Customer Care

Donald Castro

Time was when you could actually go into a store and have a vague idea of what you wanted and someone would ask you if they could help you and when you said yes they actually helped you. They actually proved themselves helpful to your cause. They fulfilled your need. First you stood alone and desperate for assistance and they assisted. They explained how foreign sizes corresponded with American standards. They had candy for crying kids stashed in their pockets. They found you the shelving system that your friend assured you he bought at their store.

I'm not talking about fifty years ago - I'm not that old. I'm talking about maybe twenty years ago. Things were not this bad. People still took a job seriously. Just because you worked retail or food services did not mean you didn't give a crap. Today people treat their job serving you pizza or working the floor at Sears like it’s only something they have to do until they make it big as a rock star. Then they’ll leave their crummy job and all us lowly customers behind.

I was thinking all this as a third sales guy told me he had no idea what I was talking about.

"Look I saw it online. I called and asked if you had the ‘Tablut’ Storage system and they said yes." I pointed to the little yellow sticky note in my other hand as if it proved something.

The sales guy had a clipboard that he consulted. He held up a page looking down a list and then asked me, "Who'd you talk to?"

"What?"

"On the phone." This kid sounded like he had some kind of an accent - maybe Chicago, but it sounded more like he just watched way too many Chris Farley skits. He looked a little like Chris Farley. His nametag said “Kenny.” Kenny said, "Who'd you talk to?"

I had no idea who I talked to on the phone. I asked about a plastic storage system to try to organize my crap. I cared about my crap and the easy organization of my crap by means of the snazzy modular kit I had seen on the web site. I cared about getting the apartment into shape before our holiday dinner party. I did not care about the person's name on the other end of the phone only that she told me that they had what I wanted and that they could not hold it for me so I would have to come down and hope that they still had one for me when I got there. I wanted no excuses from this guy so I made something up. "Linda. Her name was Linda."

The Farley-looking kid nodded his head like a puppet and made a "Hmmm" sound like the name meant something. Could have been that I got lucky but I'd say the safe bet was that this guy had no idea who answered the phone and was just trying to get rid of me as quickly as possible and if he could just blame it on someone else – poof – problem solved and annoying customer goes away.

"Look," I said, "I know how these things work - can't you check on a computer - see what's in inventory and where it should be?"

"Well it should be here." he waved his arm and vaguely gestured at the aisle of furniture kits and the expanse of store beyond. "This is where all that stuff is."

"I understand but it's not here and on the phone... she said you had it. The Tablut Blox. With an 'X', see?" I pointed to the sticky note again.

The guy didn’t even look at it. "Did you check downstairs in the bedding section?"

“I started downstairs and they sent me up here. Then the guy up here said you didn't carry anything like that but I know that you do. I saw it online. On the web site. The computer. Look, I know you have computers here… can we not just check a computer?"

Kenny checked under that protective first sheet of his clipboard again. He looked worried. "Yeah..." he said as he let out a long breath. "Yeah. Yeah. OK. You just wait right here and I'll see what I can do.”

Kenny

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I have no idea what I am doing. No really, man I don’t have a fuckin’ clue. I’m freaking out. Like you really don’t think it’s going to be a big deal when you see your parents doing it. Like, really I mean what is the big deal? You just do what you’ve gotta do right? Well wrong. I’m doing nothing but right things and they just don’t work. I just wander around asking myself over and over again “What am I going to do with a baby?”

No, I know, everybody says that you figure it out and yeah, whatever. But I can barely keep my own shit together – now I’m supposed to step up and be a father? Six months ago all I had to worry about was my major and making beer money. Now all of a sudden I gotta worry about Carl Jr.

“Carl Jr.” What the hell is that? I said to her, “We can’t call him Carl Jr. – my name is Kenny.”

But she’s all like “We’re naming him after me.”

And I go “You can’t call him ‘Carl Jr.’ if your name is Carla.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

Yeah. Fuck me.

I can’t stop looking at the sonogram. Carl Jr. Looks like a frickin’ alien. They do this 3D thing now so I swear he looks like an alien. I just can’t stop looking at it cause… cause its all just right there in the picture, my whole life now. And no matter what I did before, now I gotta get things straight and be clear about what’s important. People just don’t do that you know? Know what’s important.

It’s like today, at the store. I had to deal with this fuckhead who wanted to buy some kind of cheap-ass shelving furniture and he just could not accept the fact that we didn’t have it. Move on buddy. Deal with it. Go to a real store and stop expecting miracles at fucking K-Mart.

