It's that time again.
Time to take to the streets, hit the stores, crawl the malls, and search high and low for the perfect gift for your significant other, parent, or offspring. Plus some not-so-perfect gifts for the family-adjacents and six-degrees-of-separation relatives who are nonetheless too close to be placated with a generic card from Dollar Tree. Not to mention the great deals that will end up in your gift closet for unexpected guests and birthdays throughout the year (full disclosure: no way am I that organized!).
Oh, and it's also time to buy yet another round of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, pies, and...hey, wait a sec. Didn't we just do this last month? Yep, but there aren't enough leftovers to feed the crowd we're expecting, so...yeah, this is happening again.
Yes, once again, it is time to go Christmas shopping. And as you go, you will encounter many other people who are doing exactly the same thing.
(BTW...if anyone reading this is Jewish...how do you folks manage with Hanukkah? One day out of the year is grueling enough--but eight nights? Sorry, but consider this shikseh's mind completely boggled...)
And as you make your hunter/gatherer way through any given store, you will most likely encounter...a sales clerk. That's the person who tells you where you can find the cordless shavers, points the way to the restrooms, and takes your cash or processes your plastic. Not to mention wrapping that special something so your Little Angel doesn't realize she's getting the Giganto Lincoln Logs Barrel for Christmas (she whispered it to Santa, but you were close enough to hear).
Now, as I said at the beginning of this blog, my job title is menial. But mine is a small outfit, so at busy times of the year, it's Whoop! Whoop! All hands, battle stations! Especially Christmas. And though I am very knowledgeable about our store after (censored) years of working there, there are still things that I may not know. And any temps hired are probably going to be a little iffy about store layout, return policies, gift wrapping, or other procedures. And all of us are being pulled in several directions by different simultaneous customers and tasks. This can be enormously frustrating for shoppers. I--we--understand that.
But you know what doesn't help? Yelling at us. Especially if it's something that isn't our fault, like if we run out of a popular item 25 minutes after we opened the doors on Black Friday. Or if it's something unreasonable, like when we're asked to gift wrap an item you bought from our competition. Or if it's an act of God, like (heaven forbid) a network crash that has us hauling out the old hand-held credit card machines and hoping that somebody remembers where we stored the carbons that go with them.
And if it's something we can do something about, like exchanging a coat for a different size or correcting the price on an item that is supposed to be on sale, a normal voice and your mother's politeness words will get things done much more effectively than your anger.
So sorry, yelling won't accomplish a thing...except to raise everybody's blood pressure and turn nearly every clerk you meet into a Grinch. And if an earlier customer has already tried yelling at the clerk you are now angry at, the Grinchiness only gets worse. I have a lot of clerks as friends and acquaintances, and it's the same every season: they all gird their loins and grit their teeth and do their best to exude sparkles and brightness...and when Christmas is over, they all look like they were run through an industrial taffy-pulling machine. (Yes, me too...it usually takes me until Epiphany to recover.)
This, mind you, is when we make it through without yelling back at a customer. Or making a snarky remark just loud enough for them to hear. Or completely breaking down and screaming like the female lead in a horror movie. Clerks who do any of those things usually disappear--either to the boss's office for a reprimand, or permanently.
Ah, I hear a customer somewhere saying, "Huh. Serves them right."
Fair enough. But...I wonder, do customers ever realize that we, too, are human beings? That being harangued, abused, or yelled at should not be part of our jobs as service personnel? That if they keep calm and have a little patience, they will make it out of the store with their parcels and gift receipts and such? In short: If workers have no right to yell at customers, then they, in turn, have no right to yell at us.
(And speaking of social media...If a worker were ever to disrespect a customer online, he would be fired if he were caught. Yet customers feel perfectly free to name names or describe workers and tell out their sins for the entire Internet to hear. That's miles away from a bad review on Yelp; it's just plain vicious.)
What I'm really saying here is, show some respect. It's our job to help you, and really, we like you and want to help you. So please...help make our holidays merry by smiling at us, even if we don't smile back. (That cashier is sweating bullets because you just handed him 18 hundred-dollar bills to pay for your husband's new high-end power tools, and his authenticator pen just ran out of juice, and where is that floater with a new one from Supplies?!) And by not being offended if we don't use the approved farewell for your religion's holiday. (Should we just name them all and hope one of them creates happiness?) Oh, and remember those politeness words! (We love to hear them, especially from little kids!)
Be kind. Be polite. We'll do the same. Deal?
Great. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy Kwanzaa! Hope I didn't miss anybody... :)
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