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Sales Tactics in China: A Year Later

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Personal Essays, tagged , on June 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

By Bobby Calise

“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.” -Charles Dickens

I stumbled upon that Dickens quote a few weeks ago and immediately thought of my trip to China. This time last year, my girlfriend and I were backpacking south from Beijing down to Hong Kong, with a five-day stop in between to visit my brother, who was teaching English at a Chinese university about an hour outside of a city called Guangzhou.

Our two weeks in China were exhausting. Most nights we went to bed emotionally drained from the series of miscommunications from earlier that day. Food, in particular, was a constant struggle. The pinyin menus included items like “broccoli rape” (presumably broccoli rabe; we didn’t ask), and a Chinese waiter’s standard procedure on vegetarian orders was to smile and nod as if to say, “Yes, we have that,” and then just serve the dish normally with plenty of meat.

After a few days we got used to the cuisine. (We’d simply look at each other and say, “Noodles?” “Yeah, noodles. And beer.”) But it took a little longer to acclimate ourselves to the aggressiveness of China’s tourist-hounding sales force. The first few times someone tried to sell me something that I didn’t want, I’d politely smile and say “no thank you.” But after two or three days of this, I became more annoyed and less patient. It became a game for us: Spot the Salesman. “Watch out! Guy approaching on your right selling glow-in-the-dark Frisbees! NO THANK YOU NO THANK YOU NO THANK YOU.”

Looking back through that same Dickensian lens, I see now that it took progressing stages of politeness, aggravation, and ultimately appreciation for me to accept the persistent sales tactics in China. A former salesman myself, I can still recall some of the craftier pitches we came across:

Granola from a Street Vendor (Beijing)
Granola with dried apricots seemed like the perfect snack while biking around the Forbidden City. But between the vendor’s muddled English and my inability to convert kilograms to pounds, he managed to slice off twice as much granola as we requested, and this led to an argument over price. In the end I couldn’t tell who ripped off whom, but the granola was delicious.

The Great Wall (Beijing)
It’s easy enough to sign up for a tour of The Great Wall. (In many cases it can be done right through your hotel.) However, the Wall was just the first stop on an eight-hour excursion that included a sneak peak at a jade “gallery,” which had our tour group listlessly wandering through a Macy’s-like showroom of jade bracelets available for purchase; a “silk factory,” which found us in back room warehouse full of Chinese silk comforters for sale; and finally a 30-minute foot rub from a college age Chinese “massage student” which also included a free consultation from a Chinese “doctor.” He read the lines in my palm (which any good doctor would do) and explained that my kidney and liver issues—which I was hearing about for the first time—could be easily remedied with a few herbal treatments, which he just happened to be selling.

Touts (Yangshuo)
A young man named Kim found us wandering near a bicycle rental stand in Yangshuo and helped us find our hotel, even picking out a restaurant for our lunch. We mistook his initial friendliness for clinginess, before realizing he was actually a tout, whose jobwas to latch onto tourists and give them an insider’s tour of the area for an unnamed price. These young men and women camp out in tourist hot spots within Yangshuo (such as a bicycle rental stand) wearing comfortable shoes and small shoulder bags so they can spring into action as soon as someone looks like they might need some guidance.

Bamboo Boat Ride (Yangshuo)
After negotiations with a street-side travel agent (we settled on 160 RMB total), we followed the agent’s motorcycle-riding colleague on our rented bicycles to the Yulong River, a popular tourist attraction in Yangshuo. We were paired with a young bamboo boat driver who spoke the bare minimum of English. A few minutes into the trip, the river reached the first of several drops, this one about three feet down. As we braced ourselves for splashy impact, a photographer on an anchored bamboo raft feverishly snapped pictures of us on his digital camera. When our driver led us over to the photographer’s raft—it seemed the drivers had instructions to make as many stops as his passengers will tolerate—we saw that this was actually a one-stop photo shop: a PC and monitor to pull up the pictures and let customers choose their favorites, and a printer and laminating machine to create and sell a finished print. Gimmicky or not, we were so impressed with the photog’s ingenuity—I mean, where did he plug everything in?—that we forked over 30 RMB for the keepsake.

