I have lately been in a de-cluttering mood. Nothing having to do with spring cleaning, mind you-just a general feeling of being caught in a cluttered vortex from which there is seemingly no escape. Like the feeling of being one of the yeomen on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise when Captain Kirk pleads with Scotty to give him more power, and Scotty shoots back, "Ai cahn't a-give you more'n the engines'll spit out, Captain!"

That's what clutter does: It stops the engines from running, And all because you…uh, I mean I haven't yet learned how to say no.

It's the collectors' mentality, from whose grip I have been trying to escape for many a year. I'm happy to report I'm making great strides toward getting free. I'm talking decades of magazines, books, music, movies, photos, games, and other collector-worthy bric-a-brac that have come into my possession as I have traded this for that, welcomed something old, borrowed and blue into my home.

The problem is, at least for me, that all these years later, I am looking at things I don't remember getting. I certainly don't remember why I was interested in that! And that book…will I ever read it?

What's that they say about throwing things away? If you haven't looked at something in a year, it goes? Well, in my case, add a couple of zeros (only a bit of an exaggeration, I'm afraid).

So I've been going through everything, bit by bit, and these past couple of weeks, I've donated a lot of things to charity. Some, I sold to make some money to get a couple of things on my ever-growing wish list. That has involved me taking my meager earnings from the sales of my prized possessions and going to…retail to reap my rewards.

I'm not a big fan of retail these days. Hell, I worked in retail for five years, most of it in management, and I can tell you, from someone who's been in the trenches and seen it all, working in retail is about as low as it gets. And, no, digging ditches at the cemetery isn't worse-nobody talks back to you there.

No, in retail, everyone talks back to you. Customers come in wanting to pick a fight with the first employee they can sink their fangs into. "What do you mean you don't have Frank Stallone's CDs? He's only the greatest singer since Sinatra!" "I don't care that I've had this book sitting in my closet for the last five years. You're going to take it back, or I'm going to call customer service and tell them what a lousy human being you are!" "I was just in the bathroom, and it's a damn mess. Are you people this sloppy at home?"

I've seen, and heard, it all, and I can tell you it's not always coming from the customers. Most retail workers make 10 percent of squat and put in an equal amount of effort, and therefore have really bad attitudes that affect the way they interact with customers. So you get kids, and otherwise out-of-work adults, who don't want to be there, and want you to know it. They may initially put on a brave, happy face, but they get worn down about 10 seconds into almost every customer situation.

Now, I'm not saying that all retail experiences are alike-read, as much fun as feasting on mud pies in a wet field on a hot, muggy day-but many are, I'm afraid. A lot of people aren't properly trained, so they couldn't give good customer service if they tried. This is because they don't get paid a lot of money, they don't treat the job seriously, they just have generally bad attitudes, or they simply woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Take your pick. Either way, customer service has been suffering real bad, lo these many years.

I'll give you a couple of examples that happened to me in recent weeks. First, we had a community yard sale in the complex in which I live. I brought a couple of hundred books out, sold some, but had to drag the lion's share back home. Except I didn't. I took them to a used book store that would happily take them off my hands, or so I was told.

I called up a particular store and asked about their policies. Were there any restrictions as to the number of books I could bring in at any given time? No. Would they take any book I brought in? No, but if it was sellable and in good condition, I had a good, solid, fighting chance. Were there any restrictions on times of the day I could bring books in? No. So I loaded up the car and dragged my wife about 45 minutes down the road in raging heat to get rid of our stash.

Realize that this is a particularly grueling summer here in the Washington, D.C. area. Really hot. And for someone like me, who suffers from a growing list of maladies, this summer is a bear and a half. So, for me to even go outside for an extended period of time is about as miracle-y as it gets.

So we drive up to the store, which is pretty devoid of customers, and I start loading up the dolly my wife borrowed from work with boxes of books. We probably had 10 or 11 boxes-the size that houses reams of paper. As I'm finishing putting together the first load, my wife comes running out of the store. "Wait!", she warns, sweat pouring off of me, my back starting to hurt and my arthritic knees about a minute away from giving out completely. "Wait," she says, "the guy says there's a limit on the number of boxes you can bring in during any given day."

Huh? That's not what I was told when I called yesterday. How many boxes? "Four," my wife said. Well, I told her, since we came from so far away, and since we're not likely to come back any time soon, and since I was told there was no restriction, I'm sure they'll make an exception.

