The Anti-Dale Carnegie

 

How to Lose Customers and Annoy People

© 2025 Ross Williams

My wife drinks a lot of Diet Coke. Around 4 liters a day, and usually more. And as I am currently in the role of house husband it is my job to keep her in sufficient supply. I typically do this during the course of my other house-husbandly duties of taking the boy to and from school, and doing the bi-weekly Aldi runs.

Every cashier at Aldi knew the story of my wife and her Diet Coke habit. I'd either grab a dozen, or if they didn't have a dozen, I'd take what they had, cleaning them out entirely. Then I'd plop one 2-liter bottle on the conveyor with the rest of the Aldi wares, and tell the cashier how many in total I had. I'm not hoisting up a dozen bottles if I don't have to just so the cashier can individually hoist them down again 45 seconds later. That's way too much work for everyone involved.

But Aldi stopped carrying Diet Coke some months back, and recently it seems they've also stopped carrying regular Coke. As a result, I've been cornered into the unenviable task of hitting Walmart every week-or-a-little-more to pick up a huge batch of 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke. I've settled on 20 at a time as the most I can haul down from their top shelf, push through the store, and out, and load into the car before my surgically-repaired spine gives out and forces me onto my inversion table for a few hangings.

The Walmarts I hit for this task are the ones in Glen Carbon, if the Diet Coke run coincides with my Sunday Aldi run, and on the rare occasion the Wood River Walmart if I'm running the odd errand out that way. But most frequently I use the Godfrey Walmart, as it's on the way to and from my son's school. I always use the assisted checkout lane, as the self-checkout doesn't comes with a percentage-off discount for doing the store clerks' jobs for them.

Seriously: you try to save a few pennies on labor and what does it get you? a huge increase in retail theft. Do the math.

April 23 2025 I stopped at the Godfrey Walmart to grab 20 2-liters. I typically stop in the morning after dropping my son off at school, but April 23 is a Wednesday, and Wednesday is my Aldi run. I need to get there when Aldi opens so I can grab whatever discounted meat or fish they have. So on April 23^rd I stopped in the afternoon on my way to pick up my son from school.

I know the morning cashier at the Godfrey Walmart. She knows my wife's story as well. “You're the guy who gets 20 Diet Cokes...!” as she rings me up and gets me done in about 30 seconds. Yep, that's me.

On the afternoon of the 23^rd I grabbed a cart, hauled it to the back of the store where the pop aisle is – yes, it's called pop. Grabbed twenty from the top shelf, and stacked them in four rows of five against the back frame of the cart.

The cashier this afternoon I didn't know, but she seemed vaguely familiar to me... like I'd seen her somewhere before... perhaps in a movie.... That's it. Harry Potter's Professor Umbridge! Middle-aged, short, squat, somewhat toadlike.

I pushed my cart to her register and plopped a bottle on the conveyor. “Twenty,” I informed her.

“If you don't mind, I'll need to count them myself,” she replied.

I gave her a puzzled look.

She saw this and continued, “Do you mind? It's my job.”

“...if you must.” I shook my head in bewilderment. She continued to rationalize insulting me.

And yes, it is insulting. It implies – if not outright asserts – one of two things:
1] the customer can't count, and only the cashier can; or
2] the customer is in the process of shoplifting.

And if retailers weren't so intent on saving a few pennies on labor to gain millions in loss of inventory due to retail theft, this wouldn't be the issue it obviously is to them.

So Dolores Umbridge stepped around her register and began counting.

“One...,” she had to point with her finger.

“Two...”

“Three...”

This is going to take twenty minutes at this pace, a minute per bottle.

“Four...”

I interrupted, “Four rows of five. Twenty.”

She looked offended by my recitation of 4^th grade arithmetic.

She started again.

“Onetwothreefourfive...” Still using her fingers.

“Sixseveneightnineten...”

At least it's going quicker this time, even if she can't navigate the multiplication tables.

“Eleventwelvethirteenfourteenfifteen...”

“Sixteenseventeeneighteenninte...” She stopped, stumped. She tried again.

“Sixteensevente...” She was confused, and using multiple fingers now.

“Twenty,” I pointed at the one on her conveyor. Short-term memory loss is not a good quality to have in retail clerking.

She counted the top row once again and satisfied that the one on her conveyor did indeed constitute the twentieth bottle, she returned to her register and started her slow, methodical, painful manipulation of the buttons on her machine. Anything to draw out the ordeal.

I rolled my eyes loudly at her and exhaled in a long sigh that could move small pebbles. “Hope that was all worth it to you,” I remarked.

She stopped her button-pushing to rejoin me. Apparently she can't do two things at once. She'd better be sitting down for the afternoon if she ever decides to chew gum.

Dolores smugly sneered, “You're more than welcome to see the manager in customer service if you'd like to complain. I'm sure you'll be told that I'm just doing my job.”

She finished pushing buttons and gave me the receipt. “Your job better not include insulting customers,” I said and walked away so I could get to my son's school on time for pick-up.

The customer behind me commiserated with her in banal, sympathetic blandishments.

I'm not polite in the face of deliberate or officious insult. You don't get to cite “store policy”. If it's insulting, it's insulting no matter the justification. This is not debatable.

There's a proper method or two to double-check the veracity of the customer's claims without sending a slurring shot across his bow. One method was used by the morning cashier at this same Walmart. Many moons ago I plopped one of the twenty bottles on her conveyor and said, “Twenty.”

She looked boggled, popped her head around to take a look, undoubtedly doing a quick tally in her head, and said, “Wow, who drinks that much soda?” [The proper term is pop, but never mind]. This started a friendly banter, and a familiarity that continues to this day with “Hey! You're the guy who gets twenty Diet Cokes at a time!”

Another method was employed by a younger gentleman cashier at the same Godfrey Walmart who saw me approaching his register on May 2 2025. I could see he was doing a quick, quiet tally, and as I grabbed a bottle off the top of my stack of four rows of five to plop on his conveyor, he said, “Fifteen?”

“Nope, twenty.”

He rang me up and I was done in about 30 seconds.

What you do not do is inform the customer that he can't count or that he's trying to shoplift.

I don't know why this needs to be said, but apparently it does.