I gotta be good. I can’t say shit like that. I need this job just like I need the job at the video store and just like I need to sell the Camaro. The alien is already costing me money and he’s not even here yet. How about that Mr. “Tablut Blox.”

I really have no idea what this guy said to me. I know he wanted the Blox thing and I know we didn’t have any and I know I told him so and I know he just wouldn’t stop.

“Look loser,” he said, “They told me you had it. On the phone.”

I don’t know what kind of store he thought he was shopping in – maybe some kind of high tech Sharper Image place or something but there was no way we could keep track of every piece of merchandise unless we chain everything to the shelves. People move stuff. People shop. They wander around with their carts full for hours and hours. At the last minute they change their minds about half the crap they’ve been wheeling around and they just leave beach balls in the plant section or light bulbs in bedding. Customers don’t care. They don’t give one shit.

All I wanted to do was tell this guy where to go. Just wanted to jam his backwards ass priorities into the empty shelf and see if he could find anything in there for himself. But I needed this job and I couldn’t mess up like last time and so I kept my mouth shut and I kept looking at the sonogram of Carl Jr. I kept it under some inventory sheets on a clipboard and I swear it was the only thing that held me together.

At one point while this entitled prick was screaming I looked at Carl Jr. and I think I could make out his eyes for the first time. Like really see them for myself. His eyes. My kid’s eyes.

The Pier

I am only here because this place is close to the place want to be. I could not find anywhere to stay in the towns of the cliff-side Cinque Terre, so I settle for La Spezia, the next big city. In the evening I wander the streets looking for anything marginally interesting. At Piazza Europa I stand for a while and watch the spot lit fountain. Groups of two or three or four young people amble about the piazza and after a moment of watching I realize that they are all heading towards the bay. I follow.

Across the avenue behind the fountain I find more teenagers, a lot more actually. Like some invisible piper is playing some silent song that is calling them all to this one pier. I do not hear the piper’s music, but I follow anyway to see where it leads. Everyone in La Spezia between the age of 15 and 18 seems to be here on the pier past the parked cars and Vespas on the shore. As we walk I feel as though we have joined some sort of massive exodus – or more realistically, as though we are all headed for a party, or some high school dance or prom, waiting just a few hundred meters away. Scattered along the south side of the pier, old men fish in the waters of the bay. Sometimes their wives sit nearby, waiting. The young and old ignore each other in mutual apathy.

We march on, the teen lemmings and I, to the buzz of teen chatter. I can’t understand everything that’s being said, but I get the impression that teenagers talking freely amongst themselves make the same sound in every language, a sound full of energy, still childlike but directed for the first time by newfound goals of preening, pride and popularity. Pubescent rituals weed out the weak in Darwinian social evolutions. Halfway down the pier where the crowd is at its thickest, the first groups of three, of four, of five, stop and turn back. I keep going, following wondering what I am doing, where I am going. More turn back. The crowd thins. It is darker here, on the second half of the pier, quieter. The lights of La Spezia twinkle back on shore with the teens teeming there. The nearer I get to the end of the pier the fewer groups I notice around me. The boats docked near the end look bigger. Fewer men fish.

At the end of the pier only the lights from the boats and the twinkling stars of streetlights across the bay, light our progress. The groups of three and four have turned back to shore and only couples walk the last hundred meters hand in hand, arm in arm, embracing in the dim light of the La Spezia night. And suddenly I have become a voyeur, out of place amongst these boys and girls staring into the fires of each other’s eyes. My eyes have no match to stare into and so they look for somewhere else to rest and settle on the rubble piled on the north side of the pier - discarded body parts of once proud buildings. I turn and head back to shore. I do not think about the young lovers’ pier as I escape as I came, quietly and alone. I think of fishermen. I think of old buildings. I think to myself “I am only here because this place is close to the place I want to be.”

Mean Meaning

Sara sits on the rocks and glares at the other sunbathers from behind big black sunglasses. Look at all that bare flesh being exposed to the harsh sun. She shudders and hair tickles her shoulders through thin white cotton. Under her tint-red mane she gathers resentment. Her target at the moment is a Blonde-American tourist. Sara may be American, but at least she doesn’t wear it like a bad swimsuit threatening to slip off with every unsure blonde-step taken towards the water. Sara focuses the raw resentment through the tensed muscles of her pale cheeks and steadily sets it loose from a pout full of lips.

