Goad Trip

It was a Thursday afternoon at the corporate headquarters of retail chain Kessler’s All-In-One in Colorado Springs. A new marketing strategy was being presented to, among others, the senior vice president of retail operations and the CEO. Suddenly a strange young man in a disheveled, sweat-stained All-In-One uniform with three-day beard stubble and hair that looked like it was swirlied in a toilet full of olive oil stepped into conference room C.

The presentation halted, all eyes on the visitor. He surveyed the room for a moment and said “I regret to inform you that Margaret Najimy will no longer be shopping at our store”.

Earlier that week, Tim Dixon was at Kessler’s All-In-One in Perryville, Maryland where he worked as a merchandiser. Dealing with customers wasn’t exactly in the purview of his duties, but if one explicitly asked for help, Dixon was bound by policy to do everything he could to help.

As best could be gleaned from investigation and witness accounts, Margaret Najimy approached Dixon in the bedding section sometime Monday afternoon.

“I had come in for a down comforter,” says Najimy. “Down. Not feathers, DOWN.”

“I don’t know, she was pissed about a blanket or something,” recalls coworker Michelle Didonato. “She went up to Tim while he was replacing the dusty bedspread displays.”

“He started showing me the feather comforters,” says Najimy, “as if that’s what I asked for.”

“Yeah, I was there looking at duvet covers,” says customer Max Hendrie. “He was telling her they didn’t carry all-down comforters and was trying to show her the ones with like the best feather-to-down ratio and she just wasn’t getting it. It was really stupid. Hard to watch and not cringe.”

“Well, I’d just about had it with that store,” says Najimy, “and I told him so.”

“I saw her throw her hands up,” says Didonato, “and say like ‘This is absolutely ridiculous! I am never coming back here! Never! And you tell your corporate office I said so!’.”

“It was ridiculous,” says Najimy. “And then he walked away, just walked off. Great customer service, I’ll tell you that! Make sure you print that was sarcastic!” [Editor’s note: I don’t work for you, Margaret!]

“We thought he’d just walked off the job, like quit,” says manager Darryl Couriel. “It didn’t seem like him to do so, but there you have it. Didn’t even clock out, he was just gone.”

But, as we already know, it was not Dixon’s intention to quit his job.

“We didn’t even know how to react,” says Vivian Purcell, head executive of the customer liaison department at All-In-One corporate headquarters. “This strange man just barges into the presentation saying ‘Marjory Whoever doesn’t want to shop at our store anymore’, it was just… It was just bewildering, you know?”

A look into Dixon’s car, now adorned with several parking tickets, on the street just outside showed several days worth of fast food containers, convenience store snack wrappers, and empty drink bottles, though Dixon says that’s not all from this trip. Greasy fingerprints and a fresh butt indentation can still be seen through the window.

“I just got in my car and headed west,” says Dixon, who has since had a chance to wash off the smell of the trip. “I kept my phone off to conserve the battery and only turned it on to find the building. It was a long couple of days, man.”

“Such an amazing story,” says Purcell. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s customer service in its purest form! Tim’s like a… he’s like a hero, you know.”

We asked if she’d prefer that every sales floor did the same.

“Well, customers can’t be making such requests all that often or else we’d be hearing those messages all the time,” She laughs. “I mean, people don’t really go into stores and tell the associates to relay messages to the corporate office, do they?”

Moving on….

“Once we figured out what the hell he was talking about,” says marketing executive Vinny Lafleur, “I was like ‘oh my god, this guy is the face of All-In-One customer service! This is our poster boy!”

After talks with the CEO, Lafleur had a hotel room arranged for Dixon, ordered a barber to neaten his appearance, and sent over some basic clothing including a fresh All-In-One uniform. The next day, Dixon was in front of a camera.

“This was the perfect opportunity to replace those stodgy old training videos,” says Lafleur. “We knocked out a script and were ready to roll!”

“I don’t know how I feel about some of the stuff they wanted him to say,” says Purcell. “I agree that our associates should be doing whatever they can to help our customers, but they’re using him as an example to say that all of our associates should be going to extremes. It’s just not realistic. You can’t set the bar so high that it makes more sense not to try than to constantly come up short.”

“That’s nonsense,” says Lafleur. “Set the bar high as it goes. The ones who succeed will more than make up for the ones who don’t.”

We had a chance to sit down with Tim Dixon in an empty conference room in between shooting a video about keeping dressing rooms as clean as possible and one about the importance of good personal hygiene.

“I don’t know why I did it,” he says about upending his life to pass along Margaret Najimy’s message. “She just said to do it and I was like, ‘Yeah, okay’, like it would be funny or something. Probably not worth the ass itch I got from the car seat, but whatever.”

We asked how he felt about starring in a series of inane training videos.

“It’s fine I guess,” he says. “I just don’t want to get fired for job abandonment, and figured I might as well do them. It kinda sucks that everyone at work is going to see me say we owe it to our customers to clean out the diaper depository in a timely manner, but they said it’ll impress management or whatever.”

As we’re partway through our next question, the door to the conference room bursts open and Vivian Purcell, nearly out of breath, stumbles in.

“Lafleur’s out to lunch, but he’ll be back soon” she says to Dixon. “You need to get out of here before he comes back.”

Dixon seems taken aback. “What? Why!?”

“They’re exploiting you,” says Purcell. “You belong on the sales floor, not in some office reading a script some sleazy exec wrote. You’re a customer server, you belong with your own kind.”

Dixon is standing now. “But wh–”

“Don’t worry about us, we’ll be alright,” she says.

“But–”

“Get out of here!” says Purcell with tears in her eyes. “Can’t you see we don’t want you anymore! Why can’t you go back where you came from? Now leave us alone, Go. GO!”

Dixon walks past Purcell towards the conference room door, taking one last look in as he departs. Purcell collapses into his vacated chair and starts sobbing into her hands. “Goodbye, sales associate. He was too good for us…”

As Tim Dixon leaves the corporate offices of Kessler’s All-In-One we wonder how well he’ll be able to readapt to life on the sales floor and hope his old coworkers accept him back. And let us hope the standard he set isn’t too much for the workers–

“OH MY GOD,” shouts Purcell, “WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!”

Okay, we’ll leave now.

Also, Margaret Najimy came back like a day later and bought a feather comforter.