Support Local, Even If It’s Weird
Customer Service, Small Town Style: Blunt, Odd, and Unstoppable
Chapter 1: The Man With the Plate in His Head
Port Alberni is the kind of town where you cannot buy a decent bagel, but you can buy a chainsaw at the 7-Eleven. Maybe not exactly in the store, but certainly in the parking lot. It is also the kind of place where everyone knows your name, even if they call you by the wrong one on purpose. This is where our hero, Frank McMurtry, found himself one spring morning, trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life.
Frank used to be a faller. Not the kind that stumbles into ditches after a Friday night at the Legion, but a real faller, a man who dropped giants of the forest with nothing but a chainsaw, a good eye, and an attitude that the bush was both his office and his church. For years, he worked up there in the steep cuts, dropping firs and hemlocks, earning good money and telling better stories.
Then came the widow maker.
It happened fast, as those things do. Frank was dropped a big one, one of those trees so tall it looked like it could poke a hole in the sky. He was admiring his work when a rotten limb, thick as a telephone pole, shot down like an angry dart. It punched right through his hard hat and rang his skull like a church bell. By the time the medevac hauled him out, he was missing two teeth, his memory of three ex-girlfriends, and had a brand-new steel plate bolted into his head.
The doctors in Nanaimo patched him up, warned him about mood swings, and sent him home with a little pamphlet that basically said, “Congratulations, you’re different now.” And Frank was.
He found that his new personality came with a permanent lack of filter. If a thought crossed his brain, it usually marched straight out of his mouth. At first, this caused some trouble. The grocery store manager didn’t appreciate Frank announcing that the bananas looked like they’d been stepped on. The bank teller frowned when Frank suggested that if she smiled any less, she might be mistaken for a border guard.
Still, the steel plate didn’t rob Frank of one thing: his work ethic. The man needed to do something because sitting around at home wasn’t an option. The bush was done with him, but he figured the town might have some use for a guy like him. So, he did the only logical thing a small-town guy with zero business experience and a head full of loose screws would do.
He opened a business.
Now, calling it a business might be generous. It was more like an idea Frank slapped together after staring too long at a “For Lease” sign in an old shop front on Argyle Street. The sign said Retail Space Available, and Frank thought, “Retail, that’s where the money is. People are always buying stuff.” But he couldn’t decide on just one kind of store. Hardware? Too much competition. Clothing? He didn’t know a hem from a hole. Services? Maybe, but which ones?
So, he did all of them.
The hand-painted sign out front read:
Frank’s Everything Service and Supply
If We Don’t Have It, You Don’t Need It. If We Do Have It, Good Luck.
Inside, it was exactly what you’d expect from a man who had been clocked by a tree and rebuilt with a steel plate. Half the shelves were filled with random clearance items Frank had scooped from liquidation bins: phone chargers from 2007, mismatched socks, plastic funnels, fishing lures shaped like frogs. The other half was dedicated to “services” that Frank offered, which included knife sharpening, photocopying, small engine repair, and something called “consulting,” though no one ever figured out what that was.
But Frank wasn’t running this circus alone. No, he hired staff. He thought a business needed staff to look professional, like the big box stores in Nanaimo. Unfortunately, Frank’s hiring process was basically asking whoever wandered into the shop if they needed work.
That is how he ended up with:
Curtis, a 19-year-old who claimed he was “between opportunities” but mostly played video games in the stockroom.
Debbie, a middle-aged woman who had been fired from three different jobs for “not fitting in,” which was exactly why Frank thought she was perfect.
Todd, whom everyone in town called “Todd the Odd” because he talked to squirrels and swore they talked back.
Together, they made up the workforce of Frank’s Everything Service and Supply.
And here is where Frank’s business genius truly shone. He had bought a box of name tags at an auction for next to nothing. The catch was that every single one of them said “Mary.” Frank figured it wasn’t a problem. He was before his time anyway. Most businesses in town had no idea that part of good customer service was to provide name tags for their minions. Name tags were just for show anyway. So, no matter who you were, man or woman, young or old, employee or Frank himself, if you worked there, you wore a tag that said “Mary.”
