The Pickle Paradox

“The customer is always right” is probably one of the most famous examples of widespread gaslighting. It should be common sense that this is complete and utter nonsense but it still persists in the zeitgeist. At one time maybe this philosophy helped businesses retain customers with no regard to where it would lead. This same logic applies to Bob Farrell and his pickle.

For those of you blissfully ignorant of his training videos, Bob Farell is an entrepreneur and motivational speaker who supposedly unironically coined the term “Give ‘Em the Pickle!” to describe his philosophy on customer service.

The short version: If a customer makes a reasonable request, like getting that juicy, delicious pickle in their mouth, then it’s to your benefit to comply.

On its face it isn’t completely unreasonable. But, as we know from “the customer’s always right”, nothing ever stops at reasonable.

Here are some questions we have after watching Bob Farell’s pickle speech:

• Have the employees been empowered to give ’em the pickle?

• Have they even been made aware of whether or not they have pickle givin’ powers?

• Can employees make that decision on their own or do they need to get a manager every time they want to give ’em the pickle?

• Why not use a different analogy, like potato chips or bread sticks? Or are you being purposely suggestive?

• If the pickle is something most of ’em are expected to pay for then how is it justified to give some of ’em the pickle for free?

• Is the pickle factored into the company’s cost of goods sold and how many pickles is corporate willing to let you give ’em?

So is it reasonable to assume that all of this has been considered by a clear and consistent corporate office? What? Oh, no. It’s not reasonable to assume that. Ever.

While it seems achievable and almost quaint for a small business to enact such a policy, most employees of companies with large, corporate home offices find this advice near impossible to follow.

“Any home office who tells you that you can do anything to make customers happy is full of shit”, says Nick Aldridge who currently works as manager at a Milford, Connecticut Cinemark movie theater.

“I’ve worked for three different theater companies,” says Aldridge, “and they all give you the same training and tell you the same shit: customers should always leave here happy, no matter what it takes.”

“That is,” Aldridge adds, “until they see the cost.”

Movie theaters, not unlike other businesses, have very strict policies when it comes to cost of goods sold.

“We weigh everything every week,” says Mike Boggiano, the manager of concession operations at Cinemark Milford. “Popcorn seed, oil, butter flavoring, fuckin’ salt, every damn thing. If it don’t match what the system says we sold you’re gonna hear about it. And the margin is friggin’ tiny. We can’t just give shit out.”

Such limitations even factor into the famous readmission tickets that many customers know are only a complaint away.

“We’re only allowed to give a certain percentage of readmits versus our attendance,” says Aldridge. “Any more and your audit’s fucked.”

With all these limitations in place, how does Cinemark, like other companies, still expect their managers to comply with a “just give ’em the pickle” philosophy?

Assistant Manager Victor Cerami has the perfect example of how this actually works for most managers:

“We had a projector go down and had to delay the movie like 20 minutes,” says Cerami. “Some guy just yells out ‘Hey, you should give us all free popcorn!’. I ignored it because, you know, customers just yell and ask for free shit all the time. You can’t respond to that kind of thing.”

But the customer didn’t leave it there.

“This guy actually sent a complaint to corporate,” tells Cerami, “basically saying it was bullshit we didn’t give out like a hundred bags of popcorn or whatever.”

And corporate understood the situation and let it go, right?

“They basically came back and said if the customers ask for a hundred bags of free popcorn then we should’ve given it to them,” says Cerami. “Like they actually said that in an email! I have that in writing!”

Okay, so now there’s an understanding between all parties. Should be fine.

“It happens again not long after that,” says Cerami. “Projector issue, like a twenty minute delay. Someone starts yelling we should give them free popcorn. So we gave them the popcorn.”

Shouldn’t be a problem though. You probably see where this is going.

“The concessions department came at us looking for heads,” says Cerami. “We had enter around three hundred small popcorns as spoilage which fucked our yields. If I didn’t have that previous email I think they would’ve fired me. The district manager certainly seemed like he was fixing to.”

Because Cinemark values lost inventory by the price they would have sold it for and not the actual cost they claimed Victor Cerami had cost the company thousands of dollars. So much for “it’s just a pickle”, huh?

So where’s the disconnect between communication and practice? Well, that’s an easy one. Any customer service manager will tell you the same: They don’t actually care about the customers, they just don’t want to have read the complaints.

Nick Aldridge actually put it better than we ever could: “What we’re really paid for is to eat the shit and send them the clean plates.”

A true poet.

Most businesses will tell you “we go the extra mile for our customers, and that makes all the difference!” or some such propaganda. While to most customers the extra mile is plenty, others will take that mile and then insist you also drive them to their grandma’s house in Tacoma and wait in the car out front until after dinner and four games of Yahtzee to drive them back.

“We’d be giving out refunds,” says Nick Aldridge, “even when we don’t have to, and there’s always that one person who’ll say like ‘You should also give me tickets to see another movie’, like, asshole, we don’t actually want you to come back.”

And if you refuse?

“There’s always like an implied threat that if you don’t they’re going to go to corporate on you. And sometimes they do anyway. It’s like guaranteed another set of tickets.”

This philosophy works in retail as well, and any retail worker will tell you there’s a steady slope from “show me where it is” to “go get it for me”. However, no better example of pickle giving exists than the returns department.

“These people are mad grimy,” says Mary Teague, who works the returns department for a major furniture retailer in Stoughton, Massachusetts. “The stuff they bring back is nasty A-F.”

Mary’s store recently adopted a new return policy that some may refer to as “anything goes”.

“It’s like anything goes,” says Angela Neuman who manages returns at the same store. “We’re not allowed to refuse anything now. They say that the cost the return is worth keeping the customer, even when the same customers are in week after week returning things we wouldn’t have taken back in the past.”

“People coming in with ish we ain’t even sold in like forever and a day,” say Teague. “This one couple come in with this couch they probably been stinking up for six years.”

“It was really disgusting,” says Neuman. “We had to take it apart to get it into the dumpster. I think a bit of everything they ever ate ended up in this thing. Animal hair, finger and toenail clippings, cockroaches. And we got to pay them for the privilege.”

Over and over again we keep hearing the same stories about giving ’em the pickle. You probably even have one or a hundred of your own.

So why exactly does this philosophy fail us? At its core it’s not really bad advice. That is, if you’re a small business owner. But to customer service workers employed by large companies it’s just corporate garbage-speak.

The other chaotic factor in this equation is the customer themself. Any customer service worker will tell you that if you offer a customer a blank check they’re going to cash it, whether they deserve it or not. And once the word is out that you’re handing out free shit, oh man, they will do and say anything to get at that pickle.

The paradox here is that in order for the pickle philosophy to work there has to be clear, concise guidelines, proper messaging to staff and management, and exact limits on how much the customer can get. In other words, a store policy, and, as any customer service manager will tell you, once it becomes store policy customers consider it “just doing your job” and not “going the extra mile”.

In short, it’ll never work.

Bob Farell will tell you “Just give ’em the pickle”. We’d like to amend that by adding “Give ’em all the pickle and you’ll be left with the brine”. Sorry if that seems salty.

[Editor’s note: Bob Farell would not comment on this article, citing his death several years prior.]