Never, Never Talk to the Customer

There are physicians working in America right now who don’t talk to their patients.

While many in what we loosely called "the medical community" are aware of the aforementioned matter, there’s a corresponding assumption that the problem will resolve itself.

I recently decided to chat with some professionals from other fields just to see how they handle this kind of "disconnect" in their respective areas of inquiry. The names below have been changed because, well, that is how they do things in the witness protection program.

Jasper Schunt is an internationally recognized architect. He is thin, appears to be in his early sixties, and he looks a good deal like the comedian Don Knotts. You would never guess that he’s the man behind the blueprints for the world’s first "Fast Food" indoor playground. In fact, the more you look at him, the more you suspect he has never had anything to do with kids.

"You’re right!" Jasper says while wiping his hands with what looks like an oil soaked baby blanket. "I really don’t know a darned thing about kids. In fact when I get near children I tend to get hives."

I ask Jasper how he designed commercial playgrounds for children if he never talked to any kids.

"Rats," he says. "You put them in a tube and they’ll always go to the other end. And of course the more rats you put in, the more they’ll keep moving. Kids are no different."

When I ask him if he’s ever read Robert Coles’s book "The Political Lives of Children" he says that he doesn’t have time for "touchy feely" stuff. "Look, I gotta keep the nation’s insufficiently medicated offspring moving through these plastic tubes."

Before I leave him, I ask Jasper about his latest project.

"It’s a spin off of the Chuck-E-Cheese playground concept: I call it "Senior World"–I guess you could say it’s a kind of "roach motel" for the old folks–you know–"they check in but they don’t check out"?"

Vilnius Trap is a licensed plumber. The man has a Ph.D. from Cornell University in linguistics but after years of grinding poverty he decided to turn his back on the adapted neurological semiotics of the great "vowel shift" for good, old fashioned Victorian threaded drains.

"Yeah, I know," he says, "lots of people say I look a whole lot like Jeff Goldblum in that movie ‘"The Fly’–I have these really big eyes and forget that I’m staring at people. Plumbing work is good for me because I tend to be under sinks or behind walls."

"How do you talk to your customers?" I ask.

"I don’t actually talk to them," he says. "I mean, you know, they’re just going to tell you how the ceiling is leaking above the living room and they’re going to tell you a long, boring story about the piano from Latvia and blah blah blah."

"I haven’t got time for the domestic palaver, not if I’m going to rip out walls and floors and take a week to do what’s really a one day job."

"I’m never rude about it. I just tell them they have only one option because the situation is so serious."

"The really good thing is that people are generally terrified of their plumbing. You know, they feel grateful just to have it at all, and most people are secretly worried that if they don’t call a licensed plumber, well, something unimaginable will happen deep below the earth."

When I ask him if he’s ever asked his customers about anything having to do with their houses or apartments he waves his hand dismissively.

"No," he says, "why spoil things for them? I mean let’s be real: every plumbing job is only about 3 things: 1. the customer is friggin’ terrified that his water main is going to break at any moment; 2. they trust that the plumber has almost occult powers; and 3. they expect to pay vast sums of money to an essentially anti-social expert who is wearing ill fitting pants."

It is reassuring to know that uncommunicative professionals are still in demand.

S.K.