Part 1: Damn It.
I am incredibly hungry for unhealthy food, and have decided to share this piece of news with my co-worker.
"You know what I could go for right now?"
"Hmm."
"A soft pretzel. A great big one with a cup of melted cheese to dip it in. Or - a soft pretzel on a stick, coated in cinnamon."
"Those are disgusting."
"Yes. Yes, they are. And yet, they're delicious."
"Um, no they're not."
"Well, whatever. I just wish there was someplace downtown that sold them."
"Sucks to be you."
This last comment is quickly proven true, when my boss comes in and announces that I will be going to This Really Awesome Customer Service Seminar!! My co-worker had gone to one this morning, but a doctor's appointment had gotten me out of it. I'd thought I had escaped it entirely, but as luck would have it, there's an afternoon seminar as well. Of course we have to leave immediately, so I don't get time for lunch, which sucks, and the seminar is two hours long, which sucks more, but oh well.
I have no choice. To the Holiday Inn I go.
Part 2: Attempt at Optimism Crushed By Reality
I drag myself into the conference room, silently cursing myself for working a job where this sort of thing is required. I consider bailing right then, becoming a freelance writer or a dutiful housewife with seventeen children and one more on the way, or living on the streets of Rapid, recycling glass bottles for quarters...and then I see the pretzels.
Yes, pretzels. Soft, warm, lightly salted pretzels. And cheese. A huge pot of cheese with a stack of little white cups leaning against it.
Suddenly, it's worth it.
I take two pretzels and three cups of cheese (I'm hungry and cranky and damn it, I deserve it) and sit next to a white-haired, red-suited woman with a clipboard, who rambles for a few moments about how absolutely brilliant this speaker is before asking if I would please move over so she has a place to set her clipboard and plate.
I do so, and then I realize: I'm relinquishing my chair to two inanimate objects that would have been equally apathetic on the floor. Also, the salt on this pretzel is not evenly distributed. Screw being positive: this place sucks.
Part 3: Wait, What?
The speaker is, naturally, an assclown, and his customer service experience appears to be limited to this one time? when he worked in a gift shop?, which is obnoxious. Still, at least he's boring, and thus easy to ignore. That is, until he says something so witty, and yet so deep, that I am struck dumb by his profundity. I stare reverently at his douchily animated face and bask in the glow of his beauteous words of wisdom, desperately wishing I could come up with something as enlightening as:
"Remember, we are human beings, not lima beans."
Except, wait: what the hell does that mean? Beings and beans are two entirely different words, so there isn't even a pun in there, but more importantly, what particular undesirable traits do lima beans possess, and how could they be confused with human ones? I'm not light green and chewy. Children don't hate me. (Although, when I was a kid, I loved lima beans. God knows why. I hate them now.) Why do my differences from lima beans need to be mentioned at all? Frankly, Mr. Promotional Speaker, I'm offended. In fact, that one phrase has put me on the fast track to hating you. Do you have anymore tricks up your sleeve? Anything that rips off/cheapens Lewis Carroll, perhaps?
I think you do.
Part 4: Cheshire Cat Rip-Off
"Does anyone have a co-worker who doesn't smile? Anyone? A co-worker who never smiles? Surely someone does. Someone who never smiles at customers or the people they work with? A co-worker who never smiles? C'mon, people, I know one of you has one..."
A lone hand emerges from a sea of blank faces, waving slowly back and forth like a broken car antenna. When Mr. Assclown leaps to her side and presents her with his World-Famous Smile On a Stick, I die a little inside.
The Smile On a Stick is precisely what it sounds like - a paper cut-out of an obnoxiously toothy grin glued to a cheap wooden stick, meant to be held up to one's face when one's frown won't reverse itself. It's creepy as hell, as disembodied facial features generally are, but even worse, it's a Cheshire cat rip-off.
I swear to God, that's exactly what that damn smile looked like - overly curved, lip-less, and no bottom teeth. The only difference was that it couldn't levitate.
Part 5: My Body Stages a Protest
Damn, I need to get me some glasses. I'm squinting at his power point presentation, taking careful note of every misused or conspicuously absent apostrophe, feeling my blood pressure rise every time I read a phrase like "customer's who leave," and my eyes just won't take it anymore. No, they plead. Stop. We can't read anymore. We're tired. Don't you love us?
