Record Store Chafes

Because the customer isn't ALWAYS right

This has been a really rough year for me in a myriad of ways, but I still spend a lot of time ruminating on the many things in my life that I’m thankful for — things like good health, great friends, awesome cats, an understanding and supportive family, making something approximating a living doing what I love, etc. And as I was reminded yesterday by a conversation with a librarian friend, I’m also really thankful that I no longer have to interface with the public in any sort of service/retail capacity.

During my first five years out of college, I worked at record stores in Chicago and Los Angeles. Compared to, say, waiting tables, tending bar or working at an airline counter, slingin’ CDs was a pretty easy and low-pressure gig — and this was decades before the toxicity of the Trump administration and the “inconveniences” of the COVID-19 pandemic combined to bring out the entitled worst in so many of our fellow citizens. And yet, I still remember so many nights where I left work with murder in my heart for humankind.

My house/bandmates in Chicago also worked in record stores, and we would often blow off steam at the end of the day by recounting our worst customer interactions over a beer or a bong. In our terminology, a typically problematic customer was a “chafe” — not disruptive or abusive enough that the cops had to be called, but still sufficiently annoying to make your life really miserable for the duration of your interaction with them.

The chafe could take many forms. It could be someone who wanted to bargain you down on the price of a record — or return a “skipping” CD that had obviously been sitting on the floor of their car for a month — and wouldn’t take a polite “no” for an answer. It could be someone who called in to ask us to hold a particular CD for them (“I’ll come by for it after work today”) and then got shirty when they finally arrived a week later to discover that we’d put it back in the racks to be purchased by another customer. Or it could be someone who was having a really bad day at home or at the office, and seemed to feel that it was somehow perfectly appropriate and acceptable to take it out on you.

Weirdly (or perhaps not weirdly at all), this latter brand of chafe was often a big fan of New Age music. I thought all those languid glass harps, wind gates and pan flutes were supposed center you and chill you out, but their mellow magic didn’t seem to be working on many of the folks who bought that stuff from my store in Chicago.

My most memorable chafe encounter along these lines was the yuppie who double-parked his BMW in front of the store during one afternoon rush hour, then ran in to loudly demand a copy of the new Yanni CD. When I told him that we were in fact sold out — it’s true, we sold shitloads of Yanni — he unleashed a spectacular torrent of verbal abuse upon me with flush-faced, vein-popping fury.

While I once might have been tempted to ask if maybe he expected me to pull one out of my ass just for him, I’d learned by now that it was better just to stare back impassively and give a brief “What can I do?” shrug. I did, however, double over in hysterics when I looked out the window and saw a cop placing a ticket on his double-parked ride, a sight which of course sent him into further paroxysms of rage — only this time directed at Chicago’s Finest. If karma is a real thing, then that was about the most instantaneous manifestation of it I’ve ever witnessed…

When I moved to LA in 1993 and got a gig working at the Virgin Megastore on Sunset Boulevard, I was introduced to a whole new form of chafe via the dreaded “in-store”. See Hear, the store I’d worked at in Chicago, hadn’t been big enough to handle promotional appearances by popular recording artists, but Virgin seemed to host at least two a week. An in-store meant that not only would we have to deal with the artist and their entourage, but we’d also have to deal with their fans — the latter of whom could be especially taxing.

In late 1993, the Megastore hosted a special “acoustic” in-store performance and signing event by prog legends Emerson, Lake & Palmer to promote their new The Return of the Manticore box set. (I put “acoustic” in quotation marks, because while Greg Lake did strap an acoustic guitar over his Brobdingnagian gut for that evening’s three-song set, it was plugged into an equally massive rack-mounted tower of electronic effects.)

Though they’d once toured North America with a 58-piece orchestra and choir, ELP were remarkably easy-going and didn’t pull any ego trips during their Virgin visit, at least none that I was privy to. I did hear something about one of them and his “lady” shutting themselves in the toilet off the employees’ lunchroom in order to ingest a copious amount of cocaine, but since I didn’t see that with my own eyes I’m not gonna call them out by name here...

The ELP fans in attendance, however, were actually pretty obnoxious. There was no stage for the band to perform on, which meant that they had to stand on the same floor as the audience — and which meant that it was especially challenging to keep the fans from getting waaay too close to their idols while they played. It was also difficult to get them to queue up in an orderly fashion following the performance (“Lucky Man,” “From the Beginning” and “I Believe in Father Christmas,” for those of you keeping score at home), when the three members of ELP were escorted to the back counter where they would be signing newly-purchased copies of the box set.

There were signs everywhere in the store stating that the band would only be signing The Return of the Manticore, but that didn’t stop many fans from trying to get them to autograph other ELP records and memorabilia. (Hey, I’d have dug a signed copy of Love Beach, too, but we’ve gotta keep the line moving!) There were also several signs posted stating that the band would not be taking any pictures with fans, an edict which went largely uncontested until two buxom blonde women made their way to the signing counter and asked me if they could get a photo with ELP.

I should have immediately shooed them along, but their surprising presence at this profoundly dudes-intensive event caused me to pause just long enough for Keith Emerson to get an enthusiastic word in edgewise. “Sure, ladies,” he chortled, “Come on back here!” Lightly flirtatious banter ensued, the women posed for a photo with (and got a few hugs from) the boys in the band; it was all done and dusted in a couple of minutes. And then came the chafe.

“Me too!” cried the next person in line, a 40-something Asian guy holding a camera aloft as he tried to move past me and insinuate himself behind the counter where the band stood. “I’m sorry, Sir,” I politely told him, blocking his way and pointing at the sign next to me. “No pictures.”

“Well, those girls just did it!”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, “but that wasn’t supposed to happen. It’ll slow the line down to a crawl if everyone poses a picture, and there’s still a bunch of people behind you who need to get their box sets signed before the band leaves.”

“But they got a picture with the band,” he insisted, angrily. “They didn’t even buy the box set. I paid for mine, and I should be able to get a picture if I want one!”

Our store’s floor manager was standing at the other end of the signing counter, and I motioned for him to please come over and intercede. Zack was a stockily-built Englishman who was generally more enthusiastic about vindaloos and World Cup football than he was about music, but he had a wry sense of humor and an unflappable presence that made him exceptionally valuable in diffusing difficult customer situations. Zack gently moved the guy out of the line so that the other customers could continue coming up to the counter, and heard him out. “Look, mate,” Zack responded when the guy was finished. “It’s rock and roll!”

I thought that was the perfect way of putting it. I mean, of course these randy old dudes were going to let the rules slide when a couple of pretty girls showed up; that’s probably why they got into the business in the first place, right? But the chafe wasn’t having it.

“But it’s not fair,” he raged like a disappointed second grader; he then cussed us out for being “unprofessional” and threatened to write a letter to corporate headquarters to tell them how poorly we treated our customers. Zack stoically absorbed the guy’s rant, then simply turned and began to walk away. “Listen,” he offered over his shoulder in parting. “Boy George is going to be here next week, and I’m sure he’d be happy to let you go back behind the counter with him.”

The chafe just stood there, momentarily dumbstruck.

“But…” he finally stammered, “But… I don’t LIKE Boy George!”

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