*Good meaning fair, adequate, proper. If Sally McDouche comes to my hotel and demands to use a gift card that expired in 2008, sorry, no can do. But I’ll offer her a 10% discount as consolation. That’s good, proper, fair customer service. I don’t, however, believe in the style defined by prostrating oneself before the customer and offering to shine their shoes with humble, unworthy tears.

And you do stop and think, oh man, maybe he WAS right and I was the jerk… but sometimes you just gotta trust your gut. I know it’s hard, but at the same time, who cares? These people don’t know you, and oh wait, that’s right, it’s YOUR money. Who cares how much. I got into an argument over $5 bucks.

But I remember that feeling of not wanting to speak up for yourself. You just gotta practice. It gets way easier. And then you get into situations where you’re telling people off for no good reason ;)

My point is, she couldn’t be more already into Wodehouse if she legally changed her name to Bertie Wooster. So, your recommendation is both superbly apt and laughably unnecessary.

Also, scribbler50, I really liked your story about the bartender and the refund. I really think that’s the best way to handle the whole situation. TKOG is a regular at that bookstore, so that’s definitely how the store employees should have handled it.

And secondly, to further address the attitude business… the mere fact that the two of them reacted the way they did when the truth came out, displays more insecurity on their part than ever should’ve been felt by you. It was apparently colossal for either to admit a mistake. What horse shit! Not to mention… because you got back in line when you returned and waited like everyone else instead of barging up to the front saying, “I’m the one who called!” should have shown them at the outset you were an honorable person and not some kind of a pain who was doing this to cause trouble… and that should’ve been met with an apology by them right there. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Miss, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes we’ll try and sort this out. Mistakes do happen.” Courtesy goes a long way, especially when its absence (given all the apologizing YOU did) is obviously making the customer feel like shit. I’d like to take a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” (a hard copy no less) and whack this Jim over the head with it and tell him he’s the kind of phony asshole Holden Caulfield was referring to.

I recently had a similar situation where a woman gave me a ten for an eight dollar cocktail, and when I gave her the change she said I gave her a twenty. As I don’t have time to do an audit on the spot and after asking her to check her purse one more time (even though I was convinced I was right) I gave her the extra ten and called it a day. It wasn’t a fifty or a hundred which is easy to disprove, so I figured if I was right I would just eat the loss. And I was right because my count came out ten dollars short that night. This woman is not a regular but she does come in from time to time and the next time she did I said, “By the way, miss, remember the time you came in and you thought I shortchanged you? Well, I was ten dollars short that night, just for the record.” And because this all had gone down with smiles and a dollop of courtesy, the first night and this night, she couldn’t get the ten out of her purse fast enough. In fact she over-tipped on the second night just to show her appreciation. As I said, courtesy and respect go a long way.

And finally (sorry to go on so long here but Jim and the math major really pissed me off!) you’re going to love P.G. Wodehouse if you haven’t already. He’s flat-out my favorite writer when it comes to humor and what to do with a sentence. He’s timeless.

And speaking of what to do with a sentence, YOU certainly do, young lady…. I really enjoy your writing!

I definitely support TKOG trying being more assertive, getting way the eff out of your comfort zone, as part of your NTKOG project.

Also, if you really only had a single Hamilton in your pocket when you set out for your night on the town, that’s kind of incontrovertible evidence that you didn’t get your change.

The way I’d approach the decision in this scenario is: You just have to assign a probability to your being mistaken or having dropped the change while rearranging your pockets or something — maybe 25%. Then think about the cost of taking a few minutes to walk back to the bookstore and waiting for them to audit it — maybe $2.50. Then assign a rough social cost of the annoyance inflicted upon the employees and other customers — maybe $4. Then I’d take into account a slight disincentive that the populations needs to enforce upon the store and employees to keep them honest — the same way train conductors have to check tickets at least sometimes to disincentivize freeriding– maybe $0.50. Altogether that’s
((100%-25%) * $8) – $2.50 – $4 + $0.50 = $0.00.

So it’s a pure toss-up in my book.

Does this maybe illustrate why it takes me so long to make decisions?

For one reason or another, though, I really enjoyed this entry. Heh. Don’t know why.

PS — Thank you for the Howard Zinn reference. Just…thank you.