“Customers like consistency,” Frank told his staff. “If everyone’s Mary, they won’t get confused.”
Of course, it had the opposite effect. The first time old Mrs. Robertson came in to buy a toaster, she asked Debbie for help. Debbie’s name tag said Mary. When Mrs. Robertson asked Curtis a question about warranties, his tag also said Mary. By the time she got to the till, where Frank was standing with his own “Mary” tag, she was so rattled she demanded to know if she had walked into some sort of cult.
Frank just grinned and said, “Nope, just good customer service.”
That phrase — good customer service — became Frank’s favourite excuse for everything. Stocking the shelves with dented cans of soup? Good customer service. Leaving handwritten notes taped to products that said things like Maybe Works, Maybe Doesn’t? Good customer service. Allowing Todd to set up a “squirrel advice booth” near the cash register? You guessed it. Good customer service.
Word spread fast around Port Alberni. Some folks came to the shop just to see what nonsense Frank was up to. Others swore they would never step foot in there again. But in a small town, curiosity is stronger than loyalty, and Frank’s store had a steady trickle of both shoppers and gawkers.
Frank didn’t care. He was proud of what he had built. Every morning, he unlocked the doors, flipped the OPEN sign, and declared loudly to anyone within earshot, “Mary’s open for business!”
And somehow, against all odds, it worked.
At least, for now.
Because while Frank thought he had mastered customer service, the rest of Port Alberni was about to learn that when you put a man with a steel plate in charge of a store, chaos was only a receipt away.
And that, dear reader, is where our story begins.
Chapter 2: Customer Service, Small Town Style
If Port Alberni had Yelp, Frank’s Everything Service and Supply would have been a five-star circus with one-star reviews. Unfortunately, Port Alberni didn’t have Yelp; it had coffee shops and the Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot. That was where people traded their reviews. And Frank’s store came up a lot.
“Have you been in there yet?” asked one local over a double-double at Starbucks Coffee.
“Oh yeah,” replied another, “I went in for a plunger and came out with a bag of frozen perogies, a can of tuna, and advice from a squirrel. Five bucks total.”
“Customer service is something else, eh?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Inside the shop, customer service was less a science and more an Olympic sport where the rules changed every five minutes.
The “Mary” name tags had already become a town-wide joke. People didn’t just come in to buy things anymore; they came in to ask questions like, “Mary, where’s the toilet paper?” just to see how the staff would react.
One afternoon, a tourist couple from Nanaimo wandered in, looking for bug spray. They found Frank behind the counter.
“Hi, Mary,” the husband said, pointing to Frank’s name tag.
“Yup, that’s me,” Frank replied without hesitation.
“Uh, but your employee over there is Mary, too?” the wife said, pointing at Curtis, who was half-asleep in a chair by the window.
Frank nodded. “We’re all Mary here. Simplifies things.”
The husband frowned. “But how do you tell each other apart?”
Frank grinned. “Tone of voice.”
By the time the couple left, they didn’t have bug spray, but they had a story they would tell their friends for the next ten years.
The Return Policy Nobody Asked For
Frank had decided the store needed a return policy. Not because people asked for one, but because it sounded professional. He wrote it himself on a piece of cardboard and taped it to the wall. It read:
Return Policy: If It Breaks, You Must Have Done Something Dumb. No Refunds, Maybe Store Credit, If I Like You.
This policy became legendary. When Mrs. Green brought back a toaster that only toasted one side, Frank inspected it, shook it a few times, then told her it was “within the acceptable limits of toastiness.” He refused a refund but offered her store credit for three funnels and a fishing lure.
When young Trevor Jenkins tried to return a DVD player that didn’t even have a power cord, Frank squinted at him and said, “Well, Trevor, life doesn’t come with a cord either. You make do.” Trevor left with a bag of mismatched socks instead of his money.
