Basic Job Skills: Dealing With Customers (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2011
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

There's probably a good percentage of people who read this who have worked in retail before, whether to make extra cash in high school or something you fell into because Plan A never worked out (and if retail was your Plan A...you have my condolences).  But to deal with the various customer types out there, there's this dandy short, Basic Job Skills:  Dealing With Customers.  Here we have a list of ways to best help the various different customers and adapt to their needs.

To be honest, a lot of this is basic common sense and not that helpful.  In fact the short is so basic in order to be shown to employees of many different stores and store types as well, so if you're expecting any specific ways of handling scenarios specific to your own job, you're out of luck.  Customer service might take some getting used to for each individual employee, but I don't imagine this short ever made it any easier for them.

Having watched a fair amount of these trainee videos in my time, I was actually hoping for something more incident based with laughable acting in this short, and instead it's mostly narration and talking heads.  I would have thought digging out something for the former type would have made a better riffing selection, so to that extent this short was a bit of a disappointment for me.  That's not to say it's bad though.

Customer service is definitely something that can be mocked quite strongly, taking aim at both sides of the counter.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill are certainly up for it, riffing on both associate and consumer with a fair amount of ease bringing about narration add-ons, incompetent employees, and dimwitted customers.  I enjoyed seeing this familiar environment goofed on by these three comedians I respected.  It's not a laugh riot, but the good material is worth staying for.

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