Me, Me, Me

     This entry ties closely to a few previous entries but I’ve had enough annoying situations of late that I wanted to expound on this subject a bit more.  That subject is the greatest bane of every retail worker’s life and the worst two-word phrase in the English language:  customer satisfaction.  Don’t get me wrong!  I don’t think companies should tell customers to go fuck themselves.

     Well, maybe not all customers.

     Companies should promote a relative level of warmth for customers when they enter the stores.  I don’t, however, believe in companies bending over backwards to make sure every customer feels like they can treat the employees like homeless people or relatives they didn’t like.  Often, there are customer interactions where I feel like the store’s the girlfriend who never feels good enough for their boyfriend no matter how hard they work on their looks or try to keep them happy.

     For instance, customers come into electronic stores and often believe it’s a flea market and not a retail store.

     “How much for this stereo system?”

     “Three hundred bucks.”

     “How about two-fifty?”

     “How about you keep the two-fifty and kiss my ass?”

     Since when are prices adjustable?  I’ve mentioned that before but really, it’s the store’s fault for letting customers think they can get away with that.  In a desperate attempt to get every dollar they can, I’ve seen retail companies take money off of products for no reason other than to just to get a sale.  Then the customer thinks, “Oh, great, next time I’m at the store, I’ll just ask for money off and they’ll do it!”

     It’s great to make a person feel like they’re being taken care of but they should feel that way just by the store having good prices as is.  There shouldn’t be a need to discount something just for the sake of discounting.  If someone can’t pay the price of a $300 I-Pod, maybe they shouldn’t buy the $300 I-Pod.  Don’t live beyond your means – or hasn’t this economical clusterfuck taught us anything?  I don’t go out and eat at 5 star restaurants every night because I can’t afford it.  I don’t go there and ask if I can get a discount on the steak just because I’m a good customer.

     There are also retail companies that allow returns without receipts. What!  There are ways to look up most transactions in a store’s computer database but there are times when that isn’t the case, and yet in those instances people can still return items.  I’m sorry but a store shouldn’t accept your shit back for no reason (and let’s be honest, shit that probably isn’t from the store they’re returning it to). 

     Then there are some grocery companies that do any tiny thing that the customer could easily do at home just to create a friendly, helpful atmosphere.

     “Cut this whole chicken up into ten million pieces for me.”

     “Do you own a knife at home?”

     “Yes.”

     “Oh, so you’re just lazy on top of being rude.”

     People are infants when they walk into a store and they expect everything done for them or done their way.  It’s become so bad that normal sales aren’t good enough for people.  They need discounts on top of discounts.  They expect it because it’s a “special” price just for them.  Well, if everyone expects it, then it’s not so special and the store’s not so profitable.

     “I know this refrigerator is nine-hundred dollars off but is there any discount on that?”

     “Besides the nine-hundred dollars you just saw as the sale?”

     “Oh, but it’s still so expensive!”

     “Then go by one that you can afford.”

     Retail stores & grocery stores shouldn’t be afraid to tell a customer “no”.  Just like you had to learn to tell your child “no” when he or she wanted to eat Twinkies as their breakfast.  Maybe, if the customer hears it enough things will go back to being normal.  Customers won’t think they can walk all over a company just because they know the company will do anything to please them.  And if a customer threatens to walk out the door and shop elsewhere, well, to paraphrase the line, “If you love something, let it go.  If it’s meant to be, they’ll return.”  I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve seen walk through our doors and tell me, “I never thought I’d be shopping here again…”  Time heals all wounds and all egos.

     Again, customers:  live within your means.  It’s nice to have the BMW but maybe you’re just a Ford kind of guy.  It’s okay if you weren’t born in the top 3% of the income bracket.  Shit happens!  Do you think I like slumming it with the rest of the 97%?  Let me put that in a more friendly way…

     Welcome to our store!  How can we help you??
     More soon from the frontlines...

Why Show It Online When It's Not In Your Stores?

     This is a quick recap of an interaction I had the other day with a customer over the phone.  I hope you are as amused by this as I was.

     I received a call from a customer who was looking for a product he had seen online.  He wanted to come in and see the product before making a purchase.  We get these phone calls often and it’s typically no big deal.  He gave me the store’s special product number for the product he was looking for and I proceeded to look it up in our computer system.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything.  I figured that I had misheard him or he just gave me the wrong number.  That second option is a much more likely scenario:

     “Sorry, sir, that isn’t the model number.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “As sure as several years here can make me.”

