posted
There is a woman, an older European woman, who hands out samples at Costco. This woman has the most sour attitude I have ever seen. She must live a miserable wretch of a life. She sneers when you give samples to the kids. She sneers when you take an extra sample (even if you buy the product), and she sneers if there are no samples and you wait.
Today, I had a sample of some greasy buffalo wings at another sample station. When I finished the sample, my hand was all sloppy, so I took a napkin from her cart. You should have seen the look on her face. She told me that I should get the napkin from the cart where I got the sample, despite the fact that the cart in question was probaby twenty yards away, in a different aisle, with the walkway blocked by about seven carts and thirty people.
I was seething mad, not from the napkin, but from the acrid behavior this woman with the job of winning new customers.
As it turns out, the manager was in the area. After five years of watching this grinch, my type-A personality finally had enough and broke out of it's cage. I have a real problem with people in contact with the public every day, yet never, ever smile.
I'll never again take samples from her two-by-three-foot empire.
quote: I have a real problem with people in contact with the public every day, yet never, ever smile.
I'll never again take samples from her two-by-three-foot empire.
Um....Forgive me for saying this, but isn't what you've just said the trivially easy resolution to the problem? You don't need free samples. She obviously doesn't want to give them to you. And you don't like taking them from her, because she doesn't smile enough.
So "I'll never take samples from her again" doesn't really sound like much of an epiphany.
This is an elderly immigrant working at the chaotic, impersonal retail hell that is Costco, handing out samples to the children of strangers and vainly trying to defend her napkins from the sloppy, grasping hands of the Public. And yet she manages to get through an entire day without strangling someone or trying to microwave her own head.
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I know you're just venting, and I know I'm not sounding as sympathetic as I should towards you, but frankly I feel kind of sorry for the woman. Yeah, she's cranky and mean and a terrible saleslady. But she's also stuck at Costco in the twilight of her years, being lectured on customer service by some manager who probably doesn't even realize the humiliating irony of those ridiculous uniforms.
When I was younger and single -- and consequently did a lot of my shopping alone, unlike today -- I used to offer to buy coffee for the people I disliked. I'd say something like, "Oh, man. Has your day been as hard as mine? All the kids in this place driving you nuts? Hey, look, can I get you a coffee or something?"
Sometimes they weren't allowed to take that sort of thing. Sometimes they weren't comfortable with it. But they often opened up with their life stories, provided I kept the whole thing casual and didn't wear my irritation on my face. And when I left them ten minutes or so later, I'd typically feel better about the situation.
I don't do that so much anymore, thanks to demands on my time that make spending ten minutes with strangers almost impossible nowadays. It's a cost I honestly hadn't expected to pay, and I seriously miss being able to do this.
In my experience, the people I find actively unpleasant are often the most desperate and fascinating. And because I strongly dislike disliking people, I'm almost always glad to hear what someone else is willing to share.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Sorry, but you weren't there. What epiphany would be satisfactory? Wiping my hands on her hair net? Buying her a dozen roses?
The mess on my hand came from a sample her company (Costco's subcontractor)provided, and so did the napkin.
I don't take samples from this (not yet elderly) woman, or many other carts. This sample was handed to me by my wife, who grabbed it while I was pulling something from the freezer.
I'm sorry, but her life situation doesn't give her license to be the back side of a horse.
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
"I'm sorry, but her life situation doesn't give her license to be an asshole."
Why not? Especially when you're defining "asshole" as "not particularly good at customer service."
Her entire job consists of giving things to ungrateful people, then trying to push a sale at them. She stands on her feet all day, and is mostly invisible except when she can't keep the samples coming.
And on top of it all, she's bad at her job; all she has to do is be pleasant, and she can't even do that. And I bet she knows it.
Her life intersects yours only in the smallest of ways. She's not your mother-in-law. She's not a neighbor. She's not -- thank God -- your boss or your employee. You encounter her when you desire samples at Costco, and your enjoyment of the samples is negatively impacted.
This is not, I submit, a particularly serious problem for you. A far more serious problem, from my point of view, is that people near retirement age are still willing to be paid to hand out samples at Costco. Her life, as you observed, is quite possibly miserable.
