The Customer Is Not Right
The California of the Beach Boys is long gone...
The door slammed, causing our earthquake-proof apartment to shake on its timbered frame. In her damp coat, she stood dripping in the hallway, having caught the first rain of February as she walked up the exposed stairwell. Her fierce glistening eyes betrayed an earlier disappointment as they met mine. Crying a defiant ‘No more!’ she turned into my arms, relieved but angry. My wife had just decided that if we were to stay in Los Angeles, something needed to change.
I would say that was the moment five years ago when we committed ourselves to escape from the rat-race and found a new adventure which both stimulated and rewarded us by an independent lifestyle, in beautiful surrounds with a good-hearted community of like-minded souls.
Except, this happened something like 23 minutes ago… The No 92 bus takes twelve minutes after leaving directly outside our complex in Glendale to the front door of my wife’s work. It costs only $1.75 but often is free for no apparent reason, with the driver motioning passengers in a bored yet impatient gesture to just get on and sit down.
Mornings are usually fine, as she joins her usual tribe of Armenian and Russian-speaking babushkas and dedushkas on their way to Burbank. However, the return trip in the evening can feature any aspect of humanity. Today, a slender, dark-skinned man was in agitated conversation with himself, while loud music erupted from his phone. He wore no clothes except a plastic rain cover and the tired Hispanic workers did their best to not make eye contact as his wide-eyes danced around the bus, until falling onto my wife. He grabbed her, maybe just to gain her attention, but she cried out in shock and shrank back into her seat. He began talking at her, his words making little sense, but no one did anything. They did not want to get involved. Thankfully, the next stop was home and she jumped off and tore back to our apartment, where she now stood, demanding I collect her next time.
The authorities here have tried to persuade people to use public transport but unlike in Europe, the bus is seen as for poor people. Considering how few districts are served by the Los Angeles subway and the fact that I have yet to see more than a dozen cyclists in Glendale since we arrived - despite the installation of wide-cycle lanes and dedicated crossings - people won’t be abandoning their cars here any time soon.
Homeless and/or disturbed people regularly are found on L.A. buses, frequently engaged in conversations with themselves, but less often aggressive - although it happens. Bus drivers rarely stop people who jump aboard and fail to pay and people do it with impunity. The drivers have likely decided it is not worth their sanity to engage with fare-dodgers, much less fare-dodgers with mental issues. The end result is that the bus ride is often a nervous experience - with more of a chance of an episode on a L.A. bus than on the New York subway, taking everything into account.
This ‘naked’ man was but the tipping point, not the root cause, of my wife’s reappraisal of her life choices to that point. Her anguish is centred at work, even as her colleagues and bosses are actually lovely and respectful. She would find working at their cosmetic store mostly interesting and enjoyable – were it not for the customers. Most of them are simply awful.
Superquinn was an Irish supermarket chain founded in 1960 by Feargal Quinn, celebrated for its high-quality fresh foods, customer service, and innovative store designs. It was a pioneer in Irish retail but faced financial difficulties, leading to its acquisition by the Musgrave Group in 2011 and rebranding as SuperValu.
Quinn was renowned for his customer-centric philosophy. He strongly believed in "the customer is always right" principle and prioritised customer satisfaction above all. He advocated for treating customers as honoured guests, emphasising personalised service and going above and beyond to meet their needs. Quinn's approach was summed up in his motto, "The customer is boss”. Yet, he would have had his work cut out for him in Los Angeles, even if he didn’t take the bus.
Every day, my wife witnesses incidents involving customers who are shouting, arguing, insulting, occasionally threatening both staff and the owners over anything from attempting to return used items, items without receipts, products bought elsewhere or returns outside the warranty period (five years in a case featuring a massage stick). The checkout till is the worst bottleneck for drama, with customers arguing over prices and coupons or demanding discounts under a ‘friend’s’ trade account.
Meanwhile, the attitude of many visitors to the shop is condescending, abrupt and disrespectful and while that may be expected off the 20% of clients with three-thousand-dollar handbags, the poorest clients smelling of weed and clutching fistfuls of cash are often just as bad. Receiving abuse is race-agnostic, with literally any person of any skin colour or speaking any language engaging in this behaviour. The store’s boss believes that this bad attitude has gotten worse in recent years and was very different when his father founded the business decades ago.
A beauty salon owner outside of Los Angeles has had similar experiences, telling me, ‘People here are terrible, self-serving and single minded'. That’s a broad over generalisation of course but compared to Ireland it’s mainly the case. Politics have made everyone even worse on top of it and right now it’s like navigating a building during a fire trying to go to work in customer service.
The beauty salon owner believes the Covid era definitely made it worse.
"People got WAY crazier after Covid and the polarising nature of it just fuelled the political fire."
Another person we know worked in a nearby bakery and found the atmosphere in the mornings intolerable with customers aggressively refusing to wait for the breads to be baked in the ovens and leaving awful, personal reviews over some items being sold out!
An older American friend wistfully told me that he moved to Southern California in 1970 when 23-years-old and loved it here in the laid-back land of Beach Boys music and surfing under the golden sun. Los Angeles was a magnet due to its booming entertainment and music industries, relaxed beach lifestyle, diverse culture, and economic opportunities. It drew aspiring actors, musicians, and those seeking sunny skies, counterculture freedom, and a chance to experience the glamorous Hollywood scene. His last time living in L.A. was in 2015, seeing it now as Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’:
Farewell happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells!
Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world!
Milton seems also to have foreseen the 92 bus to Glendale…