The retail store rules: A customer service manifesto

There should be rules to what you can do in a retail store.

Now, I don’t mean rules like, “pay for your stuff” or even rules like, “don’t stand in front of the television in Walmart watching the movie instead of buying it.”

No, I mean rules about how you treat people in a store.

For example, I was standing in a major retail store the other weekend. I was buying some crackers and cheese (no, I didn’t buy any wine and no, that wasn’t funny.) I carefully counted my items and found, I had less than 20 items, so I got into the express lane.

You know, the place where you go when you don’t have a bunch of stuff in your cart. I say this because the people in front of me evidently didn’t read the sign. Instead they trundled their cart full of stuff up to the counter and slapped it up there.

Why? Don’t these people have a problem with the 15 people standing behind them who expected  this line to go fast? Aren’t they bothered when the cashier eyes their cart knowing he has a choice of saying something and getting yelled at, or suffering the glares of the customers behind them?

Don’t they have any shame at all?

So I started coming up with a list of rules for people in retail stores. Now this is not comprehensive. These are some things I’ve noticed.

• If the sign says, “Limit one per customer” for goodness sakes, take one. Don’t take five and then say, “Well, I can go through five times.” There’s a limit for a reason, so there’s enough for everyone. 

• Don’t pick up stuff and then leave it in another section of the store. This is plain rude. The store hires people to clean up after customers, but that’s not a justification to use it.

• Please don’t scream at the cashier. Not only do you make people behind you uncomfortable, but most likely screaming isn’t going to get you what you want.

• And if you need to scream, don’t say, “Well I’m never coming back here again,” because either a) the cashier isn’t going to care or b) when you do come back to the store, you’re going to look silly. 

• If you’re expecting “Nordstrom’s service” at major chain discount store X, then you’re sadly mistaken. You are not going to be able to return the shoes you’ve worn for the last two months, even if you don’t like the color. 

Yes, most of these have to deal with customers, so I started thinking about the rules for employees. Most of us have seen at least one training video in our lives. You know the ones put together by the company’s headquarters, which tell us about the joys of customer service.

That said, here are some rules for employees.

• It won’t kill you to be nice. We all know it’s hard to stand on your feet all day, in one place, while mindlessly moving items across the scanner.  Really, you can be miserable with it or you can make the best of it.

• Watch how you’re bagging stuff. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as watching someone put the bread in with the laundry detergent.

• Please, please, please don’t share your personal life with the customers. None of us care exactly what your doctor found where.

So if anybody has some rules they’d like to add, please feel free to do so and hopefully, we can make the world a better place to be, one item at a time.

Cameron Probert is the Columbia Basin Herald county reporter. He is normally the quiet, smiling guy standing in line, who is friendly to everyone he meets.