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As I was entering a “Bestbuy” store one summer day wearing shorts and a tee shirt and carrying my ubiquitous book bag (as you might expect), the security person, whom the manager later told me also works at a prison, walked after me as though stalking me, practially yelling “Sir! Sir!” Reaching me as I was talking to a salesperson who was treating me as though I were a customer, the lineback demanded to look in my book bag immediately. I stated matter of factly that I had had no opportunity to stash anything from the store in my bag while walking in the front door (after which he saw my every move).  Nevertheless, I opened my pouch for him and he was satisifed. After I left the salesperson, I reported the incident to a manager, whose “company apologizes” was belied by his curtness and saccarine politieness.

Can a company even apologize? That sounds anthropomorphic to me. Perhaps if an employee is rude in “correctly” following a company policy—such that the policy itself is odious—a manager could apologize for the store. But can a store apologize? That sounds a bit like corporate “spending” being counted as “free speech" and like a company being regarded, moreover, as a legal person. In my view, the legal person status of a company does not mean that “it” can speak and apologize. Perhaps it makes more sense to say that only the person who committed some act can apologize for himself.

In the case of my “Bestbuy” experience, the manager added insult to injury. After I told him about the security person’s behavior—the manager agreeing with me that the employee had been excessively zealous—the manager told me that typically people with book bags are, in his experience, thieves. When I objected to his assumption, he turned dismissive, accusing me even of “going in circles” in spite of the fact that I had not repeated myself at all in my one sentence reply.  The manager seemed utterly unaware (or indifferent) to the fact that he was adding insult to injury, even as he was apologizing for the company! This is a perfect example of the duplicity of corporate-speak.

A company is an economic organization. Hence, for “it” to apologize, there really must be some economic sacrifice involved; otherwise, the apology does not register in terms of what the company is. The vacuousness of “We do apologize for any inconvenience” (which we all have heard) is attested to by how easy it is for a manager to utter it while simultaneously insulting the customer (e.g., “you’re going in circles; can I go now?”). I contend that for a “company’s” apology to be valid, some economic sacrifice must be given up without the company benefitting in any way such as by a future purchase with a coupon. Customers, I contend, should indicate that the apologizing manager must put his or her company's money where its apology is; otherwise, the customer should say in like terms, "unfortunately the apology cannot be accepted as valid.” How, I wonder, would a manager or clerk react to being the recipient rather than the source of policy-speak? He or she would probably reply, “well, I can’t do anything about that.” His "can't" is probably disingenuous, as it is undoubtedly convenient, at least at the moment. The customer might reply, 'unfortunately I can't shop here again." This exchange evinces the sheer rigidity that is so ingrained in corporate-speak as well as the underlying mentality.  I suspect that businesses are so used to their customers accepting the rigidity as given (rather than as contingent or affected) that the managers and employees take their own rigidity as required, as though deterministically rather than by their free will. Essentially, I am arguing that only certain things—money and policies—are recognizeable to the managerial birds of prey, hence their “apologies” must be converted back into such terms by customers or rejected for what they are--mere attempts to pacify customers so they will buy something.  That it never occurs to a manager that the actual employee who had offended the customer ought to be the person to apologize suggests some strange surrogate type of apology is therefore valid. Just like if I offend someone only I can apologize for what I have said or done, so too only the offending employee can proffer a viable and thus acceptable apology.  For a customer to accept anything less is to enable weakness and subterfuge.

Scripted "conversations" for employees.   Some customers as "members," and the others "not."   A larger cup of coffee being an "upgrade."   It occurs to me that a blue collar worker would simply laugh in the face of a chain retail store employee using any of these misappropriations as if they were natural and fitting.  That the rest of us don't laugh and the employees are not even likely to be aware of their own fakeness, much less stop it, tells me that modern society has to some extent adopted the corporate practice, even if tacitly.  That is to say, many of us have been mindwashed into accepting fakeness as authentic in the public square.

Meanwhile, inside corporate offices, the language used can bespeak a sickness far worse than mere fakeness. Consider, for example the statement made by the head of finance at Morgan Stanley in September, 2008 when he was looking at Wachovia's bad debt: "That's a shit-sandwich even I can't get my big mouth around."  (Sorkin, Too Big to Fail, p. 450).   Add to this the myriad of military bloodsport references routinely made in stark corporate offices by suits whose actual sport is golf, and the nature of the corporate illness is clear: undealt-with aggression--unrequited anger really--in stint of malignant narcissism.  The linguistic signs and the over-reaching are palpable.

Ordinarily, I would predict that feckless fakeness projected outward from vulgarity is bound to be exposed or collapse one day. However, this is not necessarily so if enough people take the fakeness for genuine and do not know of the underlying pathology behind the store walls at headquarters.  It is perhaps like a wife who has been married to an alcoholic for decades.  Can she be expected to recognize the obvious?  Sadly, the fakeness of corporate retail consumer relations may become the de facto archetype for ordinary human interaction in modern society.  Adopting an employee's manner of fakeness--even a false smile and sales talk under some subterfuge--can give one yet another means of passive aggression. For example, one might use fake expressions and mannerisms as a way of pushing someone away.  Fake kindness can be more insulting than genuine complaint. 

