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.