What nice things have you seen at the checkout line?
The major one that will stay with me forever is ringing up a big purchase for a person and asking her if she was a teacher. She was. Her first credit card gets rejected. Her second credit card gets rejected. As I’m standing there wondering what to do, the woman behind her puts down a credit card and says “Put it on mine.”
The order is for $60+. I say “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Put it on my card.”
So I do, the teacher thanks the woman profusely and leaves. When I tell the woman “Thank you. That was just a generous thing to do,” she brushes it off with “She’s a teacher. She probably has to buy a lot of things for her students.”
I was in a grocery store checkout line behind a stereotypical little old lady who was struggling with her ten items and just seemed so frazzled that I was near tears. When the cashier told her that her credit card had been declined she just stood there. I offered to help her and she reluctantly accepted my aid. It took ten minutes or so, but we got every last item put back from whence it came.
A supermarket near me hires several intellectually challenged adults who work bagging groceries. They’re all cheerful, smiling and helpful and it brightens my day to see them doing something productive.
A couple of years ago I was in a checkout line of about four people. The woman ahead of me was having trouble with her card; she appeared to be unused to the system and confused by it, and was having trouble entering the PIN it was demanding. She made several attempts, and got more frazzled with each one.
The man ahead of her (I couldn’t tell whether he knew her or not) turned back to help, and after another couple of attempts managed to get the card to go through.
The clerk, all through this, was entirely patient and also helpful, with no sign of rushing or sarcasm. Everyone in the line was also patient; I didn’t hear a bit of grumbling.
That is not how I expected that story to go, you rascal you.
I’ve started filling out the “How’d we do?” surveys online when I have excellent service at the grocery store. I think our cashiers do get bonuses for that sort of thing (one time a cashier implored me to do it) so it’s worth it for me to point stuff out.
If I go through a line and the cashier manages to pack all my stuff in my reuseable bags only, and packs the bags evenly weighted, then they get a good review!
I filled out a review years ago for the store’s pharmacy and I swear the store must have shared it with the staff. I seem to get super extra nice service there now.
I’d never dream of giving a bad review. You never know when someone’s just having a bad day at work. No need to make things worse for them.
My mom and uncle have a running joke about “free bananas”. They see each other often, so when one or the other is at the grocery store, they’ll ask if the other needs anything, and both eat a fair number of bananas, so they often end up picking up some. This is always followed by “How much do I owe you for the bananas?” “Nothing, the bananas were free today.” Which translates, basically, to “Bananas are cheap enough that it’s not wort bothering to track them, and besides, you might be getting bananas for me next time, anyway”.
OK, that’s just family kindness, not retail kindness. The kind part, and funny for them, was one time when they were both swinging by the grocery store on the way to or from somewhere else, and each was buying nothing but a few bananas. And the guy ahead of them in the line said “Those are free bananas. I’ll cover them for you.”.
i was at Walmart last week. the tire on my brand-new, $2000 John Deere mower (not purchased there) was flat and off the rim, after only having driven on it twice. Walmart’s the closest place to me with a tire center, so I took it in to see if I could get it repaired. I figured I had to have punctured it or something. The auto center worker said the couldn’t do tire repairs on those small tires, they wouldn’t fit on their machine. I asked him if I could leave it, and if he had time, could he try to air it up for me?
I went to lunch and came back in an hour. My tire was inflated. He said he inflated it, put on a new valve stem, just in case that was the problem, and ran in their tank to check for leaks. When I asked him how much, he said no charge. I tried to pay for the valve stem, at least, but he said it was no big deal and let me go. He even wanted to carry the tire out for me, but I told him I could manage.
Well I saw an Asian family one-upping that, they used a kind of square cooler. About 18 inches on each side and they had 5-6 of them to put everything in not just the items needed to stay cold. I’m guessing they fold up.
I thought that was actually a good idea. Nothing gets crushed. Easy to carry (handles). And easy to stack.
A supermarket near me does the same. One day I went up to a worker who was training a new person like this. (It seemed to be the new person’s first day.) I asked them (both), “Could you please get down a Gatorade from the top shelf? I can’t reach it.”
The new worker smiled. “Reach?” The other worker told him to go help me.
He handed me the Gatorade, I thanked him, and he hurried back to the other worker. “I reached!” He sounded so happy and triumphant.
Back in the 90s, I went to the local record shop to buy a couple off new cds. My check was kicked back by Telecheck.
The clerks gave me a reference number for the transaction. I called and talked to the rep who explained that the clerks were wrong; my check was deemed acceptable. They had misread the info. The clerks had been kind of snotty which was typical for this store, but the credit rep had been very helpful and nice. She offered to call them up and have them accept my check, but I’d already gone to work at my bartending job so I said nevermind.