Moon Hill Postcard Lady (Yangshuo)
The long, steep stair climb up Moon Hill led us to a doughnut-shaped mountain top and a few snapshots of Yangshuo’s tree-covered, cone-shaped crags. On the way back down, an old Chinese woman somehow caught up to us. She spoke quietly, mostly in cryptic hand gestures. (She only seemed to know how to say “U-S-A” in English.) “Yes, we’re from the U-S-A,” my girlfriend responded. With that, she opened a little notebook and showed us hundreds of messages written in English from well-wishing tourists, always with a similar sentiment: “What an amazing lady! She’s 69 years old and climbs Moon Hill every day! Please buy postcards from this lady!” Acknowledging that we were probably being duped, but too polite (and too hot and tired) to say no, we bought ten postcards from her. When we reached the bottom, we bought another ten postcards and several bottles of water from two other old women who had “volunteered” to watch our bikes because the rental place had “forgotten” to give us locks.  Well played, China.

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A “Gregular” Guy Takes on Starbucks in Midtown NYC

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Q&As, Interviews & Features, Small Business, tagged on June 1, 2011| 1 Comment »

My cheapness manifests in many forms. I once paid $350 for a tattoo, but complained about the five-dollar tube of healing lotion I had to buy along with it. When I eat at a fast food joint that has a self-service soda fountain, I fill my cup to the top, slurp two or three giant sips, and top-up again before I leave. I am willing to travel miles and inconvenience friends and family just to avoid an ATM fee. But never is my frugality more evident than when it comes to my daily coffee.

For years I tried any alternative I could think of to avoid paying someone else to make my coffee. When I first started at my current job, I would drink the office’s low-grade brew. Later, I brewed my own with a single-cup machine, but couldn’t get it to taste right. Then there was my failed experiment with a cheap Target French press. Last year, in an effort get my coworkers caught up in my neuroses, I cofounded an office coffee club. We would all share the responsibilities of buying the coffee, brewing it, and cleaning the machine each day. But we never seemed to establish any sort of rhythm, and after a few months we all gave up.

Meanwhile, a new coffee shop called Gregorys Coffee (no apostrophe) had opened up in the previously vacant storefront downstairs from my office building at 40th Street and 7th Ave. Disillusioned by the disintegration of the coffee club, a few of my coworkers went down to check it out and came back with rave reviews. But I held my ground. Still uninterested in overpaying for coffee, I tried my hand at Lipton tea (there’s an unlimited supply in my office), attempting to convince myself that it was just as good.

Then one day a coworker came back upstairs after a trip to Gregorys and notified me that he had become a “Gregular.” Gregular status, earned simply by asking for a Gregorys Coffee membership card, means that for every $50 you spend, you receive $5 to spend at Gregorys. Once you cash in your $5 you start over, accumulating another $50. The prospect of spending a little over $2 per cup for coffee twice a day still made me hesitant to try the new place, but the idea of becoming a Gregular—and joining a 10% cash back program—was too good to pass up.

My first few trips to Gregorys were uneventful. The coffee was reasonably priced and tasty, pretty much what I had expected. But after a few more visits I started to notice that their commitment to customer service was, well, noticeable. A couple times I even spotted Gregory himself working the espresso machines, tidying up, and offering explanations on his various brews if a customer asked. (I recognized him from his likeness from my Gregular card, above.) To me it seemed that Gregorys should have been drowning in a neighborhood dominated by Starbucks and other better known, longer established coffee shops. Instead, it was full every morning and still busy by afternoon. On nice days the outdoor seating was occupied by office workers and tourists spilled over from Times Square.

I had to know more. I found their modest company website and sent an email to info@gregoryscoffee.com, hoping to get in touch with someone—preferably Gregory—who might meet with me for an interview. A half hour later, I got a response from gregory@gregoryscoffee.com, asking when I had some time to talk. Later, we sat down for coffee at the store below my office building. He poured me a cup of my usual “medium-medium” (medium sized medium roast, which he explained had more caffeine than the dark roast) on the house; he had an espresso.

Gregory, a.k.a. Greg Zamfotis, is 29. He went to Boston University for business with aspirations of being an investment banker, but changed his mind. He went on to Brooklyn Law School to be a bankruptcy lawyer, but changed his mind again. He didn’t want to sit in front of a computer all day; he wanted something that he could put his name on. Greg’s dad spent his entire career in the food and beverage industry in Manhattan, mostly with delis, but it never interested Greg enough to go into the family business. It was only during a conversation with his father a few years ago—at a Starbucks of all places—that he decided to combine his foodie pedigree with his entrepreneurial spirit and open a coffee shop in New York City. His first location, at 24th and Park Ave, debuted in December 2006.

