This Was Supposed to be Safe!

Counters are magical things. There's something about a counter that makes one person stand on one side of it and another person stand on the other side of it and do business with each other, exchange goods, or even, on occasion, make polite conversation. It's where people go in a store if they want to buy something or if they have a problem, and it's where the clerk stands so that they can help the customer with those things. 

The thing about the counter, though, is that it isn't supposed to be crossed. That's why it's magical. It's a defensive boundary between the clerk and the customer, and vice versa. When a clerk stands behind a counter, they are polite, informed sellers of goods, and when a customer stands in front of it, they are polite, conscientious buyers of goods. This is a wonderful model of business, and it's worked for years. The problem now is this: The defensive barrier that is the counter has been breached. 

Yesterday, this breach of my defensive line almost cost me my eye. 

My customer was buying evergreen garlands - the kind that have a wire core and are sold in bundles, not in a wreath-type packaging. I have two sizes of plastic bags behind my register: the regular size, which hangs on the rack, and a large size, which sits on a shelf underneath the regular size. I could tell just by looking at the garlands that they weren't going to fit into one of the small bags, so, being the very intelligent and polite cashier that I am, I bent over to get one of the large bags from the shelf. My customer, evidently, couldn't wait for me to complete this very action, and tried to stuff her garland into one of the regular sized bags on the rack. 

She missed the bag, poked me in the eye with a garland, and decided that the regular sized bags were too small for her garlands. 

There are several problems with this particular course of events, but I'll concentrate on one in particular: That's my safe zone! Whenever someone reaches behind my register, I feel as though my personal bubble has been popped, and for no real good reason. I'm paid to be behind the counter, and the customer is paying to be on the other side of it; why on earth do they feel the need to do my work, that they're paying for, for me, in my own personal space? I have a feeling it's because they don't trust that I'll do my job to the utmost, so I've come up with a pledge of sorts for those who feel that way: 

I promise that once I'm done counting your change, I will give you your bag of newly purchased items (no need to get grabby).

I promise that when I say I don't have enough singles in my register to give you sixteen dollars in ones, that there are not sixteen one dollar bills in my cash drawer (please don't try to look at my money, it gets very uncomfortable very quickly).

I promise that I will bag your items as well as I possibly can. I am, after all, paid to bag your items, and you can't possibly do it very well from the 'buying' side of the counter.

I promise that if you ask very nicely for another bag, I will give it to you. That way, you'll get your bag without ending up with my entire stack of bags. 

I know this list isn't comprehensive, by any means, but I hope it goes towards allaying some of your fears about my ability to do my job. 

The point of all of this is really that I just want to be able to do my job without being in physical danger. It wasn't hyperbole earlier when I said I almost had by eye poked out. I have been slapped by customers who didn't think I was scanning their items correctly. I have had customers reach behind the register and, not having the leverage to grab their items, have dropped them on my toes (one time, it was a glass vase; we're not talking about a ball of yarn, here). I have had customers accidentally whack me with an oversized frame that they grabbed from behind the counter. 

I have gotten as many bruises from cashiering as I did playing basketball, and this was supposed to be a completely non-contact job. 

I'm Your Cashier, Not Your Therapist

I have one of those faces that people like to talk to. No matter where I go, people will come up to me and spill their life stories, whether I want it or not. Sometimes they're interesting, but most of the time they're looking for my spare change. Increasingly, lately, I've noticed that this has been going on at my register. 

While standing at my register, I have heard thesis-length descriptions of hospital stays, children coming home from college, divorces, and theories of life. Just when I think I've heard it all, someone comes along and proves me wrong. After listening to a woman talk for almost ten minutes about how she needs discounts because her oldest child had moved out and the government was lowering her allotment of food stamps, a man in a wheelchair came up to my register and monopolized my ear for a good fifteen minutes by telling me about the time he had been 'gut shot' on the streets of Chicago while visiting his sister in the early seventies. Everyone has a story, and they all expect me to listen to them.