I did ask for her name and location because I had a secret. My brother was an up and rising muckity muck at Telecheck at the time. I called him and told him how helpful she’d been and how she didn’t assume I was the one in the wrong. They contacted her supervisor and she got a little reward out of it.
I love it when you can tell someone in the phone in customer service “You have been the most helpful person I have talked to today.”
Thirty-five years ago I had a visiting appointment. We got the the rented house and there was a key broken off and still sticking out of the front door lock. I walked to a local hardware store and asked what I needed. The owner told me then lent me the tool to use even though I’d never once shopped there, but I do now all the time and over the years they’ve lent me other one-time use tools they have but don’t stock for sale.
But the best incident was a snowy day. We’d cleaned a bit of the driveway (200+ feet) and were in resting. I got a call from the hardware store. The owner asked why I was out shoveling. I told him I couldn’t get my snowblower (purchased from him of course) started. His son came right over, picked it up, fixed it, and within an hour delivered it back working.
Years ago my Mom, Dad and I were were checking out that supermarket, and the old man in front of us was a couple of dollars short on his purchase and had to put something back. My Dad told the man don’t worry and he would pay for the extra item. The man was really grateful and as he turned and walked away, we saw a small bottle of coffee in his back pocket! We couldn’t say anything or we’d get the man in trouble and my Dad turned to us and said “At least he knew to pocket the most expensive item!”
I have seen people pay for other peoples’ purchases, most commonly around Christmas but at other times as well. It has ranged from helping out someone just a few coins short to one purchase of several hundred dollars.
I have often seen other customers helping elderly/disabled/injured people, complete strangers offering to help carry things.
I have had customers have meltdowns (deaths in the family, injuries of loved ones, sometimes their own mental issues) and be comforted by other customers and/or store staff.
One of my local supermarkets is part of a franchise chain; the owner is a neighbor. When he opened the store he made a point to advertise both full-time and part-time positions, knowing that a lot of veteran supermarket workers were women who preferred part-time. He’s also always tried to have a mix of veterans and newbies. Sometimes you’ll see a customer explain to an inexperienced cashier why certain items should be scanned first; the whole place has a bit of a “school” feeling to it. The one time I saw a customer become irritated at a trainee, he got such a scolding from the three women standing behind him that he was apologizing like they’d been his own mother and grandmothers come back from the grave with the fires of Hades in their hands. One day as the customers arrived, there were opened boxed of chocolates at the tills: the most veteran worker was retiring, and her coworkers were throwing her a whole week of “free chocolates for the customers”.
I make a point of wishing a “happy new job!” to people who are clearly new at it; I’ve seen other people do the same. It usually gets us a real big smile back. It’s not every day that you get a big smile from a civil worker at the Treasury!
A woman and her (maybe eight year old) son on line. He’s holding a toy, so I scan it first, put it in a little bag, and then do the rest of the items. As they are walking away, I hear the boy say “Did you see that Mom? She took the item and put it in a bag and I didn’t even have to tell her to do it. How cool is that?”
And my local supermarket has hired a young girl who uses a wheelchair to work on the checkouts - she’s on the single basked checkout because, I guess, that’s the easiest one to get a wheelchair to fit.
She’s been there a month or two now, and the last time I went through that checkout (yesterday) she had noticeably grown in confidence since the last time I saw her, and was really rather chatty. It’s nice to see.
Bob’s Red Mill is not far from our house. I always buy my popcorn there because it’s really the best. Some time ago, however, I filled a bulk bag from the bulk dispenser and the first time I had some, it was tough and full of hulls. Very unhappy, I went back to Bob’s and grabbed a bag off the shelf. As I was checking out I thought “Oh what the hell” and I told them about the crappy corn I’d gotten before, and that I’d tossed out the remainder of the bag, and I just thought that they should know.
The guy apologized for it and said “Never hesitate to bring something back that’s not satisfactory. That way we can identify the batch and trace it back to our supplier. And by the way, this bag is free.”
Once upon a time, on a very cold and rainy New York City day, I found myself in urgent need of a replacement phone charger. The phone was between two and three years old.
I made my way to the phone store, the one that had sold me the phone and contract. They didn’t have a replacement charger that fit. I asked. They thought it was ridiculous that I would expect them to have a replacement charger for a 2-3 year old phone. They told me I needed to buy a new phone. I went to another phone store run by my carrier. I got the same treatment.
I was making my way to the subway, resigned to having to order the charger on-line, which would put me without a phone for another day. Then I walked by another phone store, the one run by a competing carrier. They didn’t have the charger among the selection on the wall so I asked the clerk. He said he might have something in the back and found a used but working charger and sold it to me for 10 bucks. Then they offered to let me sit in the little waiting area of the store to warm up and charge up my phone. They made me a cup of coffee.
Guess where I purchased my next phone when the time came.
