Fresh Ideas: An Inconvenient Cliche
If I ran things, everyone would be required to work at least one retail job in their lives. That is the setting where the old cliché “the customer is always right” proves itself to be a valuable belief, if sometimes difficult to execute due to the quirkiness of people.
There were times during my days as a produce clerk when I was in danger of turning into a misanthrope (a fancy word for someone who does not like people). They could be a pain, interrupting you in the middle of building a dazzling display of apples, or with strange behavior.
One morning I learned that the customer may always be right, but can sometimes be incorrect. A man treated me to a rant against foreigners, aliens, immigrants and other undesirables not from the U.S.A. He closed by proclaiming, “I never buy any produce that isn’t grown in America,” while putting bananas in his shopping cart.
Then there was the night a woman loudly complained that it was against the law to keep animals in a produce department. When we asked her to show us where the offending creatures were, she pointed to the tamarinds, none of which were moving that we could detect.
But I also learned to look beneath the surface to understand a customer. We had one senior citizen who would take a shrink-wrapped half an onion or green pepper from the re-trim rack and ask us to cut it in half again and rewrap it. She was not a “crazy old lady,” but someone who lived alone on a fixed income and could only afford exactly what she could eat.
Our customers, whoever they are in the fresh-cut supply chain, are right, even on their off days. They must be satisfied, or better yet, delighted, or else they will turn into strangers. The stories in this issue of Fresh Cut are ultimately about giving customers a reason to keep coming back. We hope you’re equally happy with what you read here.
