a rant about organized religion, their respective holidays, and business

[hollybrooke]

I would cross-post this over to customers_suck, but I don't think this is really suitable for over there, because what I have to rant about could possibly considered wanking.

I didn't really have any problem customers tonight, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the one who had a problem with us being open on Sunday. The customer comes to the service desk, and she asks who owns our company. I guess she had a right mind to complain to the owners (or whoever she had to lodge her complaint to) because we are open on Easter Sunday. She claimed, "I just don't get it, aren't your owners Christians? Because Easter is the most sacred of the holidays!"

I understand where this customer is coming from, especially given that St. John is a quite a religious community. (Nearly all of the kids in town attend the St. John the Evangelist school, for crying out loud.) And up until last year, I guess all of the SVT stores were closed on Easter Sunday. Last year was the first year they stopped doing that. (At least we close early.)

Reasons to be open on Easter Sunday?:

A) You can't automatically assume that everyone in this town is a Christian. I'm fairly certain there are a few Jewish families in town, and there may very well be some agnostics and atheists as well.

B) I'm sure we would get more complaints if we weren't open because customers need last-minute stuff to either take to a family gathering, or you ran out of butter/gravy/mashed potatoes/rolls/pop/etc.

C) The sad fact of the matter is that the way retail business/the economy looks right now, we can't afford to be closed on Easter Sunday.


So this customer can send an email to J. Str*ck if she so chooses to complain about our stores being open on Easter Sunday; I don't think there's much he'll do about it.

What's she going to do next? Cross the street to Blockbuster and bitch to them about why they're open on Easter Sunday?

Comments

[jadore-histoire.livejournal.com]

LOL thank you. My dad was *shocked* that Borders is open on Easter Sunday, and that I have to work. It's a corporation; they'd rather stay open and have the chance of getting a few customers, rather than close and lose money. Our neighborhood that we're located in is also predominantly Jewish, but since Passover's also underway, it's going to be fairly empty tomorrow, as most of our customer base will be with family or on vacation. Unless Brangelina shows up again...

People find the tiniest things to whine about in our store. We ran out of that stupid Liberty and Tyranny book, and a customer accused my manager of doing it on purpose as part of a "vast liberal conspiracy." Someone's been watching too much Sean Hannity. Then there was the woman who wrote a letter in to corporate because she found the display of Passover books in the kids' section way too small and said we should be ashamed (I went and looked later; it was a pretty decent display. Never mind that the woman in charge of the kids' section is Jewish too). And last summer, we were under very strict orders to NOT discuss the election with anyone and if we got provoked, to tell a manager. This was because there was a TON of people complaining because the first table you saw when you walk in the store was all Obama books and we had customers bitching at the manager that we were showing a Liberal bias and, once again, that we're part of a vast liberal conspiracy. The first table was displaying the top-sellers from Borders.com; so if it was all Obama books, too bad. That's what we had to explain to them heh.

[valsadie.livejournal.com]

I hear you talking. The Culver's restaurant in my neighborhood is open Easter Sunday, and my first thought wasn't so much about it being possibly sacrilegious but feeling sorry for the employees who have to work that day -- because it's not even holiday hours, they are open all day long like a regular Sunday, to 10:00 pm! Dang!

But at least it's a meal for anyone spending Easter alone...