I look down at my empty plate, and my stomach swells with dissatisfaction. I wanted a pretzel on a stick. Can't you do anything right?
My brain shouts at me to, just this once, take a nap. No one will notice. Please? Every word from this man's mouth is a kick to my frontal lobe. Every sentence is an angry black bruise. Do you know what a brain bruise is, Samantha? It's a concussion. You are giving me a rapid series of concussions, and that's abuse. If you don't get me out of here, I'm going to call a neurosurgeon and have him transplant me in a nicer girl's head.
I disregard their pleas for mercy. I tell my brain, oh, but won't this be something to blog! I tell my stomach to shut up and think of the starving children in Argentina. I promise my eyes a pair of shiny new glasses. I pacify them with words as cheap and empty as the ones my ears are trying desperately to ignore, and the guilt overwhelms me.
Part 6: No, Really, What?
Mr. Assclown Promotional Speaker has run out of things to say. I know this, because he has resorted to making us speak. He asks each of us to state the most important thing we've learned today; the one piece of advice we plan to follow religiously, no matter how asinine it proves to be. I stare at his pompous jackass face and think, damn. What a pompous jackass. Then I think, oh, shit - does this mean I have to talk?
He starts with the opposite side of the room, and at first I'm amused by the uniformity of everyone's replies. "I'm going to go above and beyond what my customers request." "I'm going to smile all the time." "Use customers' first names." "Have fun at work!!!" But after awhile the repetition starts to get to me, and I realize that if this doesn't stop, I'm going to...actually, I don't know. But it will not be good.
When he gets to me, I promise to use customers' first names. It's not a lie, since I do it already, and it's boring enough that he doesn't ask for details or congratulate me on my Really Hot Idea, thank God. Instead he moves on to the next woman, who says she is going to "be more intentional in my customer service." She says this as though struck dumb by her own brilliance, and I am reminded of a girl I once worked with at a job hated. This girl was perfectly nice and had an upbeat, positive attitude. She was also dumb as post, and spoke as if she was constantly in the middle of a religious epiphany. This is the girl who once said to me, "I think I'm going to stop sleeping with guys I don't know!" as if the suggestion to stop hooking up with every available guy in a fifty-mile radius had come straight from the mouth of Jesus. I stared at her, watching her open a bag of cold chicken with a steak knife, and then I said, "well. That sounds like a plan."
But let's be fair - not sleeping with strangers is a noble goal. I can't fault her for it. I think it was a smart move on her part, especially since it meant I no longer had to listen to stories that began, "so, this one time, when I slept with four guys in a row?" Good girl.
And at least Dumb Formerly-Trampy Girl's comment made sense. Because, really,"I'm going to be more intentional in my customer service," makes about as much sense as "we are human beings, not lima beans." I'm still not sure what that woman was trying to say. Was she saying that she intended to be more conscientious while dealing with customers? Or was she saying that her customer service skills are usually a happy accident, and that from now on she intends to think while answering the phone?
I just don't know.
Part 7: My Really Hot Idea
I'm standing in the lobby, waiting for my ride. I'm cranky and pissed off and seriously disappointed with the quality of the soft pretzels sitting like wet lumps of clay in my stomach. Outside it's raining, which under normal circumstances would have thrilled me to no end, but I'm too annoyed to appreciate it. Then I see one of the women from the audience, the one with the co-worker who never smiles, run outside. She has an umbrella, but it doesn't protect her Smile On a Stick, which she holds out to her side. And as the corners of that repulsive disembodied grin bend beneath the weight of the rain, turning the smile to a toothy grimace, I realize what I want to do with my life.
I want to have my own seminar. A seminar for customers. I will call it the How Not to Be an Assclown Seminar, and it will be wonderful. It will include such topics such as "I Don't Want to Know About Your Incarcerated Child-Molesting Son" and "No, You Really Can't Have My Phone Number." The only items on sticks will be soft pretzels, and I won't compare my audience to legumes.
Mr. Promotional Speaker, you're more than welcome to attend.
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