Deficit of Decency

A job in retail, as anyone will tell you, requires a sense of humour. 

Plus a good sleeping pattern; a visualization of your pay-cheque; a sturdy jaw to take the clenching of teeth; patience, and a box of tissues for whenever you waver on any of the above.

It requires you to smile when you don’t feel like smiling, laugh amiably when it’s not worth laughing and answer some really fucking stupid questions (while raising a few smarter ones of your own, such as “if having this stuff is this important to some people, then what is life?”). You are required to then take the abuse that comes with this, even when you have managed to generally pander to people and their whims as much as it is humanly possible without surfacing for air with a slurp, a gasp, and a very brown nose.

I am a firm believer of ‘do as you would be done by’. 

As a customer, I want to feel valued to some degree and be met with politeness and the due amount of respect that comes with it, as any well-mannered stranger in an establishment might expect and accord. I know what it feels like to have an uninterested person serving you in a shop. 

That is why the self-service machine was invented in the first place: because, buddy, you actually could have a machine doing your job. aka. taking my money and not packing my bag for me. Put some personality into your job and a machine can’t take it from you. 

Clearly why we’re suffering in the 21^st century. 

It stands to reason, then, that I should be able to emanate the qualities so desired by a customer when I, myself, am behind the cash desk, or answering your inquiries. I will do as I would be done by. 

So I will be patient, and polite, and smile, and maybe even crack a gentle, if not mildly self-deprecating joke, in your favour. 

I will gently acknowledge the weaker moments of the corporate scheme, while not damaging the reputation of the company who employ me. 

I will run your errand, find your product, recommend the next best thing and where to find it and even call you a god damn taxi and carry your bags out to it. 

So what do you do when your customer continues to be an utter cock?

It's not even just customers. It's the public. The people allowed out on the streets. Yes, it's the twat on the phone who comes to the till and doesn't say a word to you; but it's also the guy who stops in the doorway to put his receipt in his wallet. It's the person who gets off the top of the escalator and doesn't know where to go; the person who exits a shop at snail's pace into a stream of pedestrian traffic. 

Some people exist to test you. 

I'm sure of it. Why else would anyone be that much of, and that deliberately, a tosser? It's to keep The Strong strong.  

Maybe I started this out all wrong. Perhaps it's not customers in shops at all. Just because we stand behind tills for long shifts at a time, it doesn't mean it's just arsehole customers inside the store and logical people outside. No, no. It's people in general these days. 

No one thinks, no one cares. What happened to being conscientious? What happened to saying 'please' and 'thank you'; what happened to smiling at people? 

In shops, on the pavements, in cars (God, aren't there idiots in cars). When did 'giving other people a hard time' become a more common occurrence than congratulating others on a job well done? We're a very selfish and self-indulgent generation (well, we're a very selfish and self-indulgent race, but I'll save some misanthropy for another post). 

It ain't half a struggle to try and be a decent person on the highstreets of 2017. 

*deep breath* "And would you like a 5p bag for that?"