In other words, the brief moment of misfortune she visits upon you when you contact her is something she experiences every single moment of her life.
It is your responsibility, I believe, to let the unpleasantness die there. If you can't bring yourself to help her cure her own problems -- and, yeah, I don't even try to do that nowadays; like I said, I just don't have the time (even though I hate myself for saying it) -- the very least you can do is inoculate yourself and the world against it.
Don't be a carrier. If she spreads negativity with a glance or a touch or the flick of a napkin, you have three options:
1) Carry that negativity around with you. 2) Bounce it right back, full of anger. 3) Absorb it and transform it into something milder.
I think everyone faces this same choice when faced with unpleasantness. How they react helps determine who they are, and also how much unpleasantness is left in the world.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
That isn't the definition I'm using. Why does she continue accept her position in life? Is she not responsible for her own actions?
As I said, I've tried sugar with the woman, and it goes rancid. (Her attitude is even worse with my wife, who is the non-white half of a mixed-race marriage.) The person wearing the shirt reflects the company who's logo appears on that shirt. Her attitude can't be invisible to her employer. It's no different than the sales guy at the furniture store who judged me as not being able to afford anything substantial because I'm wearing a tee-shirt and jeans. Suddenly, his attitude changes when I write a check for fifteen-hundred dollars instead of using the low monthly payment plan. Both people reflect directly on a company that wants my business. At the furniture store, the message was judge how much help a customer gets by their appearance, and in this woman's instance, it indicates a management that is indifferent.
This woman has enough seniority at this company that she should be trained for a job that doesn't involve as much face-time with the customer. That is what I would do for her if she were my employee. But, she isn't.
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: This woman has enough seniority at this company that she should be trained for a job that doesn't involve as much face-time with the customer.
I think you may have too high an opinion of Costco. It has not been my experience that big-box retail stores of any stripe spend any time giving serious consideration to the seniority, training, or native aptitudes of their menial employees.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: In my experience, the people I find actively unpleasant are often the most desperate and fascinating. And because I strongly dislike disliking people, I'm almost always glad to hear what someone else is willing to share.
Thanks Tom. I think you've inspired me to try to be a better person.
posted
I'm just curious, does the saleslady in question not have similar obligations? To also try to be a better person in spite of adversity? Or is it only the enlightened among us who have these responsibilities?
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:As it turns out, the manager was in the area. After five years of watching this grinch, my type-A personality finally had enough and broke out of it's cage. [Mad] I have a real problem with people in contact with the public every day, yet never, ever smile.
I'll never again take samples from her two-by-three-foot empire.
Am I reading this right - did you get her fired?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: Or is it only the enlightened among us who have these responsibilities?
She's not posting here. And from the sounds of it, although of course I don't know her, it sounds like she has to do some more work to even get to the point where this is possible for her.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
You know, being able to vent is requirement to being able to keep a good attitude. She sounds awful, from all accounts.
Personally, I would just not go back to that store, and unless she went out of her way to do something mean to me, I wouldn't speak to the manager. If she were someone I had to interact with to get what I needed, I would definitely speak to management.
Posts: 516 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
She is not a Costco employee, she works for their contractor. I doubt I got her fired. The manager likely blamed everything on me.
Why waste time on people who won't help themselves when there are plenty of people around who can't help themselves.
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I agree with Tom. Much of the employment in our country is dull and dehumanizing. What motivation do people have to be some chipper, enthusiastic representative of a company that treats them like a number? I'm sorry that my consumer practices lead to a system where people have to work all day in situations like that.
As far as I'm concerned, companies don't "owe" me service. If I'm there paying cheap prices for big boxes of Easy Mac, there's really no moral obligation for anyone to try to make me have a super day. Good service is the consequence of a pleasant employment; the kind of situation you get from a small, independent company that knows you and cares about you. Giant corporate nametag wagons have very little success in inspiring their employees to care about the customer because, quite frankly, they don't care about the employee.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I wonder what she'd think if she found an entire discussion about her by people from all over the country on some random website [/random thought]
Posts: 853 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I wonder how long it will be before one of our fluff crowd decides that "Elderly European Sunshine" would be a great second login, and posts a trying-to-be-funny rant here.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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