Cashiers: would it kill you to be friendly to a customer?

The BBQ Pit
101

Bland, generic politeness got me through my time in retail. I’m sure it pissed off the customers who wanted Little Susie Sunshine, but at the same time it made me look politer than the Stinkeye Brigade so I can live with it.

Opinion of a 10 year retail survivor:

She was rude, but you should have kept walking away. Sticking around to see if you were going to drag a response out of her, then poking at her again, just antagonized her.

Consider the lot of a retail drone around about Christmas time. At the store I worked at, all the decorations were required to be up the first week of November and Christmas merchandise (trees, decorations, lights) started to roll in in October. The Christmas music started Thanksgiving week. So, before it’s even December 1, you’ve been staring at the same tacky wreath and snowflake banner for a month, you’ve just heard “Frosty the Snowman” for the 93,846th time in a week, AND just had the 93,846th customer complaining about the music, the decorations being up so early, Christmas being nothing but a big toy grab anymore… because that’s all your own personal fault!!!

Consider also that you have no way of knowing if the customer before you is a christian or belongs to some other faith or is an atheist. Because there are people out there who will take an innocent “Merry Christmas” as a personal insult, an opportunity to lecture you on the stupidness of religion, or a combination of the two.

But wait! you say. There is a helpful alternative in “Happy Holidays.” No one can possibly object to that, right? HA! That gets you lectured by the “Jesus is the reason for the season” brigade, or the fucktards who think they are being oh-so fucking original when they joke, “Holidays? Like Memorial Day? We should just say Happy Holidays all year round!”

So out of desperation you quit using any type of holiday-oriented greeting, and then the next customer says, “What, no Merry Christmas, Miss Grinch?” and you idly daydream about punching them in the nose so hard it becomes embedded in the back wall of the Bed, Bath & Beyond clear across the mall…

Not to mention you just got your schedule for next week, 50 hours of joy where you have to work 2 pm to midnight two days in a row then be there for opening time the next day because the seasonal “help” they hired got fired for dipping into the till or getting their family’s presents with a five-finger discount or walked out an hour into their first shift because real life isn’t like the happy perky training videos… and it’s only the 1st week of December…

102

I feel bad admitting this but I am absolutely loving the stories of retail worker misery. Please, keep them coming. :smiley:

103

Who said anything about smug and dismissive? Interesting reflex you got there.

104

double post.

105

I know they’re instructed to ask the questions they do but damn.

No, I do not have your saver card. No, I do not want to sign up for one. No, you can’t have my phone number. No, I don’t need a gift receipt. No, I don’t want to donate a dollar to your charity. No, you can’t have my zip code. No, I don’t want a bakery treat for 99 cents. No, I don’t want your instore insurance. No, you can’t have my email address. No, I don’t want to sign up for your newsletter. No, I won’t put my pants back on.

106

Oh, drew, you’ll be cursing yourself for opening the floodgates… :smiley:

Standing in the middle of the girls’ clothing department one July day, surrounded on all 4 sides by clothing racks with girls’ clothes on them, an elderly woman comes up to me and asks where the girls’ clothes are. I indicate that we are, in fact, up to our shoulders in girls’ clothes and ask what exactly she’s looking for.

Her: “I told you: I want girls’ fall clothes.”

It being early July, we were only starting to get some fall stuff and all we had were a few sweaters, sweatsuits, and jeans. So I tell her we’re just starting to get our fall stuff so all we have right at the moment are school uniforms and these couple racks of…

Her: “I told you, I want clothes! THOSE are not CLOTHES!!!”

Me: …:confused:?

Her (face approximately this :mad: color by now): “I want CLOTHES! Those are not CLOTHES! Those are SWEATERS, JEANS and JOGGING SUITS!!! I want BLOUSES [slapping her purse with her hand] and DRESSES [slapping purse] and SKIRTS [poor pursie!]”

What I wanted to say: “Amazingly enough, styles have changed enough in the past 40 years that other garments are worthy of the name clothes. Also, you’re a fucking lunatic.”

What I said: “Like I said, ma’am, this is the only fall stuff we have right now…” and she stormed off.

107

At least put the underwear back on. Please and thank you. Have a nice day. Thank you for shopping at Au Naturale.

108

What? Again, I’m not wanting cashiers to be superFriends, or invite me anywhere, or even smile at me warmly. Is it really to much to ask that I be greeted, or thanked? Not even both, I’ll take one or the other. Say something. Most of us are not robots, solely focused on procuring merchandise in the most efficient way possible. I find it very awkward and weird when they just don’t say* anything* except the total of how much money I’m supposed to hand over- that’s all I’m saying. Stop trying to make it seem weird, like I’m wanting them to lick my asshole or something.

109

Yeah. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the cashiers who lackadaisically ring up my purchase without making eye contact once, without a single break in their ongoing conversation with their co-worker about some dumb shit their boyfriend did or what they saw on The Real Housewives the day before, and don’t even bother telling me the total but instead sit there silently rolling their eyes and waiting for me to read it off the display, are not going to become stellar, aggressively motivated career climbers if and when they ever land a “real” job.

I know retail sucks and I don’t need to be coddled. “Hello” will do. It’s really not too much to ask.

110

When I worked as a cashier in a restaurant at Disneyland, I would aim for efficiency and keep the brainwashing Disney tripe to the minimum. Managers didn’t notice because there were usually too many of us to watch individually, and they were generally impressed by my speed. The customers, ahem, “guests” appreciated it too. If you’re spending $75 per person to enter the park, you don’t want to spend one minute more in line than you have to.