I was willing to chalk this up to my very approachable look until I spoke with another cashier at the grocery store the other day. The customer in front of me was taking his sweet old time paying, and I thought it was because he was an older gentleman who was just moving a bit slow. He was flirting with the cashier, as it turns out. She was giving him the cold shoulder, but he kept right on. At one point, she actually got up and walked away from the register for a few steps. When he finally left, she apologized to me and told me that he was a regular who insisted on coming to her register whenever he came in. She said that he tried to give her hugs and kisses, and was always making rude jokes to her, even when she asked him to stop.

My first thought was that this is now a matter for management. Then I got to thinking. If I was that cashier, I would still go to my manager. That behavior is, after all, harassing. However, her story makes me think that jockeying for the cashier's attention outside the normal premises of the transaction at hand seems to be a wider problem than I originally thought. 

A part of me is frustrated by this behavior. I am, after all, a cashier, not your therapist. If I was a therapist, I'd be making a heck of a lot more money by talking to you than I am. I also have a line of people waiting to pay that I have to think about, and when your stories carry on forever and a day, it's rude to them. And as far as they can tell, I'm the one being rude to them, because I'm the one not rushing you and your story telling on. 

But another part of me slows down and thinks about why this happens. What are we, as a society, doing to make these people seek attention from complete strangers? I understand that it's a neighborhood store and the employees should be friendly to the customers, but that obligation stops at helping customers find the right product for their project. Why do life stories come up? 

The only answer I can come up with is that they're lonely. Not lonely in the sense that they live alone and just like to talk to people when they do get out and about. I'm talking about lonely in the sense that they feel like no one cares. It seems like these people are so desperate to feel like someone cares that they resort to the same course of action as petulant children: they act out. What if all of these rambling stories are really cries for help from a rather large segment of our society? What are we supposed to do about it? After all, we can't all sit down and have conversations with everyone who walks by - we'd go crazy trying, and we'd have no time for anything else, such as eating or sleeping. On a large scale, I'm not sure that we can actually do anything about it. I think it has to start on a personal level: letting people finish their sentences before you start talking, letting your mother tell you all the details of the conversation she had with the cat, acknowledging that you even heard another person speak. 

Because, really, cashiers can't be expected to be social therapists. 

            Yesterday, a woman came up to my register and wanted to make a return. She gave me her receipt and a Ziploc bag of earring backs. The packaging for the earring backs was also in the bag, but it was a mangled mess. We would never have been able to make sure that all the earring backs that were supposed to be in the package were there, let alone repackage them for resale. I explained the situation to her. Her response was to give me a lecture about how the earring backs didn’t fit the earrings that she wanted to use them with, and she was displeased with the product. Again I explained that unless there was something inherently faulty about the product, I couldn’t return it. The fact that she had already tried them in her ears just aggravated the situation; now, it wasn’t simply a matter of packaging, it was a matter of hygiene.

            She was very upset with me, and demanded to speak to a manager. When the manager came over to my register, he agreed with me: there was no way to do the return, because we would be unable to resell the product. This was also unsatisfactory, and the lady wanted to speak to the district manager about it. My manager went round and round with her for a few minutes, and she finally left in a huff without buying the new item she had picked out and, much to my amusement, leaving the bag of earring backs for which she had so desperately wanted a refund.

            She’s not the only one, either. Another woman wanted a refund on a spool of ribbon she had already used because it had cost more than she originally wanted to pay. Another customer wanted to return a frame he had bought last week because there was a better sale on them going on this week. I even had a customer who brought in her receipt to get a price adjustment on an item that she bought last week because there was a coupon out this week.

            I bring this up in part because I find it amusingly ridiculous. The first woman bought a product, opened the product, damaged the packaging, used the product, decided it wasn’t the product she had intended to buy, thrown the product in a sandwich bag, and expected me to fix her mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I know that making returns is a part of my job as a cashier. I’m very good at making returns. I can tell you the return policy backwards and forwards and probably in my sleep.  

            I even respect returns as a means of keeping the retail industry honest to a certain degree. Returns of items help to make companies responsible for their product: if it’s faulty, they don’t make any money on it. They’re also a means of establishing a healthy relationship between a store and its customers: returns are but one way a store can exhibit good faith and provide outstanding customer service. Returns should not, however, be a means of allowing customers to screw the system.

