Settling nicely into the job. After a while it isn't so bad after all, even though my feet still hurt (a little).
99% of customers are really nice and understanding, saying thank you, returning our greetings, smiling back at us. :D I have met (or heard of) the occasional fussy/unreasonable/snobby customer but it's really rare.But the caucasian/western-educated-with-American/British/Australian twang customers tend to be friendlier. It's the culture in those countries, and I guess it rubs off on those who study there. Singaporean/Asian customers aren't rude, it's just that most of them don't take that extra step to smile or be friendly to the salesperson/cashier.
There was this lady who kept apologising for all the trouble she was causing while I helped her fix up this remote control car (fastened down by just about a ton of screws) and test it out. Kept telling her, "It's ok, it's no trouble, really" but she still kept apologising. Makes me feel guilty for making her feel guilty lol, but if I were her I'd have felt bad too. But hey, it's our job--part of it.
It really brightens your day when customers smile and say "Thank you" in reply to your "Have a nice day!", or after you help them find something. And from the look in their eyes you know they really mean it. When I help the cashier pack the goods into plastic/paper bags when there is a long queue, most customers will smile, or say thank you, or nod in acknowledgement when I hand them their bags.
I think it's reciprocal, you know...when you smile at someone, he or she will feel more welcome to be nice/polite to you, just to return that smile. But on the contrary, when you greet someone with this black face that says you'd rather not be here serving him/her, of course he or she will be less inclined to be friendly because you don't appear to be friendly in the first place.
I think I do understand salespeople better...why there are some times they really can't help, etc etc.
For instance, when there's a long queue(defined as 5 people or more) at the cashier, at least 1 sales assistant has to help her pack. We have to be fast so as not to hold up the queue, and so there isn't much time to fold all clothes nicely before putting them into the bag. We just make sure they won't get crumpled. Some customers buy a tremendous amount of clothes, especially since this is the Xmas season, and there was one such lady with her daughter. A couple of clothes this pair was checking out needed a memo from the brand counter it came from (so that the cashier could check them out), and as there was no one else around and the cashier can't just go out and leave the queue standing there, I ran to the counter to get the memos. By the time I found the brands' promoters and ran back with the memos, the mother-daughter pair had been waiting for some time. Packing while the cashier keyed in the SKUs, I didn't extactly have the time to fold everything nicely so I just roughly folded the items and put them into the bag. The lady, watching with her daughter by her side, asked the cashier in Chinese, with this sarcastic tone; "Don't you people have the habit of folding clothes nicely before putting them in?" My cashier tried to explain to them that while we tried to do it as much as we could we couldn't when there was a long queue as we needed to be fast, and what more i was new and they didn't give us training....the lady left with a disgruntled look on her face. I wonder what her daughter was learning from her. Hah, maybe her daughter would understand what it was like if she became a sales asst/packer/cashier in the future, even for just a holiday job.
I wanted so much to argue my case and explain myself to that lady, but decorum and company policy forced me to keep my mouth shut and acknowledge her sarcasm.
Thankfully, I don't meet many customers like her.
Some people are postively mental. Like these so-called 'fans' on my tag board. Appreciate the effort...you must really have a lot of time on your hands (AND an identity crisis) to actually create a 'fan site' like that and tag my blog with someone elses' identity. And if you really believe that a doll can come alive and go online to tag...that says a lot.