     I asked for the model number as a second option but I still came up empty.  I asked him where he found the item that he wanted and he told me it was my store’s website.  I went online and sure enough it was right there when I typed in the model number.  There was just one problem.

     In big letters it said, “NEW ARRIVAL” and the “Add To Cart” button was blocked out.  Now, whenever a company is blocking you from purchasing something, you typically can’t buy the product because the manufacturer hasn’t released the product for sale yet.  Why would a retailer, in the business of making money off of the stupid shit people buy, want to withhold said stupid shit they could sell?

     I tried to explain to the customer the situation.

     “I’m sorry, it looks like we can’t order this product just yet because it’s not in stock at our warehouse yet.”

     “But it’s on your website.”

     “I know, but it just hasn’t arrived to our warehouse yet.  It’s a new product.”

     This is where most people would realize that it’s out of our control and they’ll just have to wait if they really want the product.  Most people.

     “Well, alright, I tried to make a sale with you but it’s your fault that I’ll have to go get it from somewhere else.”

     My fault?  I’m sorry, did any of you see the part where I was promoted to CEO of my company?  By the way, I can guarantee you all that that has not happened.  How can an hourly employee be in charge of who puts products up on our website or the time it takes manufacturers to send their products to our warehouses?  And the product he wanted wasn’t even more than $300.  My store was not going to close because we lost a $300 sale.  Had I been on commission, I wouldn’t be losing sleep over letting a big sale like that get away from me.  Don’t try to make it seem like you were doing me a favor by throwing me such a large sale.

     Don’t shoot the messenger, everyone.  I’m not paid enough to feel heartbroken because you couldn’t receive your Snuggie and have to trudge to another store for it.  I have no special powers that can make something you want appear out of thin air.  If something can’t be gotten, it can’t be gotten.  Simple as that.
     More soon from the frontlines...

More Meetings Than The President

     Something I miss from my job at a grocery store was the lack of store meetings I had to attend.  That is something quite different from my current job in electronics.  I don’t know where this idea that people pay attention the best or learn the best before 8am but it needs to stop.  Unfortunately, it seems that the more I hear stories from others in both grocery and retail chains, the more I hear that store meetings are becoming more common.  Is that something all of you out there can attest to?  I’d be real interested in hearing how many of you have to attend store meetings as part of your training for your position and how often those meetings are.

     What confuses me is just how a grocery store can have a store meeting.  What do typical hourly workers need to know about their job that requires everyone?  Every meeting I ever had was in my department whenever we had some extra time with our supervisor.  They typically took 5-10 minutes and we would bullshit whenever we had them so we often stretched those 5-10 minutes into 20-30 minutes.  They were great because I learned what I needed and I didn’t need to waste time on some big production.  In the world of electronics?  A totally different mindset.

     At my store, it seems we have at least 1 a month.  Generally, however, I have 2-3 meetings a month.  These meetings often last anywhere from a half hour to 2 hours and can involve either the entire store or specific departments within the store.  Most go over information that I could probably sum up in a third of the time.  Not to mention I could do it at a fraction of the cost it’s costing the managers to bring in everyone for an additional 2 hours of spent labor.  For someone who is just a normal, full-time employee working a job that I didn’t have to go to school for, these meetings feel like overkill to me.

     It’s not even the fact that we’re having meetings early in the morning, although that is a HUGE part of my frustration.  It’s about having to leave after the meeting only to return later in the day for a regular shift.  And in a typical electronics store that closes by 10pm or so, that gap between meeting and shift tends to be only a few hours or so.  This is hardly enough time to get anything meaningful done in your day.  Not to mention, you’re generally too tired after the meeting to want to do anything else.  So, you just go home, nap, and come straight back to work, having felt as if you’ve never left.

     These meetings can be helpful, no doubt, but generally they just go over information I’ve already been told from one of my supervisors or the store manager in a one-on-one situation.  So, really, these meetings are just a rehashing of information I already knew.  My store does it on the worst possible day, too – Saturday mornings.  Wow, thanks for getting me up at 6am on a Saturday for no reason!  I think that bugs me the most about these meetings.  It’s just such an inefficient use of labor.  With all the managers and supervisors that complain about a lack of money for scheduling, they sure don’t know how to manage their time properly.  Give me ten minutes during someone’s shift and I could relate whatever information you tried to relate in your 2 hour meeting.

