In need to speak to the manager about that title.
The Customer Is Always Wrong: An Unhinged Guide to Everything That Sucks About Work (from an Angry Retail Guy) – The Perfect Funny Gift for Retail, Service, or Office Workers by Scott Seiss (2024): 8 out of 10: The Customer Is Always Wrong is a humorous exploration of the frustrations faced by employees in customer service and in the office.
Authored by comedian Scott Seiss, known for his “Angry Retail Guy” TikToks, the book delves into the myriad challenges workers encounter, from unreasonable customer demands to nonsensical corporate policies.
Through a series of rants and workable illustrations, Seiss provides a cathartic outlet for anyone who’s ever had to smile through workplace absurdities. The book takes a soup to nuts journey from the initial job application process to the joy of finally quitting and starting the process all over again.
The Good
The Good: You know, it must have been a few nervous moments for whoever the publisher assigned to this book. Three minutes of TikToks is hardly a foundation of a comedy book two-hundred pages long. So there must have been a great sense of relief when the actual manuscript hit the editor’s desk.
There are not a lot of writing notes below compared to most books I review. Part of the reason is “The Customer Is Always Wrong” is a breezy two-hundred pages with quite a few illustrations and power point style presentations. The other is I really enjoyed the book, so I gobbled it up over three nights.
I liked Scott Seiss’s TikToks (which I watched on YouTube because I am an old and not a barbarian.). Scott pretends to be an Ikea employee, saying what every seasonal Ikea employee wants to say to a ridiculous customer. “The Customer Is Always Wrong” reprints the rants in full, alas they do not work on the written page as well as they did in the viral TikToks. Scott’s expressions, delivery and especially the dramatic music really sell the material in short twenty second bursts.
Thankfully, we are in for a treat. Even the introduction shows Scott is not riding this small TikTok wave and pounding the same joke for the rest of the book. For example, he opines on those ridiculous wallet ads on social media. “Why are men so obsessed with buying bulletproof wallets? These are the unanswerable questions of modern times. For real, I can’t go two scrolls without an Instagram ad calling me a softie unless my credit cards are encased in titanium.”
Seriously, why would anyone want those? They are too small. You’re going to lose it. Then where will you be? Plus, there is nowhere to put that condom you have had in your wallet since 2012. Also, where the hell am I supposed to put my cocaine? (This book caused me to put it down and go on my own rants more than once.)
His personal stories and asides during the various categories are the highlight for me rather than the “Customer Service Guy” shtick. As an example, let me give you his rant on the delightful and useful phrase “I have a hard out at 3pm”
“Since when can we say that?! Any time a manager wants to leave, they just utter the magic words “hard out,” then lightning cracks and they disappear in a cloud of smoke and deceit. How dare we waste your time by attending the meeting you scheduled to discuss the work you assigned? I thought we were going over quarterly analytics because we had to. I didn’t realize at any point I could pull my therapist’s signature move and just stand up and say, “Whelp, that’s my time. Later, loser.” If people could leave things whenever they wanted, no one on earth would’ve ever seen a wedding cake get sliced.”
“I normally get out of meetings early by acting like someone accidentally said my sleeper agent activation phrase, then diving out of a window with a grappling gun—but this seems much easier. And “hard out” appears to be the emotional service animal of office jargon, i.e., it’s illegal to ask any sort of follow-up question. The first person to say “hard out” gets to leave completely unchecked, and everyone after looks like either a liar or a coward. How about this? I’ve got a hard out at 9:05 a.m. every day for the next thirty years. I hope you understand.”
In another example, during the chapter on job interviews, he shares this story. “Imagine you lose out on a job and discover the person who got it was Peter Dinklage. That actually happened to me once. My acting manager called me to let me know, and I was like, “Duh.” I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been invited to my sister’s wedding if Peter Dinklage were available.
For the record, I found Scott the actor to be a delight as well. From my Cocaine Bear review “I am also going to praise a TikTok personality. (Check on Hell I believe the forecast calls for flurries). Scott Seiss maybe a TikTok comedian but he is a hilarious TikTok comedian. That said, being able to do a few minutes of observational humor doesn’t necessarily lead to a good stand-up set, let alone the ability to act in a film. Here is the thing though: he is fantastic in this.”
The secret sauce is really the personal stories, and the surprise is his material on office politics is a lot sharper and funnier that the customer service stuff.
The Bad
The Bad: I hate. And I mean hate book titles that put all the keywords and descriptors in the book’s title. It is called keyword stuffing and well look at the title above for a particularly egregious example.
