So we’re standing on line at Sur La Table on Fourth Street in Berkeley this past Saturday, which clause right there pretty much guarantees not only that the story that follows won’t be pleasant but that I walked into it with my eyes open. But Becky’s sister gave her a fifty dollar gift card for the place, a very thoughtful gesture, and so we pick up a couple silicone parchments for 9-inch cake pans, some grapeseed oil, and other such absolute necessities.
And there’s a woman at the head of the line, just in front of us, who’s trying to return a 12-inch All-Clad skillet.
The line in this place often moves relatively quickly, because they have three or four stations and the clerks are reasonably efficient. But within about twenty seconds of beginning her transaction, the skillet woman has become so difficult that she’s monopolizing three clerks, one of whom is the manager, and the fourth is helping a customer somewhere else in the store. And the manager is saying “I’m very sorry she told you that you could get your money back right away, ma’am, but if you paid with a check we can’t reimburse you until the check clears.”
We can’t hear what the woman says in response, as her back is to us and her curly gray hair provides effective soundproofing. Still, her whining tone carries across the noise of the store.
The manager puts on her best public relations face. “Yes, ma’am, and I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience. And we’ll be happy to accept the return, and we’ll reimburse you in full, and the check should arrive within two weeks after yours clears.”
I should say that my natural sympathies lie with the customer in such situations, despite more than a decade spent working on the other side of the counter. It’s infuriating to be told on the phone that something’s in stock when it’s not, or that store policy will allow a certain transaction when in fact store policy expressly forbids such transactions. It’s irritating and increasingly common. In fact, my years of retail, if anything, prompt greater impatience with merchant ineptitude. It’s so easy to get it right, most of the time.
But this woman has won. She’s getting her money back. The store’s policy is eminently reasonable. Sure, I can see a moment of annoyance if she expected to be able to skip a visit to the ATM before buying lunch, but jesus, lady, pick your battles. The manager turns her “understanding and helpful” face up to eleven. “Yes, ma’am, I know. But I am the manager. If she said that, she didn’t check with me. And like I said, we’re happy to accept the return and we’ll reimburse you in full.”
More inaudible, muffled whining commences. Becky, always solicitous of my impatience when dealing with Fourth Street yuppie shoppers, asks if I’m OK. “I’m fine,” I lie. My headache is mounting. I imagine taking the 12-inch All-Clad skillet, yelling “El Kabong!,” and beaning Whining Woman with the flat side. I wonder idly whether it would ring a clear metal tone, or make a dull thump.
My fantasy is just that, but there is a kind of person for whom coercion is the main strategy in dealing with the world at large. Sometimes the coercion is overt, with threats of violence. More often, the coercion comes in the form of being a pain in the ass. If you’re brought up with the expectation that you’ll get what you want by whining and complaining, you’re likely to whine and complain fairly often as an adult.
If I may be permitted a generalization here: this behavior is largely the province of the affluent. The whining can be over a returned skillet not being met with a fistful of cash. It can be about a real estate speculation deal not being insanely remunerative because the speculator forgot to make sure current environmental law permitted his plans. It can be over a nation not just acceding to your desire to loot the country for your energy industry pals and let you privatize Social Security and wiretap liberals. It can even be over something important, like me having the temerity to flip you off when you run the red light in your SUV while talking on your cell phone while I’m in the crosswalk, and in your way. (Actual response: “Excuse me? I’m on the phone!”)
It is the whine of entitlement, and it sounds a little something just like this:
But mumble mumble telephone this morning mumble refund mumble told me!
Those of us not brought up with the expectation that we will get whatever we want rarely see incessant whining as a realistic strategy. Sometimes we pitch fits, decide to do battle to the death for a seemingly insignificant item whose importance to us is far beyond what it would seem to a dispassionate observer, like the ongoing fight over People’s Park on the other side of Berkeley. But not for every little thing, because who has the energy for that if they actually have to, you know, make a living? A check in the mail from a reputable store is a victory. Time enough for whining if it doesn’t show up in the appointed week.
Not this woman.
There are now sixteen people in line behind her. (Observer of human foibles that I am, I count them.) A man walks to the head of the line, a friendly-faced fellow who it turns out is there with Whining Woman. “What’s the hold up?” he asks in an amiable voice. Is he her husband? Her son? Her primary care physician? I can’t tell.
Mumble something didn’t mumble whine.
“As I told you, ma’am, we’re happy to refund your purchase, and the check should be to you within two weeks after yours clears.”
But mumble mumble whine.
“What are you concerned about? Are you worried they won’t send it?” I like this guy.
I look at the clock. We’ve been standing behind the woman for ten minutes. I start to say “She’s concerned that not enough people are in line behind her: she wants to try for fifty,” but as I open my mouth to speak, a clerk’s voice rings out from the other side of the counter. “I can help the next person over here!”
Ninety seconds and we’re out of the store. My headache clears up almost immediately. We walk toward the car.
A block down the street is a restaurant I haven’t heard of before. It occupies a building that once housed Ginger Island, a fake-tropical restaurant that one memorable day made me violently and embarrassingly ill twenty minutes after eating, so I’m pleased to see a new place there. Becky and I stop to read the menu, my arm over her shoulder, for perhaps fifteen seconds. I hear some footsteps behind me, and then a plaintive, wheedling voice.
“Can I read it too?”
This is not stated as a reasonable request. It’s said in the kind of cloying, passive-aggressive, sighing tone that signifies that the person asking has been waiting an awfully long time, really long enough to stretch the patience of any mortal human, and yet was making a deliberate, forceful point of showing that her politeness was not in the least impinged by the incredible rudeness of those who made her wait, now don’t you feel as low as dirt for so horribly mistreating her?
We turn. Sure enough, it’s The Incredible Whining Skillet-Returning Entitlement Woman. Nice Guy — who I immediately rename “Enabling Guy” — stands a distance back on the sidewalk, lips smiling tightly and hands folded in front of him, as she pushes her way in front of us. Becky stares her right in the face for a moment, shocked to the point of near-laughter, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Of our responses, hers is the far more effective and I think constructive. She starts laughing and pulls me away down the street as I observe, in a voice several tens of decibels louder and probably an octave higher than my usual speaking voice, that some people are obviously far too important to have to wait in line behind anyone.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
Coyote
The Neighborhood
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