TEACHING THEM TO BE HUMAN - Joey, a conversion

Sometimes, authentic cashiering involves teaching customers to have social graces – actually, to be more human themselves.

If they try to hand their money in over someone else’s shoulder, I politely ask them to wait their turn. If they slap down their money and walk off with no verbal exchange, I count it quick and yell the amount after them, just to make sure we are on the same page.

Joey is one of our regulars. He comes in once or twice a day for cigarettes or for gas for one of his two vehicles, car and truck. He seemed for a long time to be seriously lacking in social graces. He would mostly not make eye contact and would be very curt, saying just the necessary words to complete his transaction. After getting his change, he would turn on his heels and walk away, as if dismissing you now that he longer needed you.

Realizing that Joey would be coming to my window once or twice a day, I took him on as a special project. I would give him a little extra friendliness when he appeared and a particularly warm “Have a nice day” as he left, even though he showed no signs that I still existed for him.

The first break in Joey's iceberg imitation came when he noticed me one day riding my bike off from the gas station and asked me the next morning if I rode it to work every day. I warmed to this exchange and told him I rode it every day that it wasn’t raining and that otherwise I would walk from downtown, where I lived, and that it was pretty ironic my working at a gas station when I have no car. From that day, Joey started calling me “Bicycle Man”, which struck me as his way of getting more personal – even though he still ended the transaction as abruptly as before. But I used this as a chance to get his name and used it consistently, in a particularly friendly way.

Then Joey started telling me, on some mornings, that he was “going to the country” – that he had a place out there. A ways later I got up my courage to ask him more about this place. He told me it had come down from his grandfather.

At about the same time as mentioning going to the country, Joey would sometimes say that he was going fishing and other times would brag about how many he had caught the day before. I was all over this opening, asking him – on separate days – how often he went, where, what kind of fish he caught, etc. This gave me a great hook (ha-ha) to getting more personal. One day he took me out to his truck and proudly pulled from a cooler a stringer full of fish. (Not being a fisherman, I have actually forgotten what kind.) This moment seemed particularly engaged – I knew we were making progress.

But Joey still continued to end our interactions at the window in the same impersonal way, which kept me (and my boss, back at his little manager’s desk) kind of shaking our heads. “What’s with this guy? Didn’t his mother teach him anything about how to treat people?”

Then two things shifted, simultaneously and pretty much out of the blue. I wear a name tag and many of our customers – regulars and those I am serving for the first time – seem to like calling me by my name. With no warning, Joey some of the time started dropping “Bicycle Man” and calling me John. Seemingly at the same juncture, he started – at least some of the time – also saying “Have a nice day” as he walked off. I almost did a little victory dance around the booth – maybe would have, if there was room.

And Joey just keeps getting looser and looser, more and more human. He brought me some tomatoes from his garden. One day he ended our conversation by saying, “I’ll be taking leave of you, John.” Then another day, the same line, only substituting “Old buddy” for John! Another day he greeted me by saying, “How’s my buddy today?”!! Still another day, he called me “Johnnie”. I am repeatedly knocked out by his new – and growing – warmth.

Over a period of several months, we have taken one cold-fish, pain-in-the-butt customer and either taught him or melted him into being basically a nice guy and good customer. I can’t help but wonder if this new friendliness might eventually start popping up from him in other business or even personal interactions. Maybe, maybe not. Joey seems to be generalizing this newly human way of operating with the guy who regularly works the evening shift, but not to our boss who just fills in at the window when we are on break, using the bathroom, etc.

This feels not only like a win, but a genuinely poignant little glimpse into a customer’s human heart.