BogusMeatFactory wrote:Absolutely. I find that people deserve some level of friendliness and helpfulness. If you go out of your way to be nice and happy, 90% of the people react in kind and are actually refreshed to see such behavior. Happiness breeds happiness and my current experience in retail has proven that.
Sure you get a small fraction of people who are neurotic or spite-filled, but those are so few and far between. People in general can be very selfish, but that is a part of human nature. We don't spend every second of every day considering others around us and when in a store environment, people are focusing on themselves on what they need to buy.
Only time when things get really weird is during the Christmas season when you see people break. I have watched a man attack a manager over wanting a $50 item for $5 because it was in the near vicinity of a sales tag. I have watched husbands and wives scream at each other over whether to get their kid Skylanders or Disney Infinity.
You would think that Christmas would bring the best out of people, but it usually brings out the worst. People are strange, but that is what makes them so special and interesting.
I am always nice, even when a person gets angry, because almost every time a person actually does get angry, it is about something far beyond the realm of my control and I happen to be the target. Ahhhh well!
From my almost 10 years working in a supermarket... Yeah, I've seen some interesting things myself and especially around the holidays. You'd think people would be in better moods, but it's really the opposite. Think buying Christmas gifts is bad? No, fucking with their dinner is what really sets them off. I find it hilarious how pissed people will get over something being out of stock (it's food - theirs always substitutes) or fresh food not being up to someone's ridiculous standards. I think the most bizarre event that I saw around the holidays was when a customer didn't like the way his items were being bagged at the checkout and flipped out. He made some 17 year old girl cashier cry and threw a bag of groceries at the kid that was bagging.
Whether I was in a good or bad mood from the start, after a few years I came to just match whatever attitude the customer had. Nice, or even just normal, you got nothing but smiles and as much help as I was able to give. Come up to me with a nasty attitude though and you got one right back.
There were (and probably still are) 2 or 3 ladies that work the customer service counter that are in permanent bitch mode for whatever reason. It baffles me. I can understand losing your patience with a customer that's a total ass hole, but they had 0 patience from the get go with every customer. I would notice this all the time, and always think to myself, "How do they get away with this?"
Heh, which reminds me of this one time... There was an elderly lady at the customer service counter buying stamps or lotto or whatever, and an old man waiting behind her. Her transaction finished and I guess she was taking too long to buy her change in her wallet or whatever so the old man said something like, "Hurry up." She turned around and very politely said, "You need a little patience." He said, "Go fuck yourself." Me, personally, I would have told him to leave and never come back. He was only buying a newspaper.
