It’s this sort of stand-offish, downward judging, nerd on nerd hate that I can’t stand. You are certainly entitled to your opinions and your viewpoints, but I don’t understand why someone would go into working retail at a “micro-community” specialty store if you aren’t interested in the customer service side of the product. My short reply:
1) Bathe – You signed up for the job, it might be a bit of a shameful stereotype of this micro-community, but it is very common that you will see comic nerds with hygene problems. You might not be one of them, but you knew that was the clientele when you signed up for the job.
2) Do the research yourself – Does it really take that much effort to show some effort in helping out the customer and pointing them at the answer? If there is a laptop around does it take that much to pull it up? If this nice family man with an adorable daughter has the same question of you regarding the product you are carrying every week, why not take 5 min and keep an eye out for the artist as you stock your shelves or as you go through the previews. As an employee at a comic store you have the ability to usher in new fans to this micro-community. You can help open new doors of the medium to casual fans. Why not become known for your willingness to help all sorts of people with any and all things concerning comics? There is such potential, sitting at the helm of this portal into a million other worlds and stories and it saddens me to see this gateway being closed off.
3) Converse with other customers - “I’d rather talk about fine dining or Doctor Who” As a customer I’m always saddened to see that the store clerks at my comic store are never actually reading comics. There are so few of us comic fans in the world, I would really hope that the people that have chosen to work at a comic store actually enjoy reading and talking about comics. Now understood, it gets old and you need a change of topic, but again it comes with the territory, why sign up for the job if you knew that's what was waiting for you. As far as conversing customer to customer, maybe holding community events and discussion panels at the store can get your customers to get to know each other so that they might have these conversations with each other.
4) Come in on time – Instead of giving your good customers passive aggressive rants about the bad customers. You can just put in a policy that doesn't encourage the sort of behavior you are trying to avoid. Like, pulls are only held for two weeks, or if a customer does not retrieve their pulls within a months time, they loose their pull list. I haven’t worked at a comic store so I don't know the complications of a system like that, but this really sounds like a behavior you can eliminate from your business practice with a few smart policy adjustments.
In closing, I love my comic store, and I love the fact that comic stores exist. But I’m not an idiot, I can tolerate an unhappy employee, or a less than stellar customer service experience just so that I can get my weekly books. What I won’t stand for is a retail environment that fosters an a work environment that looks down on its customers and lets its employees lord their little slice of the world over customers like they are sitting in a place of power. We are already nerds fully engaged in a nerd hobby. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.
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