     But to mention this to anyone in a position of “power” in the store is futile.  The supervisors don’t want to counter anything the store manager says, in general, since they tend to be the key for them to move up in the business.  Nobody wants to rock the boat in a store.  Whenever I suggest we change the time for these meetings or suggest a different method of delivering store news to my supervisor, I’m just given a nod and a, “I know but this is just how things are.  I have to be at these things, too, you know?”  Well, if you resent having to be at them, why not try and change that?

     The job appraisal meetings are generally a waste for me, as well, for a few reasons.  I don’t have any desire to move up in the world of retail so I’m fine in the position I hold.  I’ve been there so long that there’s no room to really move for my pay (at least that’s what they tell me).  Plus, I’ve been there so long that I’ve pretty much got the operating duties down pat for my department.  So when I go into these meetings, it’s basically a carbon copy of the last meeting.

     “You’re doing a great job.  Keep up what you’re doing.  We appreciate your leadership in the department.”

     “Okay, cool.”

     I’m glad to have gotten up so I could find out that nothing is different from last month/quarter/year/whenever.  The supervisor who is doing the review seems just as bored with the process as I am, too.  That half-enthused gusto they try to put into your meeting to make it seem like what you do is earth shattering and unique is just pointless hype.  I’ll go more into appraisals elsewhere.

     1 big meeting that occurs every year is the “Christmas season training” where we prep everyone for what is to come.  When you’ve been at one company for longer than two years, this meeting should be option.  How hard is it to know that there’s going to be a long line (for increasingly less impressive sales with each passing year), people will be running around like mad, and you’re going to feel like passing out two-thirds through your shift?  I attend these meetings and find the same information given out and each year it just gets more depressing because I used to enjoy the holidays but retail has made me hate them.  Only the new seasonal employees should have to attend these meetings.  It’s all about cutting out the wasteful spending in a store’s budget.  I’ll have more on the holiday season elsewhere but I’m just laying the groundwork for now.

     This overload of meetings does nothing more than to increase my annoyance with my company.  Like I stated in my subject, I feel like I’m going to more meetings than the president would.  How does that seem right?  It’s great to be trained but the time spent training shouldn’t outweigh the time spent actually doing your job.  Otherwise, if you’re going to make me feel like some board member or some high-ranking public servant, you better pay me as such.

     More soon from the frontlines…

"I'm Going To Repeat Myself Only Louder In The Vain Attempt You'll Change Your Mind!"

     A fun common thread that all retail work includes is the amount of yelling customers tend to do.  Fortunately, it’s not a common thread, but it’s a thread none-the-less.  It is an issue that generally occurs at the customer service desk at each store.  In all of my time, I would calculate that the amount of issues that got resolved to the customer’s satisfaction because they resorted to yelling stands at about a 30% success rate.  The other 70%, the customer’s acting like a complete asshole for no reason and get tossed out of the store once they begin to attract attention.  Well, other than they were too stupid to comprehend what they were buying, that is.

     First, the 30%.  The only reason managers or employees cave-in to a customer’s yelling and ranting is because they are tired of dealing with clearly insane people and have ten other things to get to more important.  Sorry to hear you left your new I-Pod in your car in 100 degree weather and now it won’t play, but you want us to take the product back, because…?  “WELL, BECAUSE YOU GUARANTEE YOUR PRODUCTS TO WORK FOR THE FIRST x-amount OF DAYS!  IT’S NOT MY FAULT!”  Riiiiight.  Customers who fuck up don’t ever want to admit they fucked up and will always claim an issue isn’t “their fault”.  They get pissed at stores for not taking responsibility but when there’s an issue that’s clearly their fault, they will not own up to it.

     If customers want to be treated like children, don’t be surprised when you are.

     So, the 30% shouldn’t feel like they won the Indy 500 just because they got their way over some small issue that probably wasn’t the store’s fault.  Calm down – you threw a tantrum and got your way.  The same thing works for 3 year olds.

