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Enforced cheerfulness $FAIL
I was in Walgreen's just now, and the cashier was wearing a button front and center on her uniform that said "Is my smile a 9?"
I assume that she had to wear it. I was tempted to ask, but I didn't want to waste her time because there was a long line. It made me furious on her behalf. If your policy is that employees should act friendly, I suppose there's nothing I can do about that, but I really don't like requiring employees to wear buttons that invite the customer to police their behavior (behavior that has nothing to do with whether they're doing the work of cashiering correctly).
I assume that she had to wear it. I was tempted to ask, but I didn't want to waste her time because there was a long line. It made me furious on her behalf. If your policy is that employees should act friendly, I suppose there's nothing I can do about that, but I really don't like requiring employees to wear buttons that invite the customer to police their behavior (behavior that has nothing to do with whether they're doing the work of cashiering correctly).
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My friends don't always smile. Especially when they're tired and busy, and very happy to help me but don't have the energy to be gleeful in my direction. Strangers being gleeful in my direction are not friendly; they're usually creepy. And a public note that says "PLEASE CRITIQUE MY FRIENDLINESS" says very clearly, "MY EMPLOYER IS SO SHITTY THEY CANNOT COUNT ON ANYONE WORKING HERE ACTUALLY ENJOYING THEIR JOBS SO THEY HAVE TO MANDATE THAT WE PRETEND LIKE WE DO."
Employees who work retail in places they love tend to be plenty friendly. The ones working in the local cookie shops who know they serve the most awesome cookies are proud to be a part of that. The ones who work in the tiny-weird-import shops are just as enchanted as the customers by the stuff they sell. The ones who work in Pagan shops are *thrilled* to talk about the books, the candles, the statues, tarot card preferences--they're excited to find someone else who shares some interests with them. The gamers who staff the game shops... well.
It's only in stores that pay minimum wage or close to it, and overwork their employees, and demand they put up with stupid pointless rules, and cheat them out of benefits with arcane accounting tricks, that have to *require* them to act friendly to customers. And since they can't actually measure "friendliness," they tend to come up with "the extrovert tv-hero version of friendly," defined by a huge grin.
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In my current place of employment, we sell ethically sourced hand made stuff which is pretty awesome, it's a nice place to work, and we have a small staff with a high retention rate.
So the fact that we have a checklist of customer service which starts off with "make eye contact, smile, offer a non-business related greeting (e.g. "hello", rather than "can I help you") is something that is good for training new staff, but gets quickly internalized, because it's pretty basic polite behaviour in that setting.
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When I was in college, I spent a summer working a cash register at K-Mart. We didn't have to wear demeaning buttons (because they hadn't thought of it yet), but among other things, we had to stand up straight at all times -- we weren't allowed to lean against the partition while we waited for a customer to show up -- and there was a supervisor pacing up and down the row of cashiers, making sure we were all being proper automatons at all times. I can't remember if there were specific instructions to be "friendly" -- since it was the 70s, they probably hadn't thought of that yet either.
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Sheesh.
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I'm also self-employed and a popular instructor in a small town, so unfortunately, when I walk out my front door, I'm sort of on stage. I dislike that I can't go to the damn grocery store without feeling like I have to be "on", but I haven't found a solution that doesn't interfere with the bottom line on that one.
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I do it when I teach, too.
Yes, it's draining as hell, but for the most part I find the financial rewards worth being an actor. In part, I feel like I'm kinda being paid to pretend to like people, but I guess I don't feel like it's wrong.
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In the middle of the spectrum are various other ways a company might require an employee to behave.
I think being required to wear a sign is wrong. Or to put it in a more relativistic fashion, it seriously turns me off and makes me want to avoid doing business with the company.
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