Working with the public can be a blessing and a curse; you meet all sorts of people, but those people can proceed to drive you absolutely nuts. They will all complain if you inconvenience them for one minute, but none of them make any sort of effort to make your life, or the lives of customers around them, easier. So here are some helpful tips and tricks to make your shopping experience easier for everyone involved.
1. Know what you want before you get in line.
This one mainly applies at restaurants. There’s nothing wrong with standing in the background and looking at the menu for a while, but please wait until you know what you want to actually get in line. There are very few things worse than someone at the front of the line staring at the menu for five minutes trying to decide while a line full of people behind them groans and grows more and more impatient with every “ummm.” You’re holding up a bunch of people who wish to go on with their day, you’re wasting the time of the employee, and you’re just progressively moving further and further down on the “quality people I’d like to spend time with” list.
2. Prepare your checks.
If you know you’re going somewhere and you know that you’re going to buy something with a check, date and address the check before you get to the line. When you’re at the register, it’s fine to fill out the amount and sign it, but the rest could be done beforehand. I’ve had people at the register take over ten minutes to fill out a check, making the line behind them grow and grow. While this isn’t as common of a problem, as checks are becoming used less and less these days, it still happens sometimes. It’s also amazing how many people hand me their checkbook and ask me to fill out their check for them, which I’m fine doing, but it just takes time away from productivity and helping other customers.
3. Don’t assume we know who you are.
Working at a location that has charge accounts has taught me that people really expect you to just know who they are and who they work for. If your vehicle doesn’t have a company name on it, you aren’t wearing a uniform, and I’ve never seen you before in my life, I’m not just going to know who you work for and have your charge card ready for you. I cannot express the number of times I’ve had people just walk up to the counter and stare at me. I always politely ask “Are we charging today?” and when they answer and I proceed to ask them to which account, I often get eye rolls and groans. I try my hardest to learn customers’ preferences and know who they all charge to, but when you have hundreds of customers in a single day, it’s hard to keep track of everyone. Please, just understand that. It takes you two seconds to voice the name of the company you’re charging to.
4. Employees don’t dictate the prices.
Heckling us about prices isn’t going to do anything because we didn’t create them. I’m sorry that you disagree with them but yelling or swearing at an employee about them is just a waste of everyone’s time and emotions. I’m sorry if another store sells it for cheaper, and I’m sorry if we don’t carry the brand you love, but that just isn’t up to us employees. I’m aware I’m being extremely repetitive here but I don’t know how else to convey this message. So one more time, for those in the back, employees don’t dictate prices.
5. Watch your darn kids.
I’ve mentioned this before in an article but I feel the need to bring it up again. Unless the place that you are in is a designated childcare establishment, the employees are not there to tend to your children. If your child is running around and destroying things, that’s on you as a parent. I have a whole list of things I’m supposed to be doing as an employee, and ensuring that your kid is well-behaved isn’t on it. I have kids all the time who come up to the counter and order food and give me money for it, and then I proceed to get yelled at by the parents because I’m not supposed to feed their child. How am I, as an employee, supposed to know if the kid was allowed to come buy things or not? If I am given money, I will make the exchange. I’m not aware of your child’s gluten-free diet, or the fact that they can’t have sugar in the afternoon. Just watch your kids.
These are only a few simple tricks to help you make employees’ lives easier and have a genuinely better experience while at stores, restaurants, or entertainment facilities.