     Now, the 70%.  Personally, I wish more people would resort to yelling, because I love watching people get escorted out of stores because they were screaming.  Who let’s an issue escalate to the point where they start yelling?  I don’t know 1 time when I’ve yelled at someone because of an issue at a restaurant or retail store.  Plus, like I mentioned, it’s the 70% that never get their way by yelling.  So, what does it accomplish?  Does it make you feel big that you screamed at, most likely, an 18-24 year old behind a customer service desk who did nothing other than repeat business procedure to you about a return or a defective product?

     People DO realize that the people working at the retail stores don’t actually MAKE the products they’re buying, right?

     “Your store shouldn’t sell crap that just breaks down on someone five months later.”

     Well, imagine how many people are out there who probably purchased your product and didn’t have an issue.  There’s always a lemon, remember.  A farmer’s yearly yield of oranges sometimes produces a few individual oranges that go bad by the time they reach the grocery stores.  Should grocery stores stop carrying produce from that farmer because they can’t guarantee every single item put on display will remain fresh by the time you get it to your table?

     If you really want to get your way, go in with a level head and a pleasant attitude.  A cheerful, understanding customer who politely asks if there’s anything the employees can do to help you works a million times better than a screaming, idiotic, customer.  I will go 10 times beyond what’s asked of me for a customer who is polite and friendly than I would for a dick who demands or rushes me when I’m trying to help them.  I know we all have bad experiences with retail but there’s no need to let it affect how you act now.  Again, the only people I know of that can get away with acting petulant are 2-4 year olds.  Everyone else should grow up.  Got it?

     There are plenty of issues that arise in the store where customers yell, or snap, and I’ll be getting into specific stories later.  But for now, just remember, if you get a product you’re not 100% satisfied with, it’s not going to do you any good to go into the store and yell and attract attention to yourself.  Unless you want to make the employees working at the store laugh at you after you storm out of the store.  Then, by all means, feel free to act like a jackass!  I work in retail – I need the laugh.  Breathe and calm down, everyone.

     More soon from the frontlines…

We're Closing - Get Your Crap And Leave!

     In most retail stores, if it is closing time, you’ll generally hear an all-too-eager person on the PA system announce that the store will be closing so but your shit and get out.  It’s the only announcement every worker in a store waits to hear.  Most customers abide by this because it’s a mix of common sense that closing time means closing time, as well as common decency.  Who wants to be that guy who is holding everyone up from going home?  Okay, who am I kidding, in this day and age, nobody gives a damn if they’re that guy.  I digress.

     However, in a store that may or may not be the one I work at, this message is absent.  I suppose it’s done in an attempt to create a friendly, welcoming environment.  We wouldn’t want anyone to not feel welcomed in our store by asking them to leave in a polite manner at the official close time that is posted on the doors.  Please, come in and browse for as long as you want.  Who cares if all you’re doing is buying a $7 pack of batteries?  It’s totally worth it to make everyone stay behind until you’re done finding the right AA batteries.

     Whenever I have someone ask me what time we close, and it happens to be after that stated time, they always have a half-surprised, half-nervous look about them.  As if we were going to carry them out if they didn’t hurry.  Good.  That’s the look they should have.  But it’s not their fault because it’s not announced.  They’re conditioned to gather their things and make their way to the front lanes when they hear the PA announcement.  They don’t stop shopping at a store because they’re asked to leave.

     Retail managers are just so greedy to make that extra sale they all assume will walk through those doors after we’re supposed to close.  What really happens is that you only get someone buying batteries, a DVD, a CD, or another minor product that will make no difference to the store’s profits for the day.  In retail, keeping the doors open just fifteen, twenty minutes longer doesn’t really serve much of a purpose.  If you’re keeping the doors open because it’s slow and you’re trying to make some cash, it’s doubtful you’ll need all the employees that are there to serve the one or two customers who walk in.  So, while 1 or 2 employees are engaging the customers, you have several others just shooting the shit with coworkers or waiting to finish closing their departments down.  What a total waste of payroll!  And if you’re keeping the doors open because you’re trying to make some extra cash because it’s been slow, that waste of payroll is draining the little money you already made for the day.

     If someone pages for my assistance in my department, and it’s after closing time, I always have the urge to say, “I’m sorry, I could’ve helped them, but we closed 10 minutes ago.  They should’ve showed up during the 10-11 hours we were open during business hours.”  I’m sure one day I’ll get the balls to say that.  Maybe whenever I hit it rich and can afford to quit retail.  Oh, but how I’ll enjoy that moment!