People were furious, but also weirdly impressed. Frank’s policy had turned every return into a performance. It was like shopping at a store and attending live theatre at the same time.
Mary (Todd) and the Squirrel Service Desk
Todd the Odd, as locals lovingly called him, was responsible for the strangest corner of the shop. Frank had let him set up what he called the “Squirrel Service Desk.” It consisted of a card table, a jar of peanuts, and a handwritten sign that said, Ask a Squirrel. 25 cents.
People thought it was a joke until Todd actually produced a squirrel named Norman that he swore could predict the weather, settle arguments, and locate lost car keys.
“Norman says it’ll rain tomorrow,” Todd would announce after whispering into the squirrel’s ear and waiting for it to twitch.
“Norman says your husband is lying about working late,” he told one wide-eyed customer.
“Norman says you should not buy that blender. Bad vibes.”
Frank defended the squirrel service to anyone who complained. “That’s niche customer care,” he explained. “The big box stores in Nanaimo don’t offer rodent-based consulting.”
Mary (Debbie’s) Customer Relations
Debbie, meanwhile, had her own approach to customer service. She had no patience for small talk and even less patience for complaints.
When a man grumbled that the store didn’t carry printer ink, Debbie snapped, “Then don’t print.”
When a woman asked if a pair of socks came in a different colour, Debbie said, “Yes. In other stores.”
When a teenager asked if the store had Wi-Fi, Debbie pointed at the ceiling and said, “God does, ask him.”
The thing was, customers almost liked Debbie’s bluntness. In a world where big companies trained employees to smile so hard it looked painful, Debbie’s honesty was oddly refreshing. People left her till shaking their heads, sometimes laughing, usually angry or crying.
Mary (Curtis) and the Mystery of the Stockroom
Curtis, the youngest employee, wasn’t much for customer interaction. He preferred the stockroom, where he claimed he was “managing inventory.” In reality, he was usually found asleep on a stack of unopened boxes.
Frank didn’t mind. In fact, he thought Curtis was some kind of genius. “Inventory is tricky work,” Frank told people. “Takes a big brain to keep track of it all. That kid’s got potential.”
The truth was, nobody knew what was in half the boxes in the stockroom. Curtis had a habit of making up answers when customers asked.
“Do you sell blenders?”
“Yeah, I think so, but they’re in the box behind the box behind the other box.”
“Do you have any extension cords?”
“Sure, but they’re seasonal.”
“Seasonal?”
“Yeah. Extension cord season.”
Frank Learns About Customer Service
Frank once decided to improve himself. He heard there was a customer service seminar at the Best Western in Nanaimo, hosted by some polished guy in a suit who probably ironed his shoelaces. Frank figured if he was going to beat Amazon and those Nanaimo heathens, he should learn their secrets.
The seminar started with the basics. “Name tags are important,” the instructor said, pacing the stage. “They allow customers to relate to a real person. They humanize the interaction.”
Frank scribbled furiously in his notebook: Note: Name tags are good. Must get more. All Mary is fine. Customers love consistency.
Then the instructor moved on. “Greeting customers matters. A smile and a warm welcome sets the tone.”
Frank wrote: Note: Shout at them. Louder is friendlier. Maybe use an air horn.
Next came the golden rule: “The customer is always right.”
Frank underlined his response three times: Note: Wrong. Customers are usually dumb. The sign says so. Must hold the line.
Finally, the instructor emphasized listening skills. “Good service means really hearing what your customers need.”
Frank nodded sagely.Note: Interpret freely. If they ask for a blender, maybe give them a frying pan. Creativity counts.
By the end of the day, Frank strutted out of the seminar convinced he had unlocked the mysteries of customer care. In truth, he had completely misunderstood everything. But when he returned to Port Alberni, he proudly declared, “We’re going to run this place by the book now!”
The problem was, he was holding the book upside down.
The Daily Chaos
The daily rhythm of Frank’s shop was equal parts comedy and disaster. People came in asking for normal items, like light bulbs or pens, and often left with bizarre substitutes, like a garden gnome or a VHS copy of Home Alone 2. Frank believed strongly in “creative substitutions.”
