Helping the customer save face

When I’m in this contracted state, I lose my natural graciousness. This black teenaged guy (whom I probably should have carded) had already been embarrassed by not having enough for his Phillie Blunt cigar. Then I aggravated his embarrassment my not letting him take the 8 cents out of the penny jar.

I think that, in addition to my own state, I was hewing to the company line with my boss behind me. He has already said that he doesn’t leave the penny tray out for this exact reason.

I was glad that I talked the thing out with my boss, because he then came from his empathic human place, rather than his irascible customer-bashing side. He said that he usually has that kind of change in his pocket and would hook the kid up – very cool.

I could/should have at least softened it for that teen-aged customer by saying the price had just gone up (he did have the old price). But I was too tight to flex like that – I was all business. What a blessing he came back with the money! I was able then to be lots more warm to him, glad he got his Blunt and telling him that I felt bad about sending him away without it.

Don't keep them stuck in crabbiness

I'm learning to not load up by aggravation at someone just because they start out crabby, regarding having to pre-pay, etc. Often they reconsider or somehow otherwise get their act together before they come back to the window.

Who's stupid?

Whenever possible, I like to give my customers some props – treat them as if they were smart, cute, clever, funny, etc. But what about when I need to just patiently keep pointing out their operator errors, e.g. “It’s all set to pump, Ma’am – try pushing the start button again.” Sometimes we can’t protect them from feeling stupid. And, their sense of being called out for their stupidity does often correspond with them starting out to blame us. They have a bias towards someone being at fault - it's got to be either us or them. This gets in the way of us just collaboratively trying to fix the problem.