     Trust me, if you could have a PA system in your home, you would certainly use it if you had people over for longer than they’re welcomed.  How amazing would that be if you could just get up from the couch, walk over to their personal broadcast system, and say, “Attention, family members!  It is time to make a final stop at the bathroom, gather your leftovers from dinner, and go home.  We will be closing our front doors in ten minutes.  Thank you for visiting and we’ll see you all again soon.”  I know several of my family members who wouldn’t say no to that idea.

     To recap:  retail companies, don’t be afraid to say goodbye to your customers at the end of the day.  They will return and whatever they wanted to buy that night could probably wait until tomorrow morning.  If their TV is out, maybe this is a sign that they should hold conversations with their families or read books or go out on the town.  If their fridge died, maybe this is a sign they shouldn’t be eating the crap they bought at the grocery store.  Closing the doors could do nothing but bring them positive outcomes!  It’s your duty to close those doors – think of the lives you’d be improving if you did.  (I’m just not sure if I mean that more for the employees or for the customers.)

     More soon from the frontlines…

Cloudy With A Chance Of Pointless Meandering

     Retail sunshine.  For those of you not in the know, that’s what people in retail say the weather’s like if there is no actual sunshine outside.  If it’s just bad enough to not be able to go outside and do fun things but not bad enough where they’re boarding up the windows, it’s weather that usually will drive people into stores.  Personally, it’s not very sunny for me whenever people, who drive through rainstorms or thunderstorms, enter the building by choice when I have to be there by necessity.

     “Boy, it’s raining outside.  I wish I could have spent my time outside riding my bike but instead I’m stuck inside.  I guess I have nothing better to do than to putz around the local electronics store for an hour or two for no reason before leaving without purchasing anything.”

     Which is what often happens at my store.  People will go into a store and just meander around looking at the same stuff they saw the last time they were in and wandering around (which probably occurred less than a week prior to their current visit).  If they do end up buying anything, it’s a CD or a DVD, and it’s probably one they only bought because they wanted to justify their trip out to the store.

     “Well, I didn’t really like Rambo 3 but I did just waste forty-five minutes of my day off here, soooooo… I better make it worth it.”

     God forbid you should’ve spent the time you wasted by doing something productive at home.  People seem to have a real desire to not be at home as much as possible.  They’d rather waste time at a store for no real reason other than not be at home.  Me, I wish I had the time to waste just petering around a store for endless amounts of time.  If it was my day off and the weather was crappy, I’d spend most of my day in bed reading, or writing, or, at the very least, watching DVDs or shows I recorded on my DVR.

     “Man, I have a hundred DVDs and I’ve only watched twenty of them, but none of the rest seem to be appealing to me at this moment.  Guess I should go buy another DVD!”

     But people in this day and age can’t seem to be bothered with reading a book it seems.

     You would think that I’d prefer it to be busy on the rainy days because it might mean less people on sunny days, but that is not the case, friends.  I want it to be busy enough on the sunny days so time goes by faster and I don’t feel so bad for missing out on the beautiful weather.  On the crappy days, people in my store tend to be more laidback and have a better time.  They might be stuck indoors at work but at least they’re not missing much outside.

     The concept of ‘retail sunshine’ is just part of retailing-by-weather-report that take place each day at my store.

     “Oh, it’s sunny and warm outside – it’s going to be a busy day, today!”

     “Hey, it’s raining outside – looks like we’re going to get some good traffic in!”

     Why don’t you just say, “Hey, there’s a 50/50 chance we’ll be busy today,” instead?  There will be those who prefer to shop when it’s raining and those who prefer to shop when it’s sunny outside.  You can’t predict what type of day it’ll be at your retail store based on the weather.  People are INSANE and will shop whenever they want to because they would rather waste their lives away inside a store, looking at products they will probably never buy, than to explore their neighborhoods, read books, etc., etc.

     Or just stay home and keep reading this blog.  See, this is even better than going out to get some DVD you’ll never end up watching more than once.  Just sit back and laugh at the others that I meet.  Besides, look at all that retail sunshine outside.  Do you really want to go out in that?

     More soon from the frontlines…

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…