What particularly concerns me is the extent to which people enable the corporate misappropriations and fake emotions in stores and customer relations centers.  Perhaps we really don't get it.  Maybe we need an upgrade in our state of awareness, and in our guts.  In the end, weakness is all too comfortable with fakeness.  If a malady is sufficiently ubiquitous, it can be easier to take it for normal and adapt to it than to challenge it.  Even in such a context, a few free spirits may still be driven by their nature to overcome the fakeness and insist on genuine communication.  Once I heard a customer say matter-of-factly to a Barnes & Noble employee, "No, I'm not a member. I'm a customer."  The employee just looked at her. The authentic communication must have strunned the employee, who had doubtless been mindwashed into believing that fakeness was real.  Where retail fakness is ubiquitous, calling employees out on it is akin to waking someone from the Matrix. Of course, health can only be viewed as sick to the sick. A person accustomed to a dark movie theatre is apt to enter a sunlite lobby in pain.

As another example of utter fakeness designed to manipulate under a subterfuge, consider the ubiquitious, "We apologize for any inconvenience."  Of course, the lack of any real regret can be easily concluded by the failure of any accompanied "money where your mouth is."  If a business, which is an economic entity, refuses to put its money with its apology in the form of willing compensation, the verbal "apology" should mean nothing. In other words, words alone are neutral or invisible where money is the lifebloood.  It is so easy--so utterly convenient--for one who loves money to simply make a verbal statement that does not involve paying out any money.  Yet we are all such suckers for being so easily mollified by the easy corporate-speak.  No one says, "this is a business, so unfortunately there must be a financial component to your apology for me to recognize your apology."   The inevitable answer would be a mere repetition of, "I apologize for any inconvenience" as though it were not a mere repetition (i.e., fakeness again) and thus sufficed.   It is in the nature of weakness--of sickness really--to disagree or refuse by ignoring (i.e,, repeating as though not doing so). The repetition simply adds injury to insult, for there is passive aggressive in it. I suppose this is really what those of us in modern commerical society are missing: the passive aggression in business (and, more specifically, as manifested in customer relations).  Business managers and employees cannot express their anger toward customers, so the emotion comes out via fakeness as "friendliness." It is no wonder the underlying dyanamic is not apparent, for it is using its opposite to express itself.  Customers ought to recognize the self-serving convenience and fakeness, yet this might make the underlying vulgarity transparent.  At least that would be authentic, and perhaps a solution found.

Here are to snapshots of modern American retail business:

1. “Are you a member of the store?”   Major bookstore chains, including Borders and Barnes & Nobels, refer to the customers who have registered for a discount card as “members of the store.”  Once while ordering a mocha at a Borders cafe, I was stunned when the clerk asked me if I was a member. "A member of what?" I asked. "Borders."  Stores have customers, not members, I thought to myself.  It seems presumptuous for retail sales clerks to think of customers as members, and elitist to distinguish members from non-members.  Moreover, it sounds fake to say that members shop; it is as if the people working in retail in are pretending that their store is somehow more than a store. It is the twisting of language here that is particularly of concern to me. As Borders faced bankrupcy and the closure of at least 200 of its stores in 2011, it occurred to me that part of the company's problem might be the way the stores were managed. For example, on another occasion while ordering a drink at a Borders cafe, the clerk asked me if I wanted a Borders reward card. I said "no thank you," but the clerk proceeded to ask me again, as if he had not already asked me.  He explained to me that the manager of the store had instructed the cafe employees not to take "no" for an answer until at least two. Ignoring the customers' answers if they are not what you want. Nice. So beyond the linguistic "creativity," I suspect that modern retail management, at least as evinced at Borders, has derailed into something rather toxic based on an excessive desire to manipulate not only language, but also human beings.

2. “Thinking outside the Box.”  The promotional statement going with the $4.99 cheeseburger and fries deal at Applebees.  If coming up with such a deal for a burger and fries represents thinking outside the box, I would hate to see what conventional business thinking is like.  I think it’s time that the blinders be returned to the horses.

Putting these two little case-studies of marketing mentality together, one might ask whether viewing customers as members represents thinking outside the seller-customer box.  Perhaps it does, but not by much and the box is pretty small. Moreover, supervening the club or social organization paradigm onto an impersonal store context seems contrived and ill-fitting.  That the seller ignores the contrivance just adds to the fakeness and underlying sordid character. Either it doesn’t represent thinking outside the box because it is a case of “overreaching” instead, or it must be admitted that thinking outside the box is not in itself a laudable quality.  Were I ever to be asked by a store’s clerk whether I am a member, I would reply, “no, I am a customer.”  Of course, I would probably then be asked whether I want an “upgrade.”  I understand that at Starbucks clerks refer to ordering a larger cup of coffee as an upgrade.  I suppose a window-seat is not included.  Anyway, I don’t think that pretentiousness makes for good selling, but that won’t stop the overreaching any time soon.  It is perhaps engrained in the modern sales psyche.