Monday, May 30, 2011

Hello! ... I Said, HELLO!

     Can someone out there answer this question for me: 
     Who hurt you as a child when you said “hello” to them?
     That’s the only thing that I can think of that could possibly explain why people avoid replying “hello” to a retail worker who comes up to them armed with nothing more than a smile and a friendly greeting.  If I had a dime for every customer that didn’t hear me I wouldn’t need to work in any retail job for a very long time.  As it is, I just get to keep getting people who walk around and pretend they didn’t hear me when I say ‘hello’ from less than 10 feet from them.
     And this isn’t a simple case of me not speaking loud enough, but rather people blatantly ignoring me.  Customers will just keep meandering around the aisle they’re in as if they never heard me.  As if reading the description of 300 needed their full attention to comprehend.  This leaves me standing around looking like an idiot while I wait to see if the person will ever respond.  Sometimes I’ll wait to see if they decide to acknowledge my presence but more times than not, I’ll just quickly turn around and leave.
     Being so obviously ignored is just the tip of the iceberg, however.  What is even better is when I say, “Finding everything okay?” and they respond, “No, thanks.  Just looking.”
     Wait, what?  Did you not hear what I had asked?
     People who don’t listen are even worse.  I suppose I can’t blame the customers on this point for the most part.  As retail stores that have commissioned employees go, they tend to train their employees to be aggressive in going after the sale.  A person could take 2 steps into a department and be barraged by ten people all asking if they need help and not leaving until the customer hoses them down with pepper spray.  So, when a customer is asked a question, they just automatically want to be left alone.  They don’t hear the question but only respond to the situation.  It has been my experience that even if a customer needs help, they might not want to ask for it because they know one question will open the floodgates for the salesperson’s pitch.
     I don’t care if customers don’t want my help.  In fact, there are days when I’m praying they don’t.  I’d much prefer being able to get work I need to do finished first.  But if I’m asking you if you’re doing okay, just listen first.  If you’re looking at a $5 set of blank DVDs, I don’t think I’m going to go in for the hard sell on you.  Relax!  Even if I was on commission, I would not work that hard.  You’re just not that important to me.
     Not listening to the right question is just as annoying as this:
     “Hi!”
     “Oh, we’re fine.  We’re not looking to buy anything.”
     Good.  I really didn’t care to sell you anything.  When you meet someone for the first time, if you say “hi” to that person, it’s not like you’re enquiring about how much they make, who their high school sweetheart was, and what their favorite band was.  And I, as a salesperson, am not always looking to look for more work than I want.  If I say ‘hi’, it’s just something called manners.  It’s not a big commitment to have a friendship.
     A refusal to engage employees by resorting to screaming at the employees for doing their job is an extreme example of miscommunication.  Customers who flip out on employees who just want to say “hello” or who ask if that customer is finding everything, just come out looking like a big dick.  I won’t say much about this because I’ll reserve it for a separate, special entry all its own.  Just know, that no employee, commissioned or non-, hates being treated like garbage just for saying “hello”.  You don’t scream at people walking by you on the street for saying hello to you, unless, that is, you’re a homeless, crazy person.  You aren’t, are you?
     There is a real breakdown in our society when it comes to conversation.  Nobody is hearing what the other person is saying.  This comes as no real revelation, obviously, but it is still quite surprising just how bad we’ve come.  It’s shocking to me that any 2 people, absent of electronic devices, can become friends nowadays because friendships entail listening to one another.  Nobody seems to do that.  If you can’t even fake a conversation with a salesperson for 2-5 minutes, how are you going to maintain a conversation with someone who you want to be friends with for 30-60 minutes at a time?
     What can we do at the retail level, then?
     Well, retailers should train their commissioned people to not be like the stereotypical sharks that TV portrays them to be.  It’s okay to make money and be a bit aggressive but how about you stop short of shackling your customer’s leg to your register?  I hear from my retail friends that they get lots of customers who have left a commissioned store in disgust and purchased from my friends because they worked at a noncommissioned store.  Yikes, guys.  That doesn’t spell good news for your business.  Word spreads fast.
     Customers, finally, can just relearn those lessons they were taught as a child about the common rules of conversation.  Listen to what’s being said.  If someone says “hello”, just say “hello” back.  If they keep asking you if you need help, just politely say, “I don’t want help… I appreciate it… Thanks for asking but I’m okay,” – anything!  Just remember to be nice.  That’s all.  A little kindness goes a long, long way; this is especially true in the world of retail.  Employees always remember the nice customers who understand that they’re doing their job and trying to be nice.
     This seems to be a decent rant.  I guess I’ll end things here for now.  Good-bye!
     … I said good-bye, people.  Great, didn’t you pay attention to anything I said in this post?  It’s called manners, jeez!  Forget it, you’re hopeless.  I didn’t want to write this blog anyway, so there.
     More soon from the frontlines…

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