dreamer...but I have always thought there is more to this adventure we call life than our superficial immediate response to the obvious. "