It’s obvious the guy is passionate about coffee—and equally passionate about running a successful business. He splits his time among all three of his locations, often working behind the counter in a fitted white shirt (rolled up sleeves) and a dark skinny tie. He designed the company website himself. He answers his own emails. He has plans to move into a midtown office space in the near future, and has a fourth store set to open in August 2011. And on top of that, he’s literally the face of the company.

When I hear Greg talk about the finer points of coffee, I can’t help but think of a wine connoisseur describing the subtle differences between two vintages of a cabernet, or what someone like Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales might tell me about his 60 Minute IPA versus the 90 Minute IPA.

Greg describes the coffee evolution in America as happening in three waves. The first wave, from coffee’s inception up until about 20 years ago, was when coffee was just Joe—it had caffeine, people drank it, and then went on with their lives. The second wave, in the 1990s, was Starbucks. More choices for serious coffee drinkers, from myriad roast profiles to a slew of espresso-based specialty drinks, and if you were willing to pay a little more, you could get a better cup of coffee than you could make at home or order at a deli. The third wave is where Gregorys comes into play. After our initial meeting, Greg articulated via email what exactly that third wave entailed:

“The third wave is basically taking the second wave to new heights. It is using single origin coffee and brewing them one cup at a time to highlight the specific flavors and aromas you might find. It is focusing on direct trade, buying straight from the farmers, establishing relationships with them. It is pouring latte art into espresso based beverages instead of just using an automatic machine like Starbucks. It is basically about picking and choosing specific qualities of specific beans and deciding which method of brewing will highlight that bean to its fullest.”

For Greg, it seems to be less about putting Starbucks out of business and more about putting something new out into the marketplace. “I wanted to bring the third wave to midtown,” he says. But if the majority of his customers are “first wave” coffee drinkers (like me) who order medium-mediums twice a day, doesn’t that run contrary to the whole third wave paradigm? He says no. He estimates 85 to 90% of his Gregulars order mostly just basic coffee. And if customers like those are trying to find the absolute cheapest coffee on the block, it won’t be his. (Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s are both within walking distance of his 40th and 7th location, not to mention a fleet of breakfast carts stationed at every corner.) So instead, he says, the plan is to compete by offering great customer service.

You might be thinking, Customer service? What a concept! It should come standard with every cup of coffee. But it doesn’t. The archetype of a modern coffee shop employee, as Greg describes him, is the guy wearing a wool cap in the middle of the summer, ignoring the customer so he can brag to the other employees about the latest indie flick he’s seen or the new obscure band he’s into. Of course that’s not always the attitude you’ll encounter, but Greg makes sure you don’t see it in his stores.

Even before I met with Greg, I could tell that the Gregorys staff had been trained to handle customers a certain way. On one visit, I reached the front of the line only to find the cashier fumbling with a stubborn roll of quarters. Her manager noticed the line starting to grow and in a polite but firm tone, she instructed the cashier: “Don’t worry about the quarters when there’s a line. Take care of the customer first.” Another time, I accidentally dropped my change into a dish of their complimentary mini biscotti. The cashier immediately snatched up the tainted plate and replaced it with clean cookies. On still another occasion when I was running late for work, I accidentally left a large personal check on the Gregorys counter and didn’t realize it until about an hour later. When I went back to see if anyone had found it, the check was waiting for me behind the counter along with a $10 bill I didn’t even notice I had left with the check.

The young staff is positive and enthusiastic and polite for now, but how, I asked Greg, does he keep them that way once that newness wears off? After all, even the most disgruntled employee in the world was probably happy at his job for at least the first month or two. At 29, Greg is around the same age as many of his employees. He appreciates that they have other interests outside of coffee and presumably that understanding has molded his managerial style. Though his is still a relatively small operation, he stresses the import of the distinct company culture at Gregorys. The staff regularly does book clubs and movie nights together. Once a year, Greg closes his stores and takes everyone to Medieval Times in New Jersey. And later this year, he’s headed to Brazil to visit some coffee farms and he has saved an open seat for one of his employees to join him, all expenses paid. To decide who gets to go with him, Greg is holding a contest. Employees can submit a piece of original art—a song, a personal essay, a photograph—with the best entry getting the ticket to Brazil.

