Here's the mission statement from our store: "To serve our customers and community more effectively than anyone else by treating our customers, co-workers, and suppliers as we, personally, would like to be treated and to make a difference in someone's life." Simple, right? Kind of a variation on the Golden Rule and I like this idea.
If I walked up to a clerk in the store only to have them speak to me in a fast and impatient way, I'd be really put off by that. And sadly, I've seen and heard several co-workers who respond to customers that way. Yes, I know we're busy and yes, I see there are 6 customers waiting in line, but can we not still show each customer a few moments of courtesy and kindness?
Years ago (>15 yrs) when I worked for an employer that utilized "peer reviews" for our annual appraisals, one of my co-workers stated that I was impatient and difficult to get along with (she was an extremely sensitive person and I probably was). Sadly, that review stayed in my personnel file and prevented me from transferring to any other work areas at that company, because no supervisor wanted a "meany" working for them. I eventually left the company, but the comments in that review haunt me to this day.
Now, lest you think I'm a truly lovely person, let me set the record straight right here -- I'm Not!! If thought bubbles were visible, I would have not made it past my first week at this new job. I see a lot of things that truly piss me off and it's hard to bite my tongue and be courteous.....like the person who comes in and pays for Funyuns & a 12-pack or Mountain Dew with their EBT card, or the person who comes into "my" clean bathroom and creates a shit explosion that I have to clean up, or the person who does a gas drive-off for $93 on a pump I authorized. However, to counteract that, there are all kinds of nice people who come in and really make my day better.
There's no way to know what some of these people are dealing with in their lives, we have lots of senior citizen customers who maybe don't have any family members nearby and are lonely. We have truckers who are only an hour or so away from home, but end up spending the nite because they are at their maximum hours for driving. Many travelers stop by our store in the middle of a trip: to a funeral, taking their child to college, or returning from a 24-hour vigil at the hospital where a grandchild just had surgery. It's my pleasure to take a few minutes to talk with them. Maybe I'll never see them again, but hopefully they will remember their visit to my store and possibly stop in the future, or at one of our other stores, based solely on the fact that someone was "nice" to them at a previous store visit.
So yeah, I think I'll just keep on being nice (at least when I'm being paid for it....) Simple to do and makes most everyone feel better. And if my co-workers think I'm weird, well, I guess that's their problem. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, cuz I know when I'm the customer in any store, even if I have to wait, I'm always going to choose that "nice" cashier I had on a previous visit.
So I'll end this rant with my standard farewell for my customers, "Thanks for stopping. Please come see us again!"
