I was reminiscing about my first interaction with an American customer I had when I had just started working (I don’t live in America, she was a tourist or something.) I worked in retail, and was taking care of a long line of customers. This American lady was at the end of the line. When she gets to me she asks to see my boss, so I head back and tell my boss a customer wants to talk to him, while I turn to some other work in the back of the store. A few minutes later my boss comes back and says the lady was upset with me and my behaviour, because I had not greeted her as she entered the store (because I was busy helping another customer.) The situation has perplexed me ever since, do all American stores employ greeters? I’m aware of the concept, how big stores like Walmart employ people to stand at the front door and greet people. But is it like that for every store in America?
No, it’s pretty atypical. There’s Walmart (as you mention) and a few others but more often, somebody stationed at an entrance/exit is security, a receipt checker (less common), or a cart-wrangler.
Sounds like you met one of our distressingly many entitled weirdos. Sorry about that.
‘greeters’ are also part of security or ‘loss prevention’, even the old guy who can’t stand-up during his shift and needs to sit on a stool at his post.
No, the vast majority never did that and now most American Stores barely have enough staff to run the registers.
Lol same here in the UK. If you go into the big supermarket chains like Tesco, Sainsburys and Asda, there are sometimes a whole bunch of registers but only 1 or 2 of them have a human working on them. The rest just sit there as a reminder that human jobs are being replaced by self checkouts.
Even where I work, our company does absolutely anything it can to avoid having to pay people, so we’re often understaffed and overworked.
Tangent over 😅
The most absurd part is the stores haven’t done anything to embrace self checkout. They have not changed the carts to help the checkout process, they have not decreased the number of unused registers, and many of them have not even made the self checkout area bigger.
In the states we have a big box hardware store called Home Depot and they really have done a great job with the self checkout process. I have not been in a single grocery store that has.
No. A typical “supermarket” (grocery + clothes, housewares, etc.) does not, nor do smaller stores that are mostly just grocery. Walmart is an exception.
Costco has people who could be called greeters, but they are just checking that you, or someone you are with, has a paid membership. Some stores have security guards at the entrances, but that’s a different thing.
Other than Walmart and stores that have memberships like Costco, there aren’t really designated greeters. That being said, when I worked for a gas station, the area manager, the person over a couple dozen stores in our part of the state, mandated that we all give some sort of greeting to every customer that comes through the doors. This is because, as middle management, she had nothing better to do than read google reviews of every store and make sweeping mandates based upon them. Obviously, we ignored her and continued greeting almost nobody. So, there are some crotchety people that will complain about anything.
Welcome to Moe’s!
The number of times I wanted to go get a burrito for lunch (Moe’s was next door to my office building) but went hungry instead solely because I did not want to hear “WELCOME TO MOE’S!” is very non-zero.
Not by a long shot. It’s mainly just Walmart. There are others, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
I worked in retail for about ten years. The company I was at did make a big deal about making a customer feel welcome, which might incidentally involve greeting a customer at the door, but we certainly were too busy to have someone perpetually posted up at the door like Walmart. Any sort of “greeting” we might have done would be the same as I what I experienced in Ireland or Italian retail where if I was approaching an employee, I’d get the local version of “hello”. Didn’t strike me as being very different.
So, no, the American retail space that has a dedicated greeter is fairly uncommon.
More often than not, retail workers behind the counter in smaller stores are required (by their employer) to greet customers as they enter. It’s a tactic to reduce theft. However, employees hate doing it. Most customers understand its a mandatory part of their routine and hate it, or at the least are indifferent. It’s an insincere greeting that nobody cares for, its just something employees have to do, or they get reprimanded.
Your customer encounter is not normal American behavior. Expecting to be greeted is a sign of entitlement (which is the likely case, due to asking for your manager) or possibly mental health.
I had to scroll too far for this. 100% accurate Oka!
No, that customer is a cunt.
No, and the funny thing is the purpose of the greeter (at least at this stage) is to lower the chances of shoplifting
my boss comes back and says the lady was upset with me and my behaviour, because I had not greeted her as she entered the store
I’m sure she also went to the subway driver with the same complaint after she entered the train…
A ton of stores do this in the US, but I’ve never once found myself upset that someone didn’t greet me. That person sounds bat shit insane
As other commenters have said this is basically only a thing at Walmart. Sometimes in very small shops someone will say hello as you enter, but that’s a much more informal thing and as I said only really happens with tiny mom-and-pop stores where there might only be one or two people working.
Greeters is a jobs program that keeps retirement age people working instead of them having to steal from the stores they work at.
It’s seriously only disabled people or people who should have been allowed o retire already.
It’s mostly just Walmart, and they have been laying off their greeters this year.
Your first paragraph I know is humorous but what keeps them from stealing from stores they’re working at as greeters? Too busy standing around at the front of the store to steal anything?
People usually don’t steal things they can easily pay for.
In most stores, greeting is just a task that all staff are trained on. The store has to be over a certain pretty large size before that one task becomes an entire person’s job. They also fulfill other functions like giving directions that make more sense at larger stores.
When I worked at Best Buy, if a customer entered my department I was expected to address them. We were trained to make it seem natural, just a greeting and naturally segway into asking if you can assist. It was to prevent theft but also the chances of closing a sale go up significantly.
My understanding is nobody likes doing it and most customers aren’t big on the pushy sales people.
I deeply hate going into Best Buy because of this. I don’t blame the greeters because it’s obviously not their decision. But I don’t go in there just for fun to browse around anymore like I used to. I only go in rarely when I can’t get something at a better price anywhere else. If I didn’t hate Amazon more I’d have ditched Best Buy altogether when they started doing this.
Yeah I used to have a circuitous path to enter Best Buy, so I could avoid those people. It just felt like high pressure sales or oppressiveness. Plus where are they when I do actually need a store person. I essentially never need them when entering the store so I wish they’d leave me alone
Home Depot used to be really good at this (not in several years though). They used to have people in each department (not anymore) who knew what they were doing (not anymore) and offered to help (now the few remaining salespeople don’t know anything and actively avoid customers). It used to be so nice that I could freely enter the store, goto wherever I needed but if I was stuck there’d be someone offering to help and who could usually help. I miss that
It seems like Massachusetts Best Buys did not get the memo. I hear all these stories about people hating Best Buy over pushy employees and have the opposite experience. The stores only have 1-2 employees on the floor and the duty of those employees seems to be to hide from customers. If I ever need help finding an item or want something from a locked display, I have to spend 15-20 minutes running around the store trying to catch a ninja.
This is kind of why I like going to Microcenter. They do the “hey, how’s it going” thing, but it’s in a really professional way. And if you tell them you’re just looking they back off and let you stand there for 20 minutes. And if you ask for advice on something, they’ll give you suggestions and detailed explanations about why they think that way.
No, but common retail etiquette is to say to people who come in the store. That being said you were helping someone else so the Americans should have waited as that’s also standard US etiquette