After speaking to him, it’s hard not to like Greg; I’m rooting for him to succeed. But most of his customers will never have a conversation with him or follow him on Twitter or even notice him behind the counter. Still, it says a lot about Greg that he’s managed to overcome some long odds, against both his competitors and my cheapness. For the record, I still buy all my clothes at outlets and I still hate leaving even a few minutes unused on a parking meter. But I’ll happily pay $4.46 a day ($2.23 in the morning, $2.23 in the afternoon) for my medium-mediums, and I’m proud to call myself a Gregular.

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The Unlikely Entrepreneur

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Personal Essays, Small Business on May 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

By Bobby Calise

The following story references a man named “Kingston.” The small business that Kingston runs is not exactly legal, so for the purposes of this post, please use your imagination as I’ve taken some liberties with the word “beverage.” Thanks.

I’ve written previously about my Tuesday softball team, but after our first game this past Tuesday night, I realized that I’ve neglected to mention our unofficial MVP: the beverage guy.

Our beverage supplier, known to us only as “Kingston,” has been working the softball fields at Central Park since I started playing on the team in 2005, and some of the older guys say he was there even before that. He’d walk around to all the fields selling water and Gatorade out of a cooler on hot summer days. Back then, though, we didn’t really need his services; the Petry offices were much closer to the fields than they are now, so we had the rookies lug a case of cold drinks along with the equipment bag. But when headquarters moved 25 blocks away from Central Park, we had to come up with a solution for our beverage needs. Enter Kingston.

Our team’s catcher, Charlie, recalls his first prolonged encounter with Kingston that led to the long-standing contract we have now: “One day in 2008 or 2009 … he comes around with his usual ‘I have water and Gatorade.’ I yell out ‘You got anything else?’ He pulls me to the side, gives me the inventory. A few weeks go by and one day he says ‘I could bring a cooler if you want.’ We go over to the end of the bleachers, hammer out the details, and voila, the partnership is born.”

I have a million questions for Kingston about his vocation as an unofficial Central Park vendor. Where does he get his supply of beverages? How many other clients does he have besides our team? How has he managed to operate under the radar for so long? But I assume that in his line of work, doesn’t do too many interviews with bloggers. Still, we’ve been using Kingston’s services for a couple of seasons now and it never once occurred to me that he’s a true entrepreneur and someone who, despite the mystery surrounding him—or maybe because of the mystery surrounding him—I’ve come to appreciate as a businessman. In fact, it was only after a recent bad experience with a major airline that I realized how bad customer service can be, and by contrast, how good Kingston’s is.

Last week I flew Continental Airlines to and from Puerto Rico. Due to a lack of diligence on my part when I booked the flight, my girlfriend and I had separate seats on the plane. After having no luck trading seats with other passengers on the way to Puerto Rico, I called the airlines before our return trip to Newark to see if they could help me straighten out our seating arrangements and get two together. I was assured that although the only open seats were designated as “Extra Legroom,” which cost $40 to upgrade to, we would be able to switch for free if I spoke to someone when we got to the boarding gate. But when we reached the gate, they explained that I had been misinformed, and that this was not Continental’s policy—if Extra Legroom seats go unsold, they remain empty for the flight—because it would be unfair to those who had paid the upgrade fee. I called Continental again from the airport and after 25 minutes on hold, they confirmed what I was told at the gate. My girlfriend and I sat 11 rows apart. (The worst part? The in-flight movie was Gulliver’s Travels. After seven excruciating minutes, I ripped my headphones out of the jack in frustration.) As a passenger, I know that the airline’s top priority is to get me to and from my destination safely. If the pilot can do that, I tend to forget that the flight attendants were snippy and the animal crackers were stale. But as a customer, I was underwhelmed yet again.

I think the Verizons and TimeWarners and Continentals of the world could stand to learn a few things from Kingston. He provides a high demand service at a reasonable price. If we have an issue, we can get a real person on the phone quickly (Kingston himself). This past week, a guy from Kingston’s “staff” came by to make sure we had everything we needed and even refreshed the ice in our cooler. And when he came back to collect the cooler at the end of the night, he asked us if we wanted to include anything else in next week’s order.

Most of my questions about Kingston and his business remain unanswered. I still have no idea where he came from (best guess so far: Jamaica), or where he goes when he disappears into the forest at night. I don’t know whether to believe the rumors that he works at a bazaar over the winter, or that he’s a former extra off the set of Oz. But what I do know is that like any good salesman, he persisted for a long time and eventually won our business. And from what I can tell, he’s determined to keep it.