The Ugly
The Ugly: Scott’s aside about people calling him the “If-you-bought-Luigi-from-Wish.com Guy” lands quite differently than it did when he wrote it last year.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: When Scott sticks with specific war stories, “The Customer Is Always Wrong” really sings. The latter half of the book is a lot better than the first half, but it is a breezy read, so you will be there soon enough.
Random Notes from reading
The Customer Is Always Wrong: An Unhinged Guide to Everything That Sucks About Work (from an Angry Retail Guy) – The Perfect Funny Gift for Retail, Service, or Office Workers by Scott Seiss (2024)
Okay, first that title. Good lord…. I hate the book titles that are descriptive advertising after the name. I understand the purpose behind it with algorithms and the like, but in reality, it just is a turnoff. Comes across as desperate and amateurish.
Anyway, Scott Seiss is a Stand-up comic on TikTok who made some admittedly hilarious videos about customer interactions between an Ikea employee and its clueless customers. (He was also one of the best things in Cocaine Bear.)
He states he was quickly known as the Ikea guy or if you bought Luigi on Wish.com. A name that has a connotation that is very different today than it was a few months ago.
This is a pretty funny book with some genuine laugh out loud moments. Scott takes us through the inanity of the getting a job process. I am currently at orientation, having made it through the silly resume and interview process. While I think Scott could certainly have sharpened his knife a bit more with such fat targets, I found it entertaining. His off topic asides are on point and often as hilarious as they are random. (His agent tries to let him down easy explaining he lost the film role to Peter Dinkalage. Scott dryly observes duh… he points out his sister would have uninvited him to her wedding if Peter Dinklage was available.)
So far I am very much enjoying the book.
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Well, he printed the TikTok rants. The reason for the season, I guess. They honestly don’t come across as well on the written page as they do in performance. Nature of the beast, I guess. Think of the difference between reading song lyrics and enjoying the song. “Put it in your heart where tomorrow shines/Gold and silver shine.” Sounds better when REM is singing it than reading it on the written page.
One issue I am having with the book is Scott never seems to let loose with a deep dive. A real out-of-control rant. Part of the issue is he will bring up an issue I could rant all afternoon about… say coupons and the people who use them. A couple of tepid jokes later, we are onto a different topic. I on the other hand, am a boiling cauldron of venom.
This is clearly a “me” issue, but I still feel like the book has one hand behind its back throughout most of it. C’mon tell us how you really feel (The rants that made him famous encapusulate this feeling perfectly, which is why they worked so well.)
So the tea is a little weak and there is too much milk, but I am certainly still enjoying myself. I just find myself drifting into sensible chuckle land a little too often.
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Well, this is getting a lot better. Scott seems to have read my notes above for one thing. We are getting specific war stories now. Not as in depth as one might hope, but certainly green shoots. Scott’s description of running the social media customer service is pretty brilliant.
He takes a chunk out of bosses and understandably so. I would note as a boss myself there is a special level of hell that is being responsible for other people’s KPIs. People, I might add, you did not hire yourself, but apparently wandered into the HR van when it got new employees at the Home Depot parking lot at 6 am one Sunday.
He also introduces the white collar phrase “I have a hard out”. As in I have a hard out at 3pm. I love this. I had never heard of this before. I have always used wheels up. I am wheels up at 4pm. I am going to start mixing in hard out when I have a late afternoon tee time and need to skip out early on an employee review.
Any book that has the phrase “Fuck the Antiques Roadshow” in it is going to get an extra star. The trend line is up and there is some meat on this bone. Fun read.
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My basic issue with the vast majority of self-help books is the advice could easily fit in an email. (Or a meme sometimes). This forces the author to fill the other 300 pages with something else. All too often, the “guru” just repeats the same thing over and over.
Comedy books have a similar challenge, particularly from new talents known for a catch phrase or one particular line of comedy. (Think 90s Tim Allen). Unlike self-help books, sometimes comedians surprise in the pages after they do thier obligatory bits (See Scott Adams The Dilbert Principle of all things as a good example of pulling this off. Yes, I know he has gone off the deep end since.)
Well, this Scott has pulled this off. The book sections not repeating his rants is much more interesting that the rants themselves. Surprisingly, his view of office culture is much more insightful and funny than his retail stuff.
He really is hitting on all cylinders here. (His observation that the learning curve in any job is finding out how much work you really have to do to avoid being fired.) I am looking forward to the rest of the book.