Occasionally annoying things occur in BookWorld that are universally annoying in any form of human interaction. In order to make life better for all of my brethren working in any retail I'm writing a rulebook for basic, polite customer behavior. You can all be on the lookout for violations of the rules and shame people who break them in your presence. (Unless you are on the clock at the place you work, then you'll get in trouble.) If we all band together and demand a certain level of courtesy from our fellow travelers in this journey of life the world may just be a better place.
And after that little burst of crazy, I present BookWench's Retail Law #1:
If you want to talk to a sales clerk, that better be the only thing you're doing with your mouth.
As a child my mother impressed upon me the importance of not talking with my mouth full. This rule applies to places that aren't the dinner table. If you are talking with another human being this rule needs to be adhered to. (I don't care what you do when you're talking to robots, but phone robots probably don't understand you with a full mouth either.) At various times I have had people talk to me while actively using a toothpick, eating an apple (the core of which they then left on the counter, but that's another post), smacking on the world's largest wad of grape gum, and, on different occasions, eating ice cream cones, an eggroll, and french fries.
Seriously people, I may be a sales clerk, but I'm still a person. I don't want to watch you eat, or be sprayed by bits of what you're eating/ picking out of your teeth, I really don't get paid enough to deal with that. Put down the food, throw away the toothpick and the gum, then we can talk. Until then I'm going to either ignore you or plot several ways to kill you with that f&*^ing toothpick.
Thanks to my wonderful younger sibling for the awesome title!
Book Wench is currently reading People Are Unappealing by Sara Barron
An Update: The day after I posted this I rang up a customer with one of those toothpicks with a tiny toothbrush on one end. So not only was she spitting at me while trying to talk around a toothpick, but I could still see all the chunks of food stuck in the toothbrush end. Why? Just…why?
An Update: The day after I posted this I rang up a customer with one of those toothpicks with a tiny toothbrush on one end. So not only was she spitting at me while trying to talk around a toothpick, but I could still see all the chunks of food stuck in the toothbrush end. Why? Just…why?
I can sympathize, but for me it was always people on their cell phones and expecting me to conduct business with them while they chatted to the ether. Grrr!
ReplyDeleteI'm saving that for another post…and the attack ponies
ReplyDelete