Timid grocers

The blonde stopped at the supermarket on her way home tonight to pick up something for dinner.  The market is a different place on weeknights than it is on weekends when she usually shops there.  On weeknights, the blonde says, it's staffed by very timid and easily spooked clerks who startle and bolt like deer at the approach of a customer.  Tracked down and cornered, a clerk at bay will freeze under a customer's glare as if jacklighted and forced to acknowledge a question will at first tremble all over and then answer by pointing or shaking their head.  Take your eye off them a second and they leap a stack of canned goods and disappear down an aisle.

The weekend crew is a hardier, braver, friendlier, more helpful bunch.

This happens.  I'm not sure how it happens, but it does.  Businesses, offices, stores---they have personalities.  You go into one place and it's cheerful and welcoming, you go into another and it's angry, defensive, suspicious, hostile to your presence and uninterested in your money.  Some places are tense, some are haughty, and some are burned-out and depressed.  You walk in to one video store in a chain and it just lifts your spirits, but a store belonging to the same chain the next town over has you hurrying in and hurrying out with your movie, anxious and vaguely unsatisfied, as if you're sure you made the wrong choice even though it's a movie you'd been looking forward to watching for a week.   And these feelings come over you as soon as you cross the threshold, before you've spoken to a single clerk or secretary, waiter, cashier, or counterman.

Of course, when you do talk to someone who works there it usually turns out that they share the store's mood.  But you have to ask yourself.  Does the store give it to the staff or the staff infuse it into the store?  Is it management's fault...or management's great success?  Does the boss there have a knack for hiring people of the same temperament, for good or bad?  The same managers who hired the weeknight staff at the supermarket hired the weekend crew.  Maybe it's just a matter of who you can get to work when.  Maybe it's the location.  Maybe it's the customers.

Pick a business you frequent.  Describe its character.  Speculate why it is the way it is.

The blonde came home with a roasted chicken but without the macaroni and cheese the guys love.  She doesn't know if they were all out or if they no longer offer it at the deli.

She couldn't find anyone to ask.

She knew they were there though.  Hiding.

She could hear them breathing.

Comments

[KC45s]

One of the things I have long noticed about our Chicago Transit Authority is the difference between weekday and weekend service. During the week, it's the usual litany of urban transport horrors. Missed stops. The bus pulls away just as your face hits the doors. Etc.

On the weekends, however, humanity reigns. I have seen with my own two eyes drivers helping old ladies climb the steps. They're willing to shout out "This is the Wrigley Building!" for the tourists who don't recognize what the Grand Avenue stop means. Instead of pulling away while people run for the doors, they pause and let them get aboard, even let them pay (!) before hitting the gas and throwing them off-balance.

I've assumed these weekenders are part-timers and new employees. They're nice because they want a regular full-time gig and because they're not burnt out yet. But it's only a theory. Whatever the case, there can be a big, big change in vibe from Friday to Saturday on the CTA.

[Ed D.]

It's top down... management sets the tone for it all. The good case study is Costco vs Sam's. At Sam's the employees are sullen and unhelpful. If you ask a question you'll be standing around for 10 minutes and then they may never show anyway. At Costco the employees are unendingly cheerful and helpful. I ask for something and they immediately take me in tow and fix me up.

Our local grocery stores are the same. If the employeeds look sullen, have a brief talk with the manager and see who they are. Odds are they are the type of manager who is suspicious and controlling. Happy stores have fair minded managers.

Unfortunately this plays out most in the public schools where teachers are treated like machines instead of the dedicated professionals they are. The management determines their attitudes and those attitudes are the seeds of success or failure. The job description of all public school administrators should be: "My Job Is To Support Teachers." We'd see an immediate turn around in the schools if this credo were enthusiastically adopted.

Like so many other things, it's about respect for the people you work with - give it and you'll get it.

Ed

[the blonde]

In the case of the panicked grocery store employees, I believe the culprit is a manager who rules by fear. She even scares me.

[Ken Muldrew]

blonde,
See "Chad Vader, Night Shift Manager" on youtube. Perhaps your local manager is trying to emulate one of the greats.

[Horatio]

The blonde is right, Lance. You're trying to turn a management problem into a chicken-or-egg argument.

Cheers.

[Connie]

It just so happens that last weekend I was in your neck of the woods. I was passing through on my way home from NH. After a quick visit with my parents in nearby LaGrangeville I was on my way again. I thought of you and almost invited you *out* for a cup of coffee, but since I had a 9-hour drive in front of me, I decided to grab a cup of coffee to go. Just west of Newburgh I found a Dunkin Donuts. It was early Sunday morning. I walked in, smiled at the clerk, said "good morning" and was met with an icy stare. "OK then" I said. "I'd like a medium coffee please. One milk. And a Boston Creme donut." This young man went about his business with out acknowledging me in the least. Took my money. Placed my change on the counter, then turned away as if too busy to linger. I noticed his tip cup on the counter. Didn't give him one. Won't be back.