Grocery shopping, I haven’t used a cashier in a few years. Just sayin.
I already conceded that my retail sales & management experience is not in grocery; it is in areas where there’s actual salespeople whose job having conversations. Though I myself talk to the cashier at WalMart.
Yeah, appliance sales would be bad. So would the type of small shop retail I worked in college - where for many days the store was staffed by a single employee.
But in a place where your primary responsibility is putting items over a scanner, and where there are people running registers on each side of you, with a cashier manager handling that area (Walmart, Target, Costco, grocery stores, Home Depot), I really can see it as a huge problem. Its a slight inconvience to the customer if you need to get a third party involved to communicate, but I think most people will deal with it with grace. And for the ones that don’t, there are customers who reward the company by frequenting that store or that cashier for giving someone who is deaf the opportunity.
There used to be a hearing impaired cashier at my local big box store. She did fine. But in the OP, it isn’t clear whether the husband was upset because she didn’t smile or because she didn’t say, “Hi! Did you find everything?” I have no problem with her not saying anything, but I hope she smiled. The cashier IS, as someone pointed out, the first line for PR and customer service. Smiling at a customer does not require speech or hearing. However, if she was new, she was probably nervous and was maybe trying to focus on doing her job right.
Some customers go to a cashier (instead of self-checkout) when they have a more complicated transaction and need additional help. For instance, I had a TV I was buying taken up to customer service by an “associate” (standard practice for items too big to fit in the cart), so when I got to the hearing impaired cashier’s stand, I told her about it. She had trouble understanding despite my best efforts and got the CSM for help. It took a few extra minutes, which I didn’t mind, though I might have been impatient had I been in a hurry. I felt bad for her because she was flustered.
I don’t mind spending a few extra minutes or being a little more patient because the cashier is dealing with a disability, and I hope someone would do the same for me. However, the store does have a responsibility to make sure there’s a way for the cashier to handle the transactions that require two-way communication.
I see no problem, especially since she was good at the job.
I speak practically no French and deal all the time with clerks who speak little or no English. I usually smile a lot when they greet me or ask a question.
A sign on her ID tag would be most helpful, though.
There’s a packer at the supermarket near my son’s house in Redmond, WA who is retarded (or whatever the current euphemism is). Somewhere north of profoundly, but south of mildly. She can’t talk very well, but she packs. My reaction: good on her and also on the manager who hired her.
I just say again that I believe that a cashier is Customer Service. Even if the cashier is not called upon usually to do more than scan and bag, there are times where any cashier needs to serve the customer. In this respect, I do not believe she was qualified to do that aspect of her job. If anything, because of the communication issues, this cashier would actually discourage customer service. How many customers would say “Ah forget it” instead of dealing with this person?
In my case I didn’t need her to act in a customer service capacity, but a couple times a day, someone will. I totally support the store in employing this person, I just think she should not be employed in this position.