“You wanted a pen? This frying pan has the same effect if you swing it right.”
Of course, customers complained. They complained about mislabeled prices, about products that were clearly broken, about Todd’s squirrel eating peanuts off the shelves. But Frank had a way of turning every complaint into an advertisement.
One furious man shouted, “This is the worst customer service I’ve ever had!”
Frank clapped him on the back and said, “There you go, sir. A memorable experience. You won’t forget us now.”
And oddly enough, people didn’t.
The Reputation Spreads
The strangest part was how the business kept going. Sure, people threatened to shop in Nanaimo. Sure, they complained about the 50% markup on prices. Sure, they muttered in line at Save-On about Frank being nuts. But the truth was, Port Alberni had a soft spot for chaos. The store was entertainment. It was gossip fodder. It was living proof that the town was never boring.
Parents brought their kids just to see the squirrel. Teenagers dared each other to ask for refunds. Seniors wandered in to complain about prices, then stayed an hour chatting with Frank about the old days in the bush.
Frank didn’t know the first thing about running a real business, but he had stumbled onto something bigger. He had turned shopping into an event.
And while folks sometimes said they’d rather drive fifty miles to Nanaimo for real service, most of them still found themselves at Frank’s counter, shaking their heads, muttering “only in Alberni,” and pulling out their wallets anyway.
Which was good, because trouble was on the horizon. Nanaimo wasn’t going anywhere. Amazon was creeping into town with its two-day shipping promises. And Frank, with his box of Mary name tags and his squirrel-based consulting desk, was about to find out what it meant to compete with the big boys.
But for now, Frank was content. He flipped the OPEN sign one more morning, puffed out his chest, and announced to the world, “Mary’s open for business!”
And that’s when the next round of trouble walked through the door.
Chapter 3: Frank vs. Amazon (and Nanaimo, Too)
By the time the third year rolled around, Frank’s Everything Service and Supply had become a legend in Port Alberni. Depending who you asked, it was either a charming small-town curiosity or a living nightmare that should have been condemned by the Better Business Bureau.
But the winds of change were blowing. People had started whispering the word Amazon with the same awe they once reserved for Santa Claus or a new Tim Hortons opening.
“You can get anything,” said Mrs. Green, holding up her phone at the coffee shop. “I ordered a pasta maker last night, and it showed up on my porch this morning. Free shipping.”
“Free shipping?!” gasped her friend. “Frank charged me three dollars to carry my groceries out to the car.”
“And he called you Mary while doing it.”
“Darn right he did.”
At the same time, the heathens in Nanaimo were luring more Alberni shoppers across the hump. Word spread that the Costco there had aisles so wide you could drive a forklift through, and employees who actually smiled without looking like they were being held hostage. Compared to Frank’s circus, it was like walking into paradise.
Frank heard these rumours, and for the first time since the steel plate went into his head, he felt a twinge of worry. Not that he admitted it out loud. No, Frank declared war.
Frank’s War on Amazon
Frank’s battle plan against Amazon was simple: out-customer-service them. He started by offering “same-hour delivery.” The problem was, he didn’t own a delivery truck, just a rusty mountain bike with a milk crate zip-tied to the back. Customers who tried it quickly discovered that same-hour delivery came with their items jostled, dented, and sometimes splattered in rain.
“I ordered laundry detergent,” complained Mrs. Robertson. “Frank pedalled up and handed me a jug with the cap missing and soap running down his arm.”
“Still within the hour, though,” Frank said proudly.
Next, Frank introduced Frank Prime. For twenty dollars a year, customers got free advice from Todd’s squirrel, Norman, and a coupon for a funnel.
“It’s a loyalty program,” Frank explained. “Beats Amazon any day.”
Of the three people who signed up, two demanded refunds within the week.