            Returns are not intended for us, as consumers, to be able to buy a product, play around with it, exhaust its usable life, and then bring it back so that it’s like we haven’t spent any money on our entertainment. They are also not a means for us, as consumers, to get the sale prices on items. Believe it or not, it’s a regular occurrence for people to come in and try to return an item and buy it again at the sale price. It’s also very common for customers to come in and want to return an item and purchase it again with a coupon (coupon usage is another of my pet peeves, but that is itself an entire discussion).

            I know a great many people will think, why not? A penny saved is a penny earned, and this is a way to save a few pennies. The problem with that is that it kills the system. I think a certain amount of this behavior comes from not understanding how retail works.

            It costs a certain amount to make a product. Say, it costs one dollar to produce those earring backs that the woman discussed earlier wanted to return. The company who makes them cannot simply sell them for one dollar, because selling something for the cost of production does not cover such things as maintaining the building in which the product was produced. So retailers buy the product from the manufacturer at $1.50. The retailer cannot sell the earring backs for $1.50 for the same reason the manufacturer cannot sell them for $1.00: the cost of running a business. Consumers, I think, often think that the price of an item is all profit. Admittedly, a goodly portion of it is profit. But a bit of it also goes to pay the person who has to deal with crap like this.

            The sale price of an item cuts into the store’s profitability. If everyone got the sale price, or the coupon price, on every item, every day, the store would not make any money. If the store does not make any money, then it cannot pay its employees. Without employees, a store cannot function, and ultimately closes.

            Now that we have all had our potted economics lesson for the day, let’s talk about the human factor. When consumers try to get one over on the system like that, it shows a distinct lack of respect for the employees, such as the part-time cashier (A.K.A., me). Quite literally, if the store does not make its sales goals for the week, I get fewer scheduled hours the next week. In other words, the woman trying to return the earring backs that she had already used and abused was, albeit unwittingly, but also very selfishly, making it more difficult for me and my other hourly coworkers to pay rent for the next month.

            This goes back to the societal thinking skills I discussed last week. That lady wasn’t thinking about me, or my coworkers, or the people in a factory somewhere that operate the machinery to make the earring backs, or the person who (had we been able to repackage them) bought the earring backs after her. I’m going to assume that if she had, she wouldn’t have behaved that way. 

Greetings and Salutations!

“Hi, how are you?” I ask.

            “How much does this cost? It’s supposed to be on sale, but I want to make sure you get it right,” answers the customer as she plops a leather-bound photo album on the counter in front of me.

            Greetings are some of the first things we’re taught as children. Our parents teach us to say, “hello” and ask “How are you?” before launching into a conversation or, as we get older, a business transaction. From my experiences behind the register, it seems as though we all remember that part and expect it from other people, but we forget about the second part: we’re supposed to answer them.

            When someone asks how you are, the proper response is one of two things. Either, “I’m doing well, how are you?” or “Not so great, but thanks for asking.” “I’m good” is also acceptable, but many grammar sticklers would cringe to hear it (I’m inclined to think of that one as a colloquialism as opposed to poor grammar, but that’s for another conversation). The answer should never be any of the following: “Is this on sale?”; “How much does this cost?”; “Oh my God, I love these stickers!”; or “When do you think you’ll get more of these in?”

            This sounds ridiculous, and it is. Believe it or not, these are all greetings that I’ve received while working at the register. The exchange at the opening of this post was also a conversation I’ve had with a customer. This kind of greeting is probably the most demoralizing thing that can happen to a cashier. It’s something that isn’t horribly offensive, but over the course of a five- or six- or seven-hour shift, it’s grating. There have been several days that I, as a cashier, have stopped asking customers how they’re doing because of the responses I get. I really hate to make that confession, but it’s true. After seven hours of people ignoring my polite inquiries, I just plain don’t have it in me to keep asking.

            Really, is whether or not an item is on sale so important that it can’t wait for a five-second exchange to take place? If it is on sale, the sale isn’t going to end because you took the time to be polite to the clerk. If it’s not on sale, being rude isn’t going to change that.

