how would you want to be treated?
Hi! I’m currently working as a retail part-timer and I realized that retail workers are a lot like apex predators.
Whenever a customer comes in, we will slowly and discreetly walk towards them, hover around and wait for the perfect chance to strike (ask them if they need help)
The more I think about it, I feel that if I were the customer, I’d be quite disturbed if there was a staff who kept eyeing and hovering around me.
This is why as a retail worker, I tend to just stand at one spot and wait for customers to approach me themselves.
Personally, I also like to try to understand the customers’ body language first and see if they look lost/confused.
However, my other coworkers who are more experienced tend to just follow them around and ask them whether they need help. This makes me feel like I’m quite useless
This got me thinking, how do you guys want to be treated? How do I improve myself to provide better service for customers? Everyone is different and there’s no way I can cater to all their personalities
Netizens’ comments
- Just approach once. If I need help, it’s great that they came up to me instead of me having to approach them. If I don’t need help, I’ll just politely tell them I’m looking around, and then they can leave me alone and go and serve other customers or do other store tasks.
- 9/10 kindly leave me alone. I just want to browse without eyes on my back. I understand you’re trying to help in the name of customer service. if I need assistance, I will ask. otherwise, leave me the f alone.
- Yeah I’ll probably prefer to be left alone, 100%. But to all customers, please do your part as well and don’t go around making a huge f-ing mess. I think people will be more likely to leave you alone if you’re not one of those itchy fingers.
Rant-y part:
Touch this touch that, open and look at stuff you’re not even interested in, pick something up on shelf A and place it back on shelf B, squeeze your nasty ass feet into the shoes on display, pull all the stuffing out of a display bag then just leave it there…
So if you happen to be one of those people, I’m sure the staff will have their eye on you. Not because they want to push a sale, but because they just know there’ll be a mess to clean up after you leave and they want to know WHERE that mess is.
Arranging stuff back into place is part of the job, i know, I KNOW. But some people just make it 10000 times harder lol. Giving you extra stuff to tidy up after. Will I lose sleep trying to ensure they have a memorable shopping experience? Probably not. And don’t even give me any of that “but I’m the customer, don’t you want business??” nonsense. If you don’t buy this thing, someone else will. Don’t think that people have to bend over backwards just to keep your business.