So-Called Customer Service

Take a look at this Blockbuster training video from 1990:

Perhaps you enjoyed the definitively early-90s ambience of the whole thing.  Did you see the high waist-lines?  All this talk about broken VCR's?  VHS!?!?   LOL!!!  Or perhaps you couldn't stomach the damn thing.  In either case, I hope you noticed what the creepy guy on the video monitor was telling the early-90s cutie, that she needed to show initiative and creativity in order to solve her customers' problems, make them happy, and make sales.

There is not a single sales clerk in all of Spain who has seen this video, or anything remotely like it.  Interactions with sales people often resemble the experience of Philip II in this spoof by a Spanish comedy group:

If you don't speak Spanish, it's worth learning it just to understand this hilarious video.  King Philip II has gone to the workshop to pick up the Armada he has ordered.  He is first treated as an inconvenience, then he's put to work.  He gets scolded for not bringing his claim ticket, and for presuming that the workman would know who he is.  Eventually, the guy recognizes him, and treats him like a celebrity.  Then an argument ensues, because Philip has ordered an "Invincible Armada" and the shop has made an "Armada that is Difficult to Beat," which costs less because the ships are made from particle board rather than solid wood.  Eventually, they agree that Philip will take the armada that's been manufactured, but the guy will put "Invincible Armada" on the receipt so that the enemy will be appropriately cowed.  That is, as long as the King agrees to let the guy's son go the England with the Armada, so that he can learn English.

It's a great parody because it gets so many things right.  The customer is an inconvenience.  Serving the customer is a big fucking favor performed by the employee.  The employee expresses disgust at the customer's demands, and argues with him so that he'll get it through his thick head that he can't have what he wants.  In the end, the customer has to settle.

The weird thing is that if you are the guest rather than the customer in Spain, you are treated like a king.  Spain has a deep and important culture of hospitality whereby hosts do everything in their power to make their guests feel honored and welcome.  People go out of their way.  They make and change plans according to your interests.  They never let you pay for anything.  The let you stay as long as you want.  Even after years of living in Virginia, a place that prides itself on hospitality, I have been astounded by the lengths that Spaniards go to when you are their guest.

None of this translates into a culture of "the customer is always right" service.  In fact, the customer is always wrong.  And the most irritating thing is that few people seem capable of showing initiative or asking questions in order to solve your problems.  Zoë, who does the lion's share of the shopping, can tell you all about this sort of thing.  The eye-rolling.  The look of disgust when you have some sort of special problem.  She's learned the trick of shopping at the same places all the time, because once you are perceived as a regular people start being nice to you.  The other trick is to do what Philip II does in the video.  Change tacks.  Elicit the salesperson's sympathy.  Settle for less.  None of this comes naturally to you if you are from the Americas.

I can tell you about my experience with Orange, the company who provides our cell-phone service.  Santiago had lost his mobile and we needed to replace it.  We use cheap pay-as-you-go phones, or "hooker phones," as Zoë calls them.  I went to the Orange store only to find out that I had too many lines in my name already.  Apparently, each person can have only two hooker-phone lines in his/her name, in order to limit the use of such phones for criminal purposes.   I tried to explain that I was trying to replace a phone that had been lost, and so I really wasn't looking for a  third line, but actually a replacement for one of the two lines I already had.  No idea from the sales clerk about what to do.  She said call Orange. I called the "customer service" line, and they told me there shouldn't be any problem with me getting as many lines as I wanted.  When I told them what had happened at the store, they told me to just go to a different store.  I did this, and, at the store, they told me the same thing they had told me at the first store. I called "customer service" and they confirmed that the sales clerk was right.  I tried to explain that I was trying to replace a lost phone, and they just repeated that I had too many lines already, and could not provide further information.

Then I fucking lost it.  What do you mean you can't provide further information?  I'm sorry, we can't.  Is there someone at Orange who has this information?  Yes.  Can you connect me with them?  No.  They do not deal with customers.  WHAT!!?  Are you aware of how completely absurd that is?   This is an internal policy of Orange.  I WANT TO BUY YOUR FUCKING PRODUCT, ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO MAKE THAT POSSIBLE?!!?  I'm sorry, we cannot provide further information.  I was livid.  My hands were shaking.  I was red in the face.  People around me had gone quiet.  I hung up and stormed out.

