This is a story about how being a jerk can actually pay off.
I went to the Container Store in the Green Hills Mall yesterday because it is Nashville’s only retail source for Moleskine notebooks. While I generally avoid having/doing anything quite so trendy, I had decided Moleskines are as good a bound journal as any, so I went to get one.
I walked into the Container Store and my first impulse was to find an employee and ask “where are the Molekines?”
Good luck with that…
There was not an employee anywhere to be found in the vicinity of the entrance, or on the whole upper floor. I could tell just by looking around the first floor (which is relatively small area compared to the rest of the store which is the floor below) that the Moleskine display was not going to be on that floor, so I took the escalator down to the main floor.
The escalator opens to a large open area in the center of the main floor. There are cashier counters in the center of area. But, again, there was not a sole to be found – except for some other customers who seemed equally baffled at their inability to find any personnel to help them.
I felt like I’d stepped into some television show where only the employees had been swept up in the Rapture. I figured the next scene would be customers helping themselves and just walking out of the store…
Just in case I was wrong about that, and being the incorrigibly obnoxious person that I often default to, I just shouted, quite loudly and to nobody in particular,
“DOES ANYBODY WORK HERE?!?!”
And of course, at just that instant a young man appeared from amid the the aisles and stacks in a regulation black t-shirt – rather shocked that anybody would actually conduct themselves that way, and equally embarrassed that a customer had found it so difficult to get help that he seemingly had no recourse but to ask for it at the top of his lungs.
Quickly and efficiently, the young man asked what I needed and directed to the Moleskine display. After a few minutes of deliberation I decided which notebook I was going to buy. The task was made slightly more difficult than it needed to be because all of the products on display were hermetically sealed in plastic wrap, making it impossible to see what the pages inside actually looked like. But I managed to figure it out.
Ah, retail… This is why I buy almost everything except groceries from Amazon.
I made my selection and rode the escalator back to the upper floor to the only cashier that was open and waited my turn in line (another one of my least favorite features of bricks-and-mortar shopping). The couple I’d seen downstairs that was as perplexed for help as I was in front of me. They paid for their stuff – a variety of big plastic containers – and then it was my turn.
I put the Moleskine down on the counter and reached for my wallet. I had my credit card out and was all set to pay my $20 for the notebook…
…when the young man who had magically appeared downstairs when I started yelling like a crazy person magically appeared again, behind the counter. He waved off the cashier, then picked the Moleskine off the counter and handed it to me and said “we’re good…” – in other words, giving me the notebook and not charging me for it.
I certainly didn’t see that coming.
I was sufficiently surprised that I did not fully register what else he said. He might have said “I hope you have a better experience the next time you’re in the store.”
Or he might have said “Please don’t ever come back…”
In some kind of bemused shock, I ambled out of the Container Store with a free Moleskine notebook, wondering how exactly being such a jerk had produced such a seemingly worthwhile result.
And figuring that I would tell the story and end it with the hashtag
#Don’tEncourageMe