Now I must start this with a disclaimer: I am fully aware that my wages are paid on the basis that I serve you to the best of my ability with a nice cheesy grin plastered across my face. I am also aware that whether the slogan is "every little helps" or "happy to help", it is within my job description to serve you whatever it is that you want and get you anything you need. However, would it hurt to say please or thank you once in a while? I like to think I am good at my job; I smile, I ask if they would like any help with their packing and I pack for them if they ask me to, regardless of whether they are actually unable to for whatever reason, or just being spiteful and vindictive.* It is at the initial point of contact where you can usually tell what kind of customer you are about to serve. There are a variety of different species, such as the Moaner, the Complainer, the Inept Parent, the Good Parent, the Extremely Happy, the Extremely Chatty, the Irritant and, perhaps best of all, the Indifferent. All of these customers are likely to both amuse and annoy me in equal measure depending upon the mood I happen to be in. The more negative ones will immediately start complaining or snap at you to get them the right bags. The chatty ones will usually start off with the over-familiar anecdote of the inability to remember their own carriers. The thing is, when you get one customer after another saying that their bags are in the car/by the door/in the partner's car/at the back of a cupboard, it becomes a little excessive. Then you get the ones who complain about EVERYTHING. For example, a customer I once had compared the prices of every single item in their shopping to what they could have bought at another main supermarket and how much cheaper it would have been if they had gone to that particular shop. My question is, why not go to that supermarket in the first place? Surely that would be the logical step. But that is the point. Customers en masse are very rarely, if ever, logical. They will pile stuff on to the conveyor belt and complain at me when it gets squashed against the Perspex barrier but I am not allowed to point out that it was in fact their fault because they place easily squashable items over the edge of the belt in prime squish locations. This particular subset of customers are the ones least likely to demonstrate their good manners as they are usually too busy being irate to practice being nice. Just because we who reside behind the till have to be nice, does not mean that people the other side can't be either.
And at this point in my argument, I am nearly always faced with some smug observer of retail mantras who condescendingly replies, "but the customer is always right". This person, inevitably, has never actually worked in a shop, or anything involving interracting with actual customers. I usually reply to this interminable cliche with a quote from one of the only films to ever truly understand the fundamental problem with retail, Clerks. As Randall wryly observes, "this job would great if it wasn't for the fucking customers." The first thing you learn, and trust me, it is an incredibly steep learning curve, is that the customer is pretty much always wrong but it will always, always be your fault. It can be simple things like they have misunderstood an offer label or picked up the wrong quantity to take advantage of a special offer. Generally, these customers acknowledge their mistake and leave it be. Unless they are of the Moaner variety, in which case they'll harp on for another five minutes about how confusing this shopping lark is. Or it can be absolute clangers such as picking up a loaf of bread that has not been reduced and expecting me to sell it for a reduced price at the till because "you're selling off nearly out-of-date Hovis at 30p". It is usually at this point that I observe the customer is buying Warburtons that does not go out of date for another week. But I must smile politely, call someone over who is clearly busy with more important things and then wait in an awkward silence while the runner tears across the store trying to find some obscure brand of peanut butter.
But working in a supermarket is not actually all doom and gloom. I do enjoy my job because you do meet some lovely people. People often ask if I am up to anything at the weekend or if I am up to anything in general and, in a nice natural progression, we have a mutually interesting conversation and gain insights into the lives of others. My favourite customers are the ones who greet me with a smile, say please and thank you and, even if they don't strike up a conversation, are actually nice to me rather than being rude and treating me as inferior. So this is all I ask really. The next time you, dear reader, find yourself at a till and there is a checkout person looking a little miserable, please give them a smile.
* This has indeed happened to me; a customer was angered to discover that though we sold suede shoe brushes, we did not sell the suede shoe cream cleaner to go with it. [turns out we do, he just didn't look at the next shelf along.] He therefore replied when I nicely asked if he would like any help with his packing that I could pack the entire beltload of shopping because, and I quote, "you don't have the product [he] was looking for". Granted this is just the one example, but it provides an insight into a small percentage of customers who regard us checkout folk as little more than servants.