Typically, my exchanges would go:

Me: “Hi, what can I get for you?”
Guest: <customer orders>
Me: “Ok, that’ll be $$$, I’ll be right back with your order”
Guest: <fumbles for money>
Me: “And here you are, thank you very much and have nice day!”

They wanted us to do some bullshit 2-part greeting, like “Welcome to so-and-so, what can I get for you today?” I figured “Hi” was good enough. I refuse to chit chat with people unless we were currently waiting for food and can’t process the next order, or there was nobody else in line. Even though I was dressed looking like a clown who had vomited all over himself, I know they didn’t come to see me and its all I could do to keep from throwing ice cubes at idiots. I didn’t want to speak to them and they didn’t want to speak to me, so I obliged them.

111

I don’t think anyone is saying it is weird to want common courtesy. What does seem weird (at least to me) is the “bent-out-of-shape” responses some people give if they don’t get what they believe is the response the cashier should give. There might be reasons that folks weren’t friendly, so why not let it go at that. Your next cashier in your next retail transaction will probably be fine. Same goes for the customers. You have a rude one, just let it go. Why is it so important?

Heck, I don’t think we could get everyone here to agree on what is a proper way for a cashier to behave in a given retail situation. The cashier is criticized no matter what they do by somebody. Often the cashier is at fault. Sometimes not. But barring extreme examples we won’t get consensus.

112

Once, we were told to greet people in a “space-theme” since we were in Tomorrowland. So yes, it has happened. One of the suggestions were “Solar Seasons Greetings”. It makes me cringe to remember that. At Disney. Horrible horrible Disney…

113

When I worked at Total Camera in Houston in 1981, we were told to answer the phone with:
“Thank you for calling Total Camera, home of the lowest prices on the best photographic equipment. Have you tried our laser print enlargements* this week?” *or whatever that week’s special push was.

We usually answered the phone with: “Thank you for calling Total Camera” or an even more basic: “Total Camera”

People usually knew why they were calling. I had customers in the store also. So, getting to the point was needed and appreciated on both sides.

What sucked was when upper management would call and then bitch at the store manager for us not answering the phones properly. He would take the heat, tell us to at least smile as we answered (on the premise that this would change our voices to happier ones ymmv on this), and then tell us what was actually important for that week or day.

We did have really good prices, too! On stuff from as basic as a Canon AE-1 or SureShot up to a Mamiya RB67, darkroom set ups, and studio lighting.

.

114

Jimmy Durante or Leon Redbone?

115

Without reading through this thread, I estimate that about 90% of the clerks and tellers I deal with are friendly. And most of the remaining 10% were probably too busy or pre-occupied with something or other to be bothered by my banter.

Considering that except for small business owners, none of them had a stake in being friendly and I strongly doubt any of them are well paid, I’d say that says something pretty good about human nature.

116

Well said, but you left out the drunks when you work the night shift, the lovely reaction when you try to explain to someone that their credit card has been rejected, people claiming something rang up wrong when they read the wrong price on the shelf, the screaming kids, the parents screaming back at their kids, jerking them around or spanking them or ignoring them while they almost fall out of the cart and then scream at you when you point out the kid is about to fall out, the scammers, the shoplifters, the people who want to tell you their life story, the couple arguing with each other, the person piling a cart load of items on your 10 item or less line because the manager told him it would fine, the management that never backs you up because the customer is always right even when they are wrong.

I last worked in retail 24 years ago and I still occasionally have nightmares about it.

117

:stuck_out_tongue: Ha!

118

How could I forget the drunks. :smack: Also the stoners, drug dealers, prostitutes, and their clients (actually the dealers & hookers tended to mind their own business & not cause problems). And of course the college students. So many experiances from working 3rd shift at a campus adjacent c-store. The obnoxious brats who can’t even be bothered to show their fake IDs to get their precious tobacco. People urinating on the curb/gas pumps/floor. I’ll never forget the freshman pledge who was supposed to streak back to his house, but chickened out & ended up trapped in our bathroom naked except for shoes & a skimask. Or the drunken bachlorettes who could neither tell the difference between annoyed clerk & male stripper or keep their hands to themselves. :mad: That was the first time I’ve to actually hit a woman, and if the sexes had be reversed I’d have ended up on the news as a local heroine.

119

I’ve encountered much ruder retail employees than cashiers that don’t greet or make eye contact.

Clerk who refused to end her personal phone call when I came in-- as a bonus, it was the store’s landline, which is why I had to come in to find out if the shop had what I wanted

Employee who told me a transparent lie about how the equipment just broke down so go away

A bartender who cut off drinks a good half hour before the posted closing time because she wanted to go to another bar

Hardware store employees who hid from customers to avoid waiting on them

Cashier at a convenience store who gave me bad directions with a shit eating grin, I guess he didn’t like my looks

Etc.

However, I understand because I worked retail. Customers suck. They steal, they make a mess, and they complain to management if they don’t get their asses kissed. I hated customers sometimes, and sometimes it showed. If a particular customer went away and didn’t come back all that meant to me was one less hassle. It’s not like I got a bonus if sales were good. The chain I worked for got bought out, so maybe it wasn’t just me with the attitude problem.

120

QFT. As long as I’m not getting active hostility, I can deal with someone who isn’t feeling all perky-cheery. Cashiers are human beings, after all, and might have had to come to work on little sleep, dealing with a medical/emotional problem, etc., because they can’t afford to miss that day’s pay if they want to pay their bills. All I really insist on is that they do their job at a reasonable speed, and prioritize performing the duties they’re being paid for over social chit-chat.