CSotD: Norm Feuti sells out
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For some reason, it seems like I've had fewer barrages of offers from cashiers lately for charge cards, affinity cards and to donate to their cause-of-the-month. I'm assuming it's because they're tired of being told 'no,' and that it isn't the result of some head office suggestion that they quit badgering the clientele.
Such a dim view of management may be why I am so fond of Norm Feuti's Retail. I was still in newspapers when the strip came out, and the sales packet had me on the floor, together with the entire twenty-something support staff in our corner of the building, all of whom had worked in malls at one time or another.
That was five years ago, and Norm is marking the occasion by rebuilding his web site. Apparently, King Features has eased up a little on the on-line rules, because I've noticed a couple of KFS comics that now have today's strip on their sites instead of following a two-week delay. (At least, I hope it's a rule change and that I didn't just rat them out.)
As long as I'm plugging Retail in general and not just for today's strip, you should know that Norm's book, "Pretending You Care," is not a collection of strips but an actual handbook to the grim world of life as a hapless drone in the retail business, generously illustrated with applicable Retail strips, but still a "book" at heart.
The strip's authenticity comes from the fact that Norm put in about a decade and a half at the mall himself, and the book is very dark but very accurate. The first tip is that you shouldn't take a crappy job for the staff discount because you'll get a better deal when things go on sale anyway, which they do with such regularity that you'd be a fool to take all the grief of working there only to end up saving less than if you didn't. (Employee discounts don't apply to sales prices.)
My exposure to retail work was thankfully minimal, but I spent 20 years working for newspaper companies, so I was able to appreciate his scorching analysis of stupid, short-sighted, cloth-eared meddling by people in distant cities who have no idea what your customers actually want.
Mind you, as one of my sons pointed out when I gave him the book for Christmas a few years ago, it's funny, but it's not the kind of funny that makes you laugh.
But that's the kind of funny I like best!
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