The Nanaimo Menace
Then came the bigger problem: the draw of Nanaimo. Entire families started making Saturday trips across the hump, lured by Costco’s samples, Canadian Tire’s endless aisles where the staff were actually helpful, and the promise of stores where no squirrel sat on the counter.
Frank saw this as betrayal. “You think those heathens care about you?” he thundered one morning to a crowd of customers. “Over in Nanaimo, you’re just a number. Here, you’re Mary. We’re family.”
To prove his point, he staged Customer Appreciation Day. He set up a barbecue in front of the store, grilled hot dogs until they were black on one side and raw on the other, and handed out coupons handwritten on scrap paper. The coupons read things like 10% Off Broken Toasters and Buy One Funnel, Get a Free Sock.
The event was chaotic, messy, and, much to Frank’s shock, a hit. Families showed up, kids loved Norman the squirrel, and even Debbie cracked half a smile while yelling at customers. For one day, Frank felt like he had turned the tide.
The Absurd March of Business
Despite the looming competition, the rhythm of Frank’s store never slowed down. Every day brought new absurdities:
The Great Blender Incident: A customer bought a blender, returned it because it smoked when plugged in, and Frank insisted it was “self-cleaning.”
The Extension Cord Festival: Curtis mislabeled a shipment of extension cords as “seasonal decorations,” so Frank threw a sale called the Festival of Power. People bought cords they didn’t need just for the novelty.
Debbie’s Positivity Workshop: After someone accused her of being rude, Debbie launched a one-day “positivity campaign” where she ended every insult with “please.” Example: “Your kid is sticky and probably breaking things, please.”
Meanwhile, Todd expanded his squirrel empire. Norman got his own Instagram page, run by Curtis from the stockroom, and suddenly had more followers than the store itself. “Norman’s an influencer,” Todd bragged. “Amazon can’t touch that.”
The Final Showdown
The showdown with Amazon and Nanaimo came to a head one stormy fall day. A group of locals announced they were going to Costco the next morning for a bulk shopping spree. They bragged about it in the café, right in earshot of Frank.
Frank couldn’t let it slide. The next morning, he stationed himself outside his shop with a sandwich board sign that read:
BOYCOTT NANAIMO
Support Local, Even If It’s Weird and Costs You More.
He also taped up a hand-drawn poster comparing himself to Amazon:
Amazon: Two-day shipping
Frank: Same hour, if the bike chain holds
Amazon: Faceless corporation
Frank: Handsome face, plate in head
Amazon: Billions in profits
Frank: Makes enough to keep our squirrel in peanuts
The campaign didn’t stop anyone from going to Nanaimo, but it did stop traffic long enough for people to honk, laugh, and snap photos.
And here’s the strange thing: the more ridiculous Frank got, the more people loved him. Sure, they still ordered from Amazon and went to Nanaimo for bulk toilet paper, but they also kept showing up at Frank’s store. Because deep down, Port Alberni didn’t want him to succeed too much, but they didn’t want him to fail either.
He was theirs. Their chaos, their joke, their reminder that not everything had to make sense.
Epilogue: Mary Forever
By winter, Frank had accepted the truth. He would never beat Amazon. He would never outshine Nanaimo. But his store didn’t need to. It plodded along, absurd and unstoppable, just like the man who ran it.
Customers still came in for broken appliances, squirrel consultations, and mismatched socks. They still left muttering, laughing, sometimes cursing. Frank still shouted “Mary’s open for business!” every morning, steel plate glinting under the fluorescent lights.
And somehow, against all logic, the business survived.
Because in Port Alberni, customer service wasn’t about polished smiles, perfect returns, or two-day shipping. It was about stories. And Frank’s store gave the town more stories than a million Amazons ever could.
So if you wander into Alberni and stumble upon a place where everyone is named Mary, where a squirrel might judge your marriage, and where the return policy calls you dumb, don’t be alarmed.
That’s not bad service.
That’s small-town town service.
Just keep your head down and be ready to run.
Ok …. You got me … just finished this one and grinning from ear to ear …. Bravo