My Fellow Shop-Happy Americans -- 3 things:
Hello.
Excuse me.
Thank you.
These are incredibly simple words and expressions which have been established as baseline guides for behaving in a civilized manner. If these seem like first-world problems or rules it's because they are. Because this is where we live. These aren't foreign words or concepts or outta-left-field ideologies; they're more like currency, a concept so many people clearly understand since y'all be shopping all the time and such. My point is that using these words--at a cost of no more than their mere utterance--buys you what you really want: world class, I'm-always-right, Veruca Salt-me-right-now service.
Speaking in my general direction--even, especially, in your amphitheater voice--will not garner you the reaction you think you're commanding. "I WONDER WHERE THE SHEETS ARE..." is just that ol' proverbial tree falling in the woods.
Interrupting me (without using those first 2 phrases above) while I'm talking to someone--anyone--else gives me greater resolve to finish what I was saying by saying aloud, "Anyway, as I was saying ..."
Sidling up to me and just standing there ... being ... would probably work really well in a method acting class, but in the real world it just makes you skeevy. I don't like skeevy; I avoid skeevy at all costs.
Actions like these do not inspire customer service. They inspire disservice. These behaviors Helen Kellerize me to your entire existence for I cannot hear or see such evil ... and neither can many members of my retail family. Actions like these help explain all those times you've dealt with a surly sales associate.
I've never feared for humankind more than when working in retail. It rhymes with hell for a very good reason. But I'm someone who both likes and needs extra money, so this is a means I choose to navigate. I realize that the people about whom I'm complaining are too absorbed in themselves to read this post ... or anything really. I mean, you would be uh-mazed at people's selective literacy abilities. You can hang a banner the size of 6'3" obese person with $9.99 on it and people will still walk right up to it, hug the product to their bosom and wipe their face with it (TRUE STORY!), look around like Dorothy fresh out of Kansas and call out like they were giving a sermon on the mount, "HOW MUCH IS THIS?"
It happens so often I can't even fully express it, but I tell you our "childrens do learn" comes immediately to mind, and it's the bushier doctrine that needs some serious tending.
'Cause what we seem to be learning and believing is that we're entitled--to everything. Whenever we want it, however we can get it. And I'm not buying that, and neither should you (although i'm pretty sure you can get it on Amazon). I'm not even willing to buy it and I realize that probably puts me in a 1% category of some sort, but hey--at least I can be rich in this respect. But you shouldn't buy it because it's cheapening your shopping experience. It's a larger part of the reason why you "can't ever find anyone to help" or "that sales worker was so rude." That one worker is manning a revolving door of demands, and increasingly most of those demands are ridiculously petulant and unnecessary. I'm not asking you to put yourself in those shoes because chances are you're already wearing a different style of the same brand. Any one of you feels the entitlement brunt because someone in your life--your boss, spouse/significant other, kid, bill collector, parent--is expecting you to provide them with something, and we all know that most of the time it's about how the request is made that makes all the difference in terms of our delivery. No one enjoys being taken for granted. I'm just asking you to remember to be respectful ... and kind.
Right now the consumer ethos is looking a lot like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors. And I'm here to tell you, the world can't handle one Audrey II, much less a whole warehouse full of them, so when you're shopping, or people you know and love are shopping, or as you raise your children to become shoppers and so on, remember that 3 is a very magical number and just be kind.
And when you see someone acting like they're the only ones in the store, like only their money can buy anything, like only their time is the moment that matters the most, help them out. Say loudly in their general direction how you've always marveled at how many magical doors have opened to the words "Thank you," or tell them how great they are in that Under the Dome show where nobody can actually reach them. Or hit them with your shopping cart (accidentally!) and say, "Oh, I would say excuse me but you might not know what that means," or send them to me, where I'm more than happy, entitled even, to be Rosa Parkin' the Golden Rule ... one customer at a time.