Store "Greeters"

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Unless they ask me how I am doing, this is harmless. In fact, its actually a good idea. Workin in C-stores & such, in the past, you learned to greet everyone who walked in the door because it 1) Let's them know that you have seen them and 2) You are aware of your enviroment & engaged.
The principle applies to large stores too. I have actually had to do it, myself ( In Wal*Mart too!) Only covering the breaks & such. This side of it, was God Awful for me. I do not like calling attention to myself & they always wanted to make smalltalk, something I have little skill in. Usually, if busy, I would soon go into sensory overload fairly rapidly. Uggh! I hate even remembering it. In my store, I was more than happy to work the service desk, but keep me off the Sales Floor!

Sincerely,
Matthew

Logicalmom, I bark at them sometimes, LOL Being checked is one of the things that make me prone to having a meltdown.

What did make me a bit uncomfortable in the US (Manhattan) last year is that they all wear black suits with black ties and their bodies are huge. I felt like I was going into a mafia fortress rather than a store. Here they're just regular boys or girls after the army service, or retired old men or immigrants... Isn't that uncomfortable for you, guys?

In the USA, in Wal*Mart, they are mostly semi-retitired senior citizens. Its more like talking to older relatives for me. Not a problem. Usually.
If you were in New York or New Jersey, it might actually have been a MAFIA establishment!

Matthew
PS.
Do you know that your "handle" was actually a Top Secret US Gvt. program? (OT I know but I got curious!)

Nope, they were women's clothes stores! LOL

Top secret gov't programs is a special interest of mine! I'll see if I can find info on the web.

The worst are the ones who wander through the store and check on you while you're in the midst of browsing. I've had people ask me if I was 'finding what I was looking for' when I had an armful of books and my nose in another one, checking the first few pages to see if I wanted to buy it. If someone is wandering around looking lost, feel free to offer to help them! If they're clearly not lost, leave them the f**k alone.

When people offer to find stuff for me, I just take them up on the offer. Make them work for their money.

I don't really care, I just quickly force a smile and walk past them. They're usually friendly old people anyway.

Greeters are in nearly all cases a loss prevention measure. It is somehow cheaper to pay someone $8 per hour to be just capable enough to use a walkie and a telxon gun.

For this I almost have to respect their employer for realizing that losing a pile of cheap Chinese goods really does add up to more than a couple hundred bucks a day.

In the end, I don't really acknowledge Greeters physically since they serve no humanitarian purpose.

I don't mind the greeters at Walmart. I'd probably do okay as a greeter myself. Since I am so horrible at recognizing people, I just assume that I know everyone and say hello to them anyway just in case I am supposed to know who they are.

What I hate is their employees who randomly select someone leaving the store and check their bags. I used to get selected for this at one Walmart store by one particular employee of theirs every time I left the store if he was working. That employee was rather elderly and frail. The only thing I could figure is that I looked much less threatening than most of their customers.

Actually, they used to do this in my local ASDA. Now they've stopped doing it - instead, they have two chaps staring at people walking through the door and gazing at their CCTV camera monitors.

Here is my idea of good customer service:

Don't look at me
Don't ask if I need help finding something
Don't start a convoration with me at the check out
Don't pet my service dog
Don't follow me around the store
Don't smile at me for a long time in a creepy way and expect me to smile back
Don't compliment me
Don't even speak to me, just leave me alone and let me shop in peace!

You're quite happy to say hello, thank you and goodbye though? It's free and costs nothing.

I've never been in a store where they randomly select people to go through their bags. I'd get offended, take everything back for a refund, and never shop there again.

There have been times when something didn't scan all the way or something and the alarm at Wal Mart went off. Usually somebody walks over there, because I stop and back up and start looking under the bags in my buggy. Me and the lady who comes over look through everything. I hand her the receipt because I can't see stuff that small and usually she knows which items it is that cause a problem, because they have been causing one all day. For some reason some stuff doesn't scan right and stop the alarm thing. After a minute or so of looking, they usually get tired of it and say "Oh, just go on". The worst I've ever had was a lady who used her little hand held thing to rescan each item and let me walk through again after each item., to see which one did it.

The thank you and goodbye is fine. Not the hello because hello always turns into how are you.

That's easy - you can answer the 'hello' questions by rote. It's easy. Just say what everyone else says.

You: "Hello."
Them: "Hi. How are you?"
You: "Fine thanks. Yourself?"
Them: "I'm alright."
You: "Nice day innit?"
Them: "Aye."

And so on.

Even though I had to do that when I worked in a local grocery store so much, that I would even greet people outside of work, it always catches me off guard when people do it to me.