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Free Souvenirs

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Personal Essays on April 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In four years of journalism classes, I learned that one of the worst things you can do as a reporter is to decide what the story is about before you write it. Sure, you’re trying to make a deadline and odds are there won’t be too many twists and turns in a local PTA meeting or a high school baseball game. But sometimes the story writes itself. And the best thing you can do as a writer is just to stay out of its way.

As I write this, I’m looking at a Yankee ticket stub from April 11, 1996. During Easter break from school, my mom took my brother, my friend Beth, and me to see the Yankees. This was the day after Opening Day, when some guy named Andy Pettitte pitched through the snow on the way to a 7-3 victory. And as any New Yorker can tell you, the weather here is fickle: the day after the Yankees opened in the snow, it was so warm at Old Yankee Stadium that we watched the game in t-shirts.

Now I’m looking at a Yankee ticket stub from June 11, 2003. Relatives from Texas were in town for a few days over the summer and wanted to catch a Yankee game. On this particular night—and I know this because I wrote it on the back of the stub—the Houston Astros no-hit the Yankees with six pitchers, and I stuck around until the end to say that I saw such an unconventional no-hitter, even though it was against my own team.

Another ’96 stub, this one from October 20: Game 1 of the World Series. After miraculously scoring a $95 Row Y ticket, I couldn’t have been more excited. The game was scheduled for Saturday night but was moved to Sunday night after a rainout. To dry off the field, they flew in helicopters to hover above the Stadium to dry off the grass. After letting my excitement marinate for another 24 hours, I showed up just in time to watch the Atlanta Braves and 19-year-old-rookie Andruw Jones break my heart by taking the first game 12-1, behind two HRs by Jones and a foul pole dinger from Fred McGriff. I can tell you first-hand how much it sucked to be there that night, but as most Yankee fans will remember, it turned out pretty OK for us after that.

Digging through my old tickets was a fun exercise, but it wasn’t what I thought I’d be writing about when I started this post. I had planned to go on a Lewis Black-like rant about how, thanks to StubHub, I’ll no longer have the stiff, glossy tickets with the Modell’s 15% off coupon on the back when I go to Yankee games; I’ll only have a paper print-out with a barcode at the top and the StubHub URL at the bottom. But when I started to look through my box of old ticket stubs, I realized that it doesn’t really matter that what material the ticket is printed on. What matters is what you think of when you look at that ticket.

For example, I have ticket stubs from…

The Departed, 2006 – I was supposed to wait to see it with my girlfriend. I didn’t. We broke up shortly after.

No Doubt, 2000 – Lit opened for No Doubt at Jones Beach; a pre-Fergie Black Eyed Peas opened for Lit. Not. Too. Good.

The Sixth Sense, 1999 – Turns out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. Crazy!

Fenway Park, 1995 – My mom took us when we were kids. This past Thanksgiving she showed me a picture from that vacation. In the picture, I was wearing a Red Sox souvenir t-shirt. I threw up a little in my mouth.

You get the point. Whether it’s the shiny ticket or the crappy paper print-out, save your ticket stubs from concerts, movies, ballgames, plays, museums, whatever. Save plastic hotel keys from family vacations. Save matchbooks from skeevy dive bars. Keep them tucked away in a box like a time capsule, and look through them from time to time. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be happy you did.

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To Tip or Not to Tip

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Personal Essays on March 29, 2011| 1 Comment »

By Bobby Calise

The Office’s Dwight Schrute once pontificated: “Why tip someone for a job I’m capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can—and do—cut my own hair. I did however, tip my urologist, because I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones.”

Like Dwight, I’ve always found the rules on tipping to be rather arbitrary. Why is it sacrosanct that we tip a waitress 15 to 20% for average service, but many of us are much stingier when a cab driver adequately gets us to our destination on time and unharmed? Why do many people leave their barber a generous tip for a job well done, but never more than pocket change and lint to our Subway sandwich maker?

Using myself as a case study of a frequent bar hopper, my standard rule is to tip $1 per beer. Whether I’m drinking $10 Stellas on the roof at 230 Fifth or chugging $1 Natty Light out of red Solo cups at a college bar, the bartender is still getting a dollar a drink. Think about that: my dollar is a 10% tip at one place and a 100% tip at another. The act of pouring beer is exactly the same in both places, so the tip should be the same, right? Well, the evil eye I’d probably get from the rooftop bartender would suggest otherwise.