            I understand that a great many people who come up to my register are in a rush. They just want to come in, get their items, and leave. I respect that; we’ve all been in a rush at some point, and we’ve all been impatient to get home and make use of our new purchases, and we’ve all been annoyed at waiting in lines. I get it. That being said, manners should not go by the wayside. Speaking as a cashier, I can guarantee that I can make small talk and ring your items at the same time, and that you’ll be away from the registers in the same amount of time as it would have taken to ring your items while being taciturn. While it may seem like I’m trying to keep you in the store for a longer amount of time, the reality is, the small talk is just there to show you that I care that you are there and spending your hard-earned dollars at my register.

            The most frustrating thing about this for me is that we should have this down by now. We’re the United States of America. We invented the New York Minute. We should know how to be both speedy and polite at the same time. We should know how that dynamic works. We should already have so much practice at being speedy that we can exert the brain power to be polite at the same time.

            This, however, will take practice. The way I see it, it’s kind of like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. Once you have the patting your head down, you can work on rubbing your tummy. We have the speed down, now let’s work on the other.

            Now that we’ve established that it’s possible to be both speedy and polite, let’s take a second to look at why we should practice those two things. Cashiers are going to be as speedy as possible out of respect of us and our time. We should reciprocate, just a little bit. By answering the question, “How are you?” we are respecting the fact that the clerk (or waiter/ess, or greeter, or receptionist; the list goes on and on) asked us a question and expressed interest in us. We are also showing that they are worth answering.

            I admitted before that there have been days when I stop asking customers how they’re doing by the end of my shift. I’ve noted that this isn’t admirable on my part, and I only bring up this embarrassing fact to show what being rude as a customer does to the clerk as a person. I stop asking because I realize that my politeness isn’t valued by the customers. My questions aren’t worth being answered; to those customers, I’m not worth being answered as a person. I’m just a body in the shop, there to tell them whether or not they can have the sale price. 

Societal Thinking

            A little while ago, my father sent an email out to all the people that he worked with, and he carbon copied me in it. It was an article about listening: what does it actually mean to listen to other people, do we actually put forth the effort to listen to other people, and how does that affect our lives were some of the topics that the author discussed ("Cogent Communicator: We're Terrible Listeners, and Here's Why" by Susan de la Vergne).

            I work as a cashier in a craft supplies shop, and that article got me thinking. I see a lot of things in a shift that make me raise my eyebrows, and I’m fairly certain that social listening skills like the ones discussed in that article would address most of them.

            Almost immediately upon starting at the store, I realized that I wasn’t always going to be dealing with the nicest people society has to offer. Working retail, it’s understood that every once in a while there would be a person who acts like a pain; what I didn’t realize was that there are a great many people who, while not acting outrageously, are just rude enough to make retail a very difficult job.

            Many of the customers that I deal with will say, “Oh, I didn’t realize,” or “Oh, I wasn’t paying attention,” or, my personal favorite, “Oh, I wasn’t thinking.” This last is, I think, the underlying issue that needs to be addressed. We are a society that doesn’t think. I’m not saying that we’re dumb or that everyone walks around in a haze or that we’re incapable of doing better than this (let’s face it, I wouldn’t bother to write about it if I didn’t have hope that we could improve as a whole). What I’m saying is that we’ve become so used to a certain, standard mode of operation that we tend to forget that each transaction, whether it be business or personal, is unique and has potential to be something great.

            I’m not so naïve as to believe that everyone who reads this is going to have a profound, life-altering conversation with the sales clerk every time they go to the store. That being said, I am naïve enough to think that we should, collectively, as a society, try and not negate that potentiality before it even has a chance. Even if all that our efforts yield is a few more polite conversations, that would be great. However, I personally believe that being mindful of what we say and how we say it makes us better people; knowing how much effort I put into my work makes me respect the work of others all the more; having waited on irritable customers, I respect the people who can do so and stay calm and polite throughout the entire transaction; remembering how I’ve been treated by some retail workers makes me cognizant of what some of my customers are feeling as far as customer service is concerned; acknowledging that I’ve been nasty to several retail workers makes me work harder to keep from making my customers feel that way.

            And I most certainly am naïve enough to think that if I can do it, so can other people.