T H E__C U S T O M E R__I S__ always wrong - - - - - - - - - - - - - FOR EIGHT HOURS A DAY I DEAL WITH INDECISIVE YUPPIES, BRAIN-DEAD BOZOS AND ORDER-GIVING ASSHOLES, FOR CHUMP CHANGE. AND YOU WANT ME TO SMILE?

P L U S: Service tension You just can't get good help these days

BY TRICIA ROMANO | I was fired from my last job working at a cafe in Seattle. They said I was rude to the customers. Let's see: six bucks an hour plus an average of $20 a night in tips, working from 7 p.m. to 3 in the morning. All while I'm a full-time student. Rude? Naawww. No, I wouldn't dream of being rude to the pretentious customers who would demand that the milk be steamed to a specific degree, or to the junkie kids who tried to steal my hard-earned tips. No. Instead, I would smile sweetly when they ordered a double-tall nonfat decaf mocha with whipped cream and then waited until I was finished making their drink before telling me with a blithe giggle, "Oh, it was to go," causing me to dump out the drink and start all over again. Did I mention that this almost always occurred when there was a huge line of indecisive Seattleites who would hem and haw about their order before finally deciding on a grande mocha with whipped cream? If there is one thing I have learned in my many years (seven, to be exact) of retail experience, it's that, contrary to popular business belief, the customer is not always right. In fact, customers are almost never right. Some kiss-ass coined this slogan, and nearly every corporation followed it. All hail the customer. Customers do, after all, pay the employees' bills; they keep the business in business. So, it was always "keep the customer happy." Tell them they are right and give them whatever they want. Fine. But you're going to have to pay me more than minimum wage to be nice to people who seem to think that I'm their servant and they are my master. You could say I didn't have the proper retail training to be good at what has been deemed "customer service." I worked under my first boss, Doreen, at a chain bookstore in Las Vegas. Originally from New York, Doreen was a piss-and-vinegar Italian woman who could give a flying fuck about the customer. Her flowery dresses and prettily braided hair belied her nature. Doreen the dragon, we'd call her, lovingly. Sitting atop her desk (which really was a pedestal), she'd point to the store's spacious opening and say, "If the customer doesn't like it, those are the biggest doors in the mall, and they can walk right out." Working at a bookstore in Las Vegas is sheer hell. The customers, most of whom are from middle America and haven't a clue about culture and literacy, buy books by authors such as Danielle Steele, Tom Clancy and Judith Krantz. High-minded literary types, these folks. They'd waddle in, stinking of suntan oil and sweat, with the buffet still on their breath, and want to know, "Do you have the new Stephen King?" Just so happened that there were a few hundred copies of the new King book, all stacked up like the Pyramids of Egypt right in the front of the entrance. Signs, all over the place, stating that it was on sale for only $19.99. Inevitably, they'd ask you, after you'd handed them a brand new copy, "How much?" amazingly ignoring the HUGE bright yellow sticker screaming, "ON SALE! BESTSELLER PRICE! $19.99!" Because they were too tired from all the exercise they got while pulling the slot machine handle all day long, they'd whine and want me to actually fetch them a copy. Which I did, but not without shooting a nasty glare in their direction. And there was, of course, my favorite Stupid Customer Trick: They'd come in fresh from a night out throwing all of their money into the vast Vegas Wasteland and want to know if we had that book that was "on Oprah about a week ago, written by that author, what's-her-name? Oh, I don't remember, it was a self-help, though." Giggle giggle. Sometimes I would actually try to be helpful. I would try so hard to coerce the title or the subject matter out of them and help them find it. But usually they were dumber than rocks, and I could have probably pulled any old self-help book off the shelf and they would have bought it. And then there are the customers who have more wealth than my entire family in the giant rock on their little finger. Snidely, they'll ask for a book. You fetch it and present it to Her Majesty, the Bitchiest, Richest Customer from Hell, and she nods approvingly. "Yes, it is good," she says. "What is the price?" You tell her that the hardback copy of Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" goes for $11. "What!" she protests indignantly, as if you are the one who sets the prices. "I am not paying that for a book. Outrageous!" She flaps her arms, knocking one of her golf-ball-sized diamond rings on the counter, and storms out the biggest goddamn exit in the mall. It's not that I want to be rude. I am generally a nice person with a propensity to be helpful. But my patience is stretched when working long hours for meager money at a job that any idiot could perform. It doesn't help matters that I am a college-educated young person, with two bachelor's degrees under my belt, forced to work menial jobs that are far beneath my competence level. Because of the waning opportunities for entry-level positions in the job market, I am virtually driven to work odd retail jobs and do what I really want to do -- write -- on the side. So when a customer comes in and assumes from my tattooed and pierced regalia that I'm a druggie high school dropout, I have no choice but to point to the largest doors in the mall and say, "Don't like it? Leave." My only hope is that someday, I'll be able to walk out those doors too, never to return. SALON | Oct. 15, 1997 Tricia Romano is a freelance writer who lives in New York. Share your tales of retail hell -- from either side of the counter -- in Table Talk.

DETAIL OF ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC WHITE