She refuels the process with a drag of nicotine and scans the rocks. Who’s Next? She feels herself sweat under the long sleeves of her shirt – Jean’s shirt actually. Jean’s white, button down oxford dutifully covers her pale skin. His long wiry body sits beside her and his tired eyes roll over a newspaper. His gray hair looks whiter against the blacks and browns of the rocks. Body, hair, rocks: he’s all hers. Not one God damned person in this cove, hell none of the so-called-lovers here in these five towns, have anything like what we have. Just coming here doesn’t make it love. Romance on the Riviera alone can’t cut it. Sara’s had other romantic spots before her eyes but only living here, with Jean, does she finally understand. She finds herself amazed that it’s taken her this long, all her twenty-five long years to understand. Twenty-five wasted years. Thank God Jean appeared to show her the difference. He really is a saint.

She locks on to her new target: three young women hardly wearing bikinis and talking in loud Italian to an older man in bright green bathing trunks. The girls laugh when one takes a photo of the other two on either side of the old man. Sara’s cheeks flex. The old man is talking about making someone jealous. Sara pouts. Jealous. Ha. They don’t know the meaning of the word.

Unfound Love and The Mask Bride

When I get to the gates of Venice, I am denied entry because I am not in love. “This is ridiculous!” I explode at the porter, who I suppose meant me no personal insult.

“Mi dispiace,” he says, “I’m sorry, sir, but this is the new law. For centuries, the romance of Venezia has attracted the innamorati: the lovers. Lately it has become necessary to close our doors to everyone else.”

Behind the porter, through the gates, I see the Grand Canal and the crowds of people wandering through the streets along the water. “You mean to tell me that everyone in Venice, every one of those people out there, is in love?”

“Sì Signore. And trust me, if you are not in love you really do not want to be here.”

This presumption upsets me. “How do you know? Are you in love?”

“I am in hell, Signore. This is my penance.”

I’m not sure if he’s joking or trying to scare me off. I decide to reason with him. “Well how do you know? Exactly how do you know that I am not in love?”

The corners of his mouth curl down. His brow furrows. “Please, Signore,” as if I’ve insulted his intelligence.

I think of one last gambit. “And what if I say that I am, in fact, here to find love?”

The porter smiles at me and says with a compassionate finality, “I can assure you, Signore, that there is no unfound love in Venice.”

#

I wander away and find a bench that does not face the gates and their enticing, Venetian view. I sit and watch the trains.

“I’ve come all this way – I can’t turn back,” I mutter. “Who do these people think they are?” Only then do I notice the woman sitting nearby. “Oh, not you Signora.”

She nods her head, excusing me, otherwise emotionless, staring straight ahead. In her aimless stare I recognize a dejected look, similar to my own.

My eyes and mouth go wide. “They wouldn’t let you in either!”

She responds again with a sad stare.

“How sad indeed.” Feeling a strong rapport I ignore propriety. “Are you here to find love too?”

Her empty eyes have a story to tell but they get caught up watching a train leave the station. She just sits, watching, wearing her mask of silence. I can somehow feel her clenched teeth holding back… holding back everything, and at the same time keeping her face from falling.

An idea forms inside my desperate head. I stand and boldly extend my hand. “Come with me.”

#

The porter is not surprised to see me again.

“Here she is,” I tell him. “I’ve found her.”

“Found who?” he says.

“My love,” I say and smile broadly. I wink at the woman, telling her, in our secret silent language, to play along.

“Questa?” the porter asks, “This is your love?”

“Yes. Look at her. How could she be anything but my love?” I put my arm around her. “I grant you that she leaves everything to the imagination, but you see…” I look around and in a quiet voice confide, “…that is her charm. She is a woman of mystery. She twists, she turns – you get lost in the corridors of her eyes. Her very being demands to be looked at and watched, studied, loved and, yes, wed. I am caught in her trap. She is the Venus for which this city was built!”

Unmoved by my passionate presentation as he remains, the porter has had enough of me. “Allora. If you want to share Venice with this comedy of art, your Mask Bride, do as you please. You have been warned.”

Bride beside me, I enter the city and dive into the narrow streets and bridges and boats of all my romantic dreams. Every via teems with vendors, artists, academics and most of all innamorati. I drink deeply of the grandeur and feed on the romance. I loose my way in the maze of Venetian streets when my distracted eyes become enamored of gondolas and ornate facades and the treasures of shop windows. Behind the glass of one such window I find the truth in the porter's warning. An artisan shapes velvet, paper and glue into a souvenir mask, a mask with my love’s face.

Bewildered, I turn to look for an answer in my bride’s eyes and face-to-face I see her for the first time. Bewilderment becomes shock. I realize that my bride, my soul mate, my newfound love is in fact only a mask, no different than those in the shop window. I stagger back and through blank eyes I see the labyrinth around me. In my haste to find love I have lost myself. Venice swallows me and in its belly I find myself behind a mask of silent solitude in a sea of lovers.