Don’t get me wrong, I really like my new optician, and the eyeglasses he sold me. It’s just that he talks a lot about everyone else. Gossip. I can’t quite figure out why, and, having worked in retail myself, I’m not sure it’s good business practice.

Today I walk in to have my new glasses tightened, and overhear him talking with his associate in the back about “when she comes in with them, I’ll just give her a check.” He comes out front when I clear my throat.

As he pops the lenses from my glasses to adjust them, he talks freely about how the above-mentioned customer has come in three times because she swears there’s a flaw in one lens. He tells me he has replaced the lens twice because it’s his policy, but she still insists there’s something wrong. She was high the last time she was in. He shakes his head. “I just got off the phone with her this morning. What can I do? There’s no flaw in the lens. I’ve remade them twice and checked them. She’s stoned out of her mind. I told her to bring the glasses back and I’ll give her a check and she can go somewhere else.”

I laugh. I know this scenario from picture framing. I remember the time I completely disassembled the glass, frame and stretcher of a needlepoint piece to give the art back to the customer, and told her she was free to find another framer. I’d redone the piece twice and I knew it couldn’t be stretched any flatter, even though she insisted it could be done. Some people are simply unreasonable… or they want something for free.

The optician tells me more stories, one about the woman who returned eyeglasses with stones because they discolored from the acid in her hands, only to have her pick another pair, with stones, that did the same thing. She wanted to keep that pair and order another. He says with a quick roll of his eyes, as if he were talking to her, “Oh, you want two pairs? I’m sorry, I can’t do that.” And then there was someone who tried to return a broken pair of eyeglasses that weren’t even purchased from his store. “People hear about my two year warranty, but I don’t sell Calvin Klein. I never have.” On and on he chatters. “I bend over backwards, but some people….”

I like him, and his stories are funny, but it makes me a little uneasy to hear salespeople talk about other customers when I’m a customer. We live in a small town. When I leave, as if he realizes he’s said to much, he says, “But it’s always nice when people like you come in.”

Hmmm… In the future, if he tells me another story about a customer, I think I’ll say, “Oh, you must be talking about my cousin. The sweetest person ever. You have her all wrong,” just to see what he says.