Working in a grocery store, restaurant or retail teaches you certain people skills you just can’t learn any other way. As an employee, you can ever so easily decipher the customers that have worked with the general public from those who haven’t. People that don’t mind when you take the extra second to organize your cash drawer, kindly ask for the check or refrain from asking you to bag their single item have the courtesy of someone who has worked in your field before. But the people that get mad at you over uncontrollable things, ask for paper in plastic, unfold everything they see, or cannot be simply decent have never worked a minimum wage job a day in their lives. Wow, does it show.
The mere minutes you spend with customers shape your entire opinion of them, so the small niceties go a long way. The customers that when you, for the thousandth time that day say, “Hi, how are you? Did you find everything okay today?” respond quickly and kindly, maybe asking how you are too, are the best! The customers that, when they pick up items then realize they don’t want them, put them back nicely in the right spot are incredible. If you as a customer realize how exponentially irritating it is to come through a ‘fifteen items or less’ lane with any more than fifteen items, thank you so much, you make my day better.
Then there are the customers who remind you to appreciate the good ones. If you have ever doubted what your cashier or waitress has told you and ask to ‘see the manager,’ we know you have never ever worked in service because if you did, you would know the regular workers know just as well as the managers that we do not provide whatever you are asking for, and by calling them over you will just hear the same answer you were previously unsatisfied with. We have heard the “No price tag? So it must be free!” joke twenty times already today. And please stop getting mad at workers for things that are in no way under their control, and that they can do nothing about; you’re not helping anyone with your public screaming scene.
Every single customer is different. Whether they spill out their life story or give you nothing more than a head nod, as humans we can’t help but form opinions about our customers. And anyone that works with the general public knows that their impression of you is entirely based on your politeness and how easy you make our job for us.
The bottom line is: working in a grocery store, restaurant or retail gives you life-changing people skills. You learn to treat workers of the stores and restaurants you go to with respect because you know that they deserve way more than what they’re being paid for working to serve people that have never worked with the general public. You learn that little interactions go a long way, and that you’re not entitled just because you’re the customer and they’re the employee. And if everyone had experience working with the general public, I know everyone would be a little nicer to each other.
