It surprises me that rather few stores seem to understand this. Sometimes customers would like help - which will be clearly indicated by behaviors such as accosting and speaking to available employees, so there’s absolutely no need to ask everyone. Sometimes they would like to be left alone, to browse - which is also clearly indicated by an absence of the above accost/speak behavior pattern.
IOW, having an employee simply smile at customers entering the store (which serves to clearly signal that help is available if needed) is actually more helpful than having one speak to each entering customer. It also consumes meaningfully less employee and customer time.
My local Ace does this, and I love it. Walk in the front door, and someone will ask you if you need help finding anything. Say no, and they leave you alone. Say yes, and the front person directs you to the aisle, and calls someone from that department, who meets you to help you find things.
As long as they leave you alone when you say no it wouldn’t really bother me. But sometimes there aren’t enough peope in the store and idle employees will one after the other come by to ask me if I need help. I prefer the solitude of being alone with hardware.
The local ACE is pretty good about having people in the store that know where things are. They don’t ask my name but they are pretty proactive about asking if you need help but they are not obnoxious about it. I am pretty happy with the level of service. What I don’t like is the fact that more than 1/2 the time they don’t have what I need and I have to go to home depot. The local home depot people are pretty good as well but there are not as many of them and in some departments you have to wait around while they are helping other customers.