Stop telling employees “thank you” when you come to the store on a holiday
Other places I’d rather be than working >>>
Tell me you really haven’t worked a customer service job without telling me you haven’t worked a customer service job. I’ll go first:
Every one of us who has had customer-facing jobs, whether it be retail, theaters, department stores, or the food industry, all have stories about working on a holiday. To me, if you haven’t worked holidays then you really haven’t worked in customer service, not sorry.
You see, working on a holiday is some other type of beast, especially the big ones: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. It really brings the worst out of people. And if you’re in a customer-facing role and have to literally deal with people, your whole shift is going to be people being the absolute worst on days where it's supposed to be a time of celebration! Or a time for family! Or a time to be with loved ones! :) For you, it's not about hanging with friends and seasonal dinners, but instead, the day in which you are trying to make it through the day without crying or not yelling at someone because they meant to buy tickets for the 4:00 pm showing of Star Wars, but now the next showing is full and they demand to get in and there’s a line out the door of people also trying to find ways to make your next 8 hours hell on earth.
But I digress
While I can go on about the tragedies of working on a holiday, there is a response that I always get that just really grinds my gears
Its when they say, “thank you for being here” or “sorry you have to work today!”
Bullshit Deborah.
During the holidays when I worked back at Arclight, I remember all of us being so bitter when we’d hear that. We’d mumble under our breath, “well if you really wanted to thank me then you wouldn’t come in so we could go home.” Because Deborah, I would not be here scooping popcorn that you believe wasn’t just popped 2 minutes ago for you if were really sorry. You aren’t sorry. You aren’t thankful. You —
Let me dial back my tone a bit.
For me, there is something about someone saying “thank you” that has an underlying apologetic tone to it.
Imagine this — Someone just mopped the floor and wanted you to wait for it to dry but you refuse and so you say sorry while making footprints, and the person who just cleaned it as to stand there, watch you dirty the floor again and has to go back to re-mop it. If you really felt bad, then you wouldn’t have done it in the first place, and saying sorry is not going to clean the floor again.
In truth, for me, this is my job. I have to be here. If I did not want to be there then I would’ve quit before I had to suffer through the population's rank attitude. If you feel guilty, do not let me know. Leave yourself at home, because at the end of the day, I am still serving you.
So, do you want some friendly advice?
Just be a nice person. Be kind to the employees on holidays. They might have an attitude because they also don’t want to be there, or they’ve had heinous customers before you. They might be mentally and physically exhausted. But you just having good energy or cracking a joke or just being patient while you get the right order can go a long way for us. It can turn our day from well this is another Christmas that I had to work and I hate my life to I had to work Christmas which was fine but I also — . I can still walk away from my day with a sense of joy and positivity. Just be kind. That’s all we want. We want to enjoy as much of our holiday as you do.
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