I know a guy who runs a part-time dog grooming business. He charges a flat rate for house calls and often clients tip him on top of that, sometimes as much as 50%. The tips tend to be better when the dog needs more grooming…or when it tries to bite him. Let me repeat that: he stands to make the most money if a dog mistakes his hand for a chew toy.

Assuming you’ve worked out your own system for tipping the various service professionals here in America, traveling abroad comes with its own set of tipping etiquette quagmires. I recommend giving yourself a head start and reading a travel guide for that country in advance. When I studied abroad in England, I had previously read that the English don’t tip bartenders. Still, I usually tried to leave an extra “quid” on the bar when I had it. As a result the bartenders always seemed to find my face in the crowd of people waiting for a fresh pint. On another occasion during a weekend trip to Dublin, our group found a busy cafe to grab a cheap breakfast. Not realizing that our waitress was not working on tips, someone asked, “Can I have a free refill on my coffee?” The waitress replied, “Free refills? What do you think this is, America?”

My oddest tipping experience came during a two-week stay in China last May. My girlfriend and I had read in several books that tipping doesn’t exist in mainland China. We adhered to that policy pretty strictly, though we were willing to bend the rules for masseuses who could sooth our barking dogs—the kind that don’t bite—after long days of sight seeing on foot. But when you’re staying in a touristy area, such as The Forbidden City district in Beijing, the service workers know that they can probably convince you to tip them if you’re from a country that regularly pays a gratuity. One particularly aggressive taxi driver—whose taxi, for the record, was a two-seat cart pulled by an electric motorbike—unabashedly cajoled us for a little extra on top of his fare. Using perhaps the only English he spoke, he said, ”tippa tippa tippa.” (Imagine how you’d say ”tickle tickle tickle” to a baby.) Confused, I gave him a 10% tip, one yuan, or the equivalent of about 7 U.S. cents. He looked at me, laughed, and said again, “tippa tippa tippa.” I handed him one more yuan. He laughed again, shook his head, and zoomed away. It seems that when it comes to tipping, China is the worst of both worlds. The service professionals don’t work on gratuity so they’re not inclined to provide better service, but they still ask for a tip. Next time, I’ll keep my 14 cents.

At this writing I’m no closer to answering the questions I asked above. In the end, I guess, a waitress may not be able to control the frugality of her customers, but at least the food service industry has some degree of self-policing built into it. The concept of serving defiled food has been well-documented in cinema (see: Fight Club, Road Trip, or Waiting), so much so that it’s even created an irrational fear for some of us. I once was out to dinner at Applebee’s with a college friend and her younger brother who was visiting from home. The meal was good and the service was fine. When we got the check, there was some discrepancy and we asked the waiter to please take a second look. When he left the table to review it, my friend’s younger brother said, “Oh great. Now he’s gonna spit in the bill.”

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The Customer is Always Right

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Personal Essays on March 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

By Bobby Calise

Beggars, apparently, can be choosers.

That’s the lesson I learned this past Saturday on the 4 train headed towards Brooklyn. When I boarded the packed subway car, a homeless man was working the crowd of passengers, asking for monetary donations to help propel himself away from his current circumstances and toward greener pastures. By the time I had gotten on, he had come to the end of his spiel and was in the process of collecting donations. He seemed to linger a little too long for one passenger, though, a young blonde woman who had given him 50 cents a few seconds earlier. She muttered something to the effect of, “OK enough already,” apparently hoping the homeless man would take the hint and move on.

The homeless man instead took exception to the woman’s comment and launched into a ten-minute diatribe, first towards the young blonde woman and then towards society in general (to his credit, he kept his language clean). He talked about his status as a veteran of three different wars and his efforts to defend the freedoms that people, like the young blonde woman, took for granted. At one point another rider even chimed in to support him: “Some people don’t know what it’s like to be homeless!”

By this time I had begun to tune him out and keep my head down for fear of being engaged in the debate. But then the homeless man did something that got my attention, something I had never seen before: he turned to the young blonde woman, reached over to her, and gave the 50 cents back to her. Huh?!?! This particular homeless man was poor enough to ride the subway asking passengers for donations, but not so poor that he’d accept money from a patron whose attitude he didn’t like. I was stunned.