Except they weren't going to make any exceptions. The manager, who looked like she needed an adult chaperone at the school dance, stared me down and said that they had to keep the line of people bringing in books to sell and trade moving, since people were constantly coming in, one after another, minute after minute, and if she made an exception for me, then she'd have to make it for everyone. But, I pointed out, we're the only ones here with books to sell and trade. They'll be here, she intimated.

So it was no dice with this veteran of the used bookstore wars. Now, mind you, when I trade something in, it doesn't look like it's ever been touched by human hands. I keep my stuff in immaculate condition. This didn't impress her or her henchpeople. I mean, my stuff is golden, people! They barely took any of what we brought in. But we made a couple of bucks and got some trade slips, which were good for…more books, which is exactly what we didn't need. Yet, I was able to find Frank Capra's autobiography, a Charlie Chaplin encyclopedia, and an old Bob Hope book about playing in Russia, so it wasn't a total loss.

I pointed out to the young lady manager that she should post these restrictions on the wall, among the other notices that have little or nothing to do with said restrictions. At the very least, I pointed out, she should instruct her employees that the correct information should be given out when people call up. Uh-huh, was her only answer.

After visiting a number of other used bookstores and getting a decent coin out of the experience, I started thinking I'd put the money away for the Paul Simon box set of remasters-30 bonus tracks, you bethca!-that came out this past week. Which I did.

Which brings me to customer disservice example number two. I called up a bunch of local retailers, after checking out their prices for the Simon box online, and hoped to come up with the low, low price of all time. I saw the box on sale for a great price, but, since the other stores were within a mile or two, I figured I'd try to see if I could do better elsewhere. I did worse, but price had nothing to do with it.

One place I walked into, a major retailer, provided me with an unfortunately typical customer service experience. "Hello, can I help you?" was the greeting I received from two or three young, chipper sales folk on my way to the music department. No thanks, I said, I'm okay. I was hoping to avoid having to ask for help. I saw the box, started salivating. It's within inches of my grasp, I thought to myself. Soon, it will be mine, all mine!

But the price was more than I wanted to pay. So I snagged one of the eager helpers and asked if the box might be on sale. "Uh, is it in the ad?" the eager helper wondered. "I don't know," I said. "Uh, well, if it isn't in the ad, then it isn't on sale." "I haven't seen the ad, so I wouldn't know," I shot back. "Perhaps you can check for me?"

My buddy-helper looked at the price sticker and then looked at me. "Uh, I don't think it's on sale. It doesn't have a sale sticker." Now, as a veteran of the retail wars, I know that a lot of sale items don't wind up getting stickered, so I thought this might be the case here. And yes, I figured the box wasn't on sale, but I didn't think it would hurt to ask. "You don't think it's on sale, or you're sure it's not on sale?" I remember all the times I heard sales people at my store not going the extra mile, which isn't really the extra mile at all-it's one of their jobs to look up sale prices. The goal is to get the sale if you can.

"Uh, I don't think it's on sale," helper-person said. "Can you please check?" "Uh, I guess so. I'll be right back." Helper-funky-folkster lumbered on a path to somewhere, and I patiently waited for its return. A couple of minutes later, helper no. 1 came back and said, "Uh, I don't think it's on sale." "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure." Sure of what, exactly? That it probably wasn't on sale, or that it really, truly, absolutely wasn't on sale? I gave up and moved on to store number two, where I got much the same reaction. It just so happens that store number two is a part of the chain at which I worked. I asked the helper-person there if he would look to see if there was a sale price, since the box was not marked. He said he didn't think it was on sale. Ugh. I know there's a list. In fact, it was sitting on his desk. Right there in front of me. Part of me wanted to play quarterback and touchdown on the list and look up the sale price myself, but I resisted, because…, well, let's just say you haven't seen my play football. (And, by the way, the box was on sale.)

I wound up going back to the first place I saw the box on sale at, snagged it for my very own, and the rest is musical heaven.

I dunno, you might say I'm a grumpy old guy with zero patience who should give a sucker an even break. But I've been there, and I've seen people reprimanded and fired over bad customer service outpourings, and I'm a customer, too, and so are you, and you should never have a bad experience in a retail location. The idea is to give you superior customer service and ensure that you will come back when you are next in the market for what that store sells.

These days, reps at my local phone company tell people who call that their goal was to give superior customer service, and then proceed to ask if that is what they gave. My thing is, if they have to ask, maybe they shouldn't have.

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