If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time in grocery stores. Boy, has customer service changed! Clerks rarely make you feel welcome, checkout lines are long, and full-service checkout is suffering the same demise as the Sony Walkman.

Is it just me, or have you noticed that checkout clerks don’t seem happy to serve their customers and they really don’t want us to “come again”. We’re either interupting their gossip with a coworker, interfering with their text messaging or phone calls, or expecting them to return our plastic forms of payment or customer loyalty cards (as if they know what loyalty means) to our hands and not the check-writing counter. Speaking of counters, who still writes checks in stores? That’s a topic that deserves it’s own discussion.

Another trend has emerged within the past decade. Stores don’t seem to schedule enough people to work and they only open a small number of available registers even during expected rush-hours. What do they care? They already have you waiting in a line as long as a football field with a cart full of goods right? Not always! Twice in the past month, I’ve walked into a grocery store just to have to go right back out in search of a grocery cart. Seriously? Not a cart in sight? Yes, seriously; not a cart in sight.

Finally, what’s up with the move toward self-checkouts? I’m OK with self-checkouts for a small number of items, but why do these pennypinchers expect me to scan and bag large amounts of my family’s latest wants and needs? One local superstore typically has only 2-3 manned registers. Our checkout options aren’t very good; we can: use the express self-checkout lanes, use the “I’ve got a ton of groceries – maybe a cart or two” self-scan (and bag everything by myself!) lanes, or wait in a long, winding line for full-service. By the way, full-service doesn’t always include help bagging items and loading them into your cart. Many-a-times, the clerk handed over my receipt and began the next victim’s order – whether or not my items have been properly prepared for the trip home.

Fellow shoppers aren’t being let off the hook by this writer. The next time you’re finished loading your groceries onto the conveyer belt, please be courteous and use the divider thingy – especially if you’re much closer to it than the person behind you. Oh, and don’t forget to say, “please” and “thank you” to your checkout clerk – even if they don’t make you feel welcome. Then tell a store manager, so that future shopping trips can be a more pleasant exchange of money and service.

Maybe telling a manager won’t even matter, because one day, I’ll walk into a store and the only employees available will be self-scan registers that sometimes go haywire and have to reboot in the middle of my order. But hey, at least they’ll have good enough manners to thank me for shopping with {insert grocer or superstore here}.

Love to all! Let’s discuss.

CC