We Live to Serve

By Elaine Viets

Helen Hawthorne and I worked in customer service at a country club for my latest Dead-End Job mystery. We dealt with every kind of complaint you could imagine – and a few you couldn’t.
     How about the husband who didn’t want his wife to get a copy of the club bill – because he’d taken his mistress to lunch there and charged it?
     Or the woman who was unhappy because she’d spilled soft-serve ice cream on her designer outfit. She wanted the club to pay for her dry cleaning. She said it was our fault the bowls were “too small.”
     We were not permitted to tell the woman she should have taken a smaller portion. Our jobs demanded that we treat club members with the utmost courtesy, no matter how badly they treated us.
     This Dead-End Job mystery is “Clubbed to Death,” and Publishers Weekly was kind enough to call this a “superior cozy series.”
     The Superior Club was also the name of the novel’s mythical country club.
     We watched millionaires shovel cheap cookies into Prada purses, and folks with six-figure incomes order sliced lemons and make their own lemonade at the table with the free water and sugar packets.
     We had to learn to tactfully handle the chronic complainers. Anyone who worked customer service has a few key phrases they use. In “Clubbed to Death,” Phil, Helen’s lover, and Margery, her landlady, outlined them for her after a bad day at the Superior Club.
     “Next time Mrs. Rich screams at you, tell her, ‘Rest assured that topic will be brought up to the staff,’ ” Margery said. “It will, too. You’ll warn them that she’s a bitch on wheels. But she doesn’t know that. Mrs. Rich is happy because she thinks she got someone in trouble.”
     “Here’s another good one,” Phil said. “I use it all the time: ‘Don’t you worry, ma’am. There will be a note in the file on this incident.’ ”
     “You’re not lying. The note will warn the staff that Mrs. Rich is a real problem.”
     “If the complainer is halfway reasonable,” Margery said, “you try this one: ‘I understand. I agree with you. But the rules say . . .’ ”
     “How do you handle the line that always makes me grit my teeth: ‘I’m a doctor.’ The doctor acts as if he expects the yacht club basin to part so he can walk across it. I’d like to say, ‘So what?’ but that would get me fired.”
     “No, no, Helen,” Phil said. “You have to tweak their noses, not hit them on the head with a brick. Next time someone says, ‘I’m a doctor,’ you say, ‘ PhD or MD?’ Deliver it very seriously. That always flummoxes them.”
     Helen laughed, but it was clear she wasn’t finding the lesson funny. Phil looked at her and said, “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”
     “I hate this job,” Helen said. “I hate these pointless people.”
     “But you like combat,” Phil said. “Why do the members upset you so much?”
     “I don’t know,” Helen said, miserably. “I don’t understand them. I don’t understand myself. I guess I’m not a Superior person.”
     Helen went to work, determined not to let the job get her down. Her resolution lasted about ten minutes. What tipped Helen over the edge was the woman who screamed, “I‘ll have your job.”
     “I hope so,” Helen told her. “You deserve it.”

CLUBBED TO DEATH: A Dead-End Job Mystery, is $21.95 in hardcover from NAL/Obsidian. The ISBN is 978-0-451-22394-4.

Clubbed to Death: A Dead-End Job Mystery

“Do you know who I am?” The woman’s high-pitched whine sliced through Helen Hawthorne’s phone like a power saw cutting metal.
     Yes, ma’am, Helen thought. You are another rude rich person.
     “I am Olivia Reginald. I am a Superior Club member. I spend thousands at this country club.”
     Everyone spends money here, Helen thought. That’s how they get in. “How may I help you, Mrs. Reginald?” she said.
     The power-saw whine went up a notch. “I’m sitting by the pool waiting for you to call. I left a message at eleven o’clock. It took you half an hour to call back.”
     “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reginald, but we’ve had a busy morning.”
     “My husband is in the pool but I can’t go in until I arrange a guest pass for my sister. Laura is staying at our home while we’re on vacation. How can I enjoy myself when I have to wait by the phone?”
     I’m sitting in a stuffy office on a fabulous January day in South Florida, Helen thought. How can I enjoy myself when I have to deal with you? “Do you know who I am?” The woman’s high-pitched whine sliced through Helen Hawthorne’s phone like a power saw cutting metal.
     Yes, ma’am, Helen thought. You are another rude rich person.
    

         Read more . . .