Continuing his monologue as my fellow passengers and I counted the stops until we could escape the awkwardness, the homeless man (who is black) told a story of his encounter with another man who also works the trains (who is white). The other man claimed to have made $88 on a one-way trip on the Lexington Line, just by telling his own story and collecting donations. So the homeless man, making use of the other man’s tip, did the same in the hopes of a similar fortune. He rode the Lex Line one way, telling his story and collecting donations. According to his tally, he earned just $6. He not so subtly attributed these figures to an element of racial bias among the subway riders of New York City. And with that, I reached my destination and got off the train.

Homelessness in New York City, or anywhere for that matter, isn’t funny. It’s heart-breaking. But to me the saddest part of this particular man’s story wasn’t that he was a victim of racism or rudeness or any number of bad breaks that led to poverty. It was that he was a bad businessman and didn’t realize it. He turned a customer (the blonde woman) into his biggest detractor and actually lost money on the transaction. And through his argument with her, he poisoned the pool of other potential customers (a subway car full of passengers who just wanted him to go away). Finally, he managed to waste his own valuable time deriding an individual dissatisfied customer rather embracing a “The Customer is Always Right” attitude, ignoring her rude comment, and moving on to the next car to work his way towards his $88 goal.

I can’t possibly fathom what it’s like to be in the homeless man’s position, and for that I feel very blessed. If his rant was simply a momentary setback on an otherwise successful attempt at reaching his goal of getting off the streets then I applaud him for his hustle. But what I do know is that Chase won’t turn away a customer’s money even if that customer is rude to one of its tellers. Starbucks will still make your caramel macchiato for you, even if you’re a jerk. And JetBlue doesn’t ask you a series of questions about how nice you are as a person before they let you buy a ticket. The customer is always right, and $88 is always more than $6.

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The Art of Haggling

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Personal Essays on February 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Around this time last year, I spent a Saturday afternoon walking through Chinatown with my mom. She was preparing to throw a Chinese New Year-themed party and needed all the accoutrements to decorate her place; items like chopsticks, wooden fans, an Oriental tea set. Anyone who’s been to New York City’s Chinatown knows that most every item’s price is negotiable, and that the vendors are pretty crafty negotiators themselves.

So there we were, nearly finished shopping, carrying our purchases around in little red plastic bags, looking to get in and out before the claustrophobia started to set in. The only remaining item on the list was one of those Chinese umbrellas, and my mom was looking to get a good price. The saleswoman opened the negotiations at $7; my mom expertly low-balled her at $5; they settled on a very reasonable $6. Score! Now my mother is not a wealthy woman, but certainly she could have afforded to pay full price on the umbrella. But that wasn’t the point. She just wanted to feel like she wasn’t being ripped off. She wanted to feel like she won.

It was also around this time last year that I got my first tattoo. My first instinct was simply to use the cheapest shop I could find. But on my girlfriend’s advice, I researched and found a clean and reputable establishment. My artist, Simone, explained that my particular tattoo would take less than two hours to complete the shop’s rate was $180 per hour (I would get a 10% discount, of course, if I could pay cash).

While I was at the shop for my initial consultation appointment, I overheard another customer haggling with Simone over price. He showed Simone the design he wanted and was quoted at $360 for two hours of work, the same amount of time and money as my own design. This other customer said, “Come on man, this is an easy one.”  Simone ponder for a moment, after which he agreed to a reduced rate of $250. My first thought was, What? You’re allowed to negotiate the price of a tattoo? You’re arguing price with a guy who is sticking you with needles thousands of times and permanently marking up your skin? But this dude seemed to know what he was doing. He was a born haggler.

After I overheard that conversation with the other customer, I told my girlfriend that I thought I could maybe do better than $360 for my own tattoo. Having a couple of tattoos herself, my girlfriend (again the voice of reason) advised against it. And eventually I understood where she was coming from. There are certain service professionals that people don’t always feel comfortable haggling with. Some people are afraid to ask a waiter for fries instead of mashed potatoes for fear of having their food spit in. Others hate negotiating price with an auto mechanic because they’re worried their car will end up with a more expensive problem than the one they came in with.

In the end, everyone has their own haggling comfort level. But if I’ve learned anything from my own failed haggling experiences, it’s this: it never hurts to ask, and a simple “Come on, man” can go a lot further than you’d think.

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