Upon getting home and calming down, I checked the internet.  Couldn't buy a phone from the website either.  Then I tried calling them again.  I was connected to the ONE person in the whole company who had seen the Blockbuster training video.  In fact, I think it was Marie herself, who has lost her job at the sinking ship which is Blockbuster, has learned Spanish, and has moved to Spain, where she is spreading the bible of good customer service everywhere she goes.  "Maria," as I shall call her, explained to me that I needed to go to a store and ask for a replacement card, not a new phone.  Ohhhhhhh.  I complimented her and thanked her profusely.

I went to the store, and bought the replacement card with no problem.  So can you sell me a phone as well?  No.  Why?  All our phones come with cards, and you can't have another card.  What am I supposed to do with this replacement card?  You see, he lost his phone as well as the card that was in it.  You need to buy another phone.  NO FUCK!!!  But you can't sell me a phone.  What do I do?  You need to go to the Phone House and buy a telefono libre (an unlocked phone that can be used with any service).  Thank you.

A Triumph of the Ass

I was going to make this post about our recent trip to Valencia, but I've been doing a lot of posting about our trips and very little about other things.  So, briefly, we went to Valencia by invitation of the folks who run the UVA study abroad program there, and had a spectacular time.  I was invited to give a lecture to the students, and then we spent time seeing the city with our various hosts.  They treated us like royalty, making the whole weekend quite memorable.  It was especially nice to see our old friends Agustín and Tammy, who had us for a paella at their apartment facing the Mediterranean.  Zoë and Santiago came back to Madrid on Sunday, while I continued on to Barcelona to give a lecture at the University of Barcelona.

But I keep getting these remarks from people saying that it looks like I'm on an extended vacation.  This is natural, since I have barely, if ever, mentioned my work on this blog.  Yes, we travel a lot, and I have no guilt about it whatsoever, because I figure any travel I do in Spain is a form of professional development.  But we also spend a lot of time in Madrid, where I put in long hours at the Biblioteca Nacional and other libraries and archives.  I thought I would tell you a bit about what all that is about.

Take a look at this map:

This is the closest thing that we have to an official map of the Spanish Empire, from the century or so when that empire was first created (i.e. 1492 - 1600).  In it's original form (this is a slightly modified, later copy) it was published in 1601 as part of an official history of the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Indies sponsored by the Spanish government.  Notice that I did not say "discovery and conquest of the Americas," because, as you can see from this map, the Spanish concept of the "West Indies" included a bunch of transpacific territories that we usually think of as the East Indies, as well as the Americas.  The map includes two vertical lines, one of the colored red and cutting through Brazil, and the other grey and cutting through East Asia.  Everything between these lines is what Spain considered to be its empire, including such places as the Philippines, New Guinea, China, and Japan.

I am writing a book that traces the fortunes of this concept.  I think it's an important one because of the way it helps us think differently about the geographies that were at work in early modern imperialism.  Over the course of the last few decades, a lot of scholars have been talking about the Atlantic world, the whole political, social, economic, and cultural network that arose out of the European encounter with the Americas and Africa.  This map reminds us that early modern imperialism, particularly Spanish imperialism, was transpacific as well as transatlantic.  Spain had ambitions regarding Asia, and once it established itself in the Philippines, it began to trade with China and other countries by way of the market in Manila.  Other scholars have studied the development of this Pacific world in economic terms, and I am trying to study it in cultural terms.  I am trying to figure out what the concept of the "Indies" meant for early modern Spaniards, and how it managed to encompass the Pacific and Asia along with the New World.

My progress so far has been a triumph of the ass.  I wish I had made this expression up, but I actually heard it on NPR, who said that's what writing a book was, a triumph of the ass.  Books happen because authors spend a lot of time sitting on their ass reading and writing and revising and writing and revising.  They do it for hours.  They do it when they don't particularly feel like doing it.  And that's what I've been doing when I haven't been on the road to cool places with the fam.  I've been sitting on my ass, reading letters, travel narratives, histories, plays, secondary sources of all kinds, and writing, writing, writing, writing.  So far, over 250 pages of writing, of which I think 120 or so are usable.  God, I hope 120 pages are usable . . . If not, it's more ass time for me.