fandomhigh | Retail 101, Monday morning, All and Sundries

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retail

Retail 101, Monday morning, All and Sundries

All and Sundries is, frankly, a mess. Baldrick moves quietly through the store sweeping and gathering up debris, but it's fairly obvious that there was some sort of ruckus here recently.

Edmund stands by the cash register waiting for the students to all arrive and sign in. Once they are assembled, he begins.

"Retail is often a demeaning and frustrating occupation. Its rewards are few and sometimes subtle. Being overtly insulting is entertaining, but sometimes, hard on one's bones.

"Better is the pleasure of informing your customer that they are a complete blithering idiot and having them thank you for that privilege.

"Baldrick will now assist me with a demonstration."

Baldrick shuffles forward holding a piece of paper in one hand and a shopping bag in the other. He looked at the paper and read stiltedly, "Good. Afternoon. This," he held up the shopping bag, "Hat. Is too. Small?"

Edmund rolled his eyes at Baldrick's recitation but responded. "You do have a very large skull there, don't you, sir? You hearten men everywhere who have ever heard 'size doesn't matter.'" Then he plastered on a smile that would make small children cry while Baldrick gaped like a dehydrating fish and said, "I will exchange your hat right away."

He shooed Baldrick away and turned back to the class. "Obscure. Possibly obtuse. I have insulted Baldrick and he may have even thought I was complimenting him, but I have amused myself and perhaps compensated for the fact that my employer has told me that I'm fired if he hears one more complaint from a customer about my bad attitude.

"Retail, children, is a war - us against them - clerk against customer. They hold the power of the purse, you hold the power of the cash register, the 'we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone' sign, and the key to the store. Never compromise, and never back down.

"Again, I want you to break down into groups. Two groups of two, one group of three. Practice your veiled insults with each other in a clerk/customer setting. I will assist you with object lessons as you progress."

"Your assignment is to insult at least one person this week and have them not catch it. I expect a complete reporting of that in our next session. Failure may ~~at your mun's discretion~~ be rewarded with detention."

[ooc: Break up, chat, insult each other. I'll be along as soon as I can to have Blackadder deliver his critiques, but I'm on PST, so it will be later in the day for the east coasters.]

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Willow attempted to get into the role of an obnoxious customer. This involved tilting her nose up. "Excuse me, I would like to buy something, for I am a customer and I must custom."

Cedric tries to give off an air of interest yet only mildly. He doesn't think it quite works.

"All right," he says, looking at her. "What would you like to custom?"

Willow was momentarily at a loss. She hadn't thought this far. She pointed to something at random. "That." She looked. "Um. Tic Tacs. I'm a collector."

"Rather interesting thing to custom," Cedric remarks, looking down at the tic tacs. "Anything that combats halitosis gets high marks in my book."

"I'm mostly interested in the color," Willow said. "And how they create the chemical combination so that they taste really good when you start? And then after like a minute they turn into candy evil?"

"Perhaps that change is due to consumer error," Cedric says lightly.

"There's a specific way you're supposed to suck it?" Willow replied, dubiously.

"Of course," Cedric says, making things up on the fly. "But, most customers don't know that. It's all right. There should be instructions on the back of the container."

He tries to look confident.

Willow actually looked.

"I don't see them," Willow said. "Though this list of ingredients is troubling."

"Perhaps they're invisible," he suggests. "And why are the ingredients troubling, may I ask? Not enough meat?"

"Mostly because I think a lot of these words are made up," Willow replied, pointing at it. Then, remembering she was supposed to be obnoxious, she added, "Possibly by you. Because you have so much free time that you probably go around changing the labels on everything as some strange British practical joke."

"The British are better looking," Cedric says, completely out of nowhere. "And we know how to suck things."

"Some of you take your time about proving it," Willow said. Then her eyes widened. "Um! I mean - Americans are cute too."

"Tic tacs won't help you with personal problems," Cedric says and nods knowingly. "I suggest counseling for that."

"Might it take one to know one?" Willow replied.

"It might," Cedric says, "but I doubt it. I am British, after all."

And that really made more sense in his head.

"And no Brits need counseling?" Willow asked. She folded her arms. "Pfft. Have you seen the royal family lately?"

"Television rots your brain," he says and waves a dismissive hand.

"You would know," Willow replied.

"My dear customer who customers, have you been spying on me at night?" Cedric bats his eyelashes at her. "I'm flattered, I am. And, for that, I shall give you these tic tacs for free."

"Oh yay!" Willow said, taking the Tic Tacs. "Does this mean I win?"

"I think so," Cedric says and shakes his head. "I'm rather bad at that."

"Me too," Willow admitted. "I don't like trying to insult people just to insult them."

"I know nothing of British versus American sucking abilities, by the way," Cedric says. "I'm sure Americans suck as well as the British."

"Well I don't think Oz had any Brits he could compare to but - um. Yeah, so do we switch places now?" Willow asked.

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