James

James is the manager of the wine store across the street from where I live. I had been thinking that I might want to work as a “Wine Tasting Host” at a local resort that has its own vineyards, so I decided I should drink more wine (work, work, work) and try to learn more about wines. So I went over to the wine store and tried to get some information.

I told James what I was up to. I asked him to describe to me the differences in two wines that were on sale – both quite reasonable at about $8 – and then picked one to buy. I would not say that James was unfriendly – just that he was not friendly. (The contrast with Kawla, in the previous post, was extremely striking.) He stayed very aloof, answering my questions, briefly, but making no attempt to really engage with me.

I walked out of the store feeling almost like I had dirt on me – I not only did not feel valued in that store, it felt that I had been disrespected, really kind of devalued. This whole thing felt so yucchy, especially in Asheville, a town where people do generally tend to be informal, friendly and engaging (the orthopedic surgeon who operated on my shoulder calls me, “Man” – I love that). The whole experience felt kind of strange – I was actually a bit blindsided by it.

So I found myself trying to make sense of what had just gone on – partly so as to not take it personally, even when it did feel kind of personal. Here were my hypotheses:

1) James knows lots about wines. He was offended by the very idea that a store could hire someone, teach them some minimal amount about a limited stock, then turn that person loose like he really knows about wines. This is actually my favorite hypothesis. I can kind of understand it and it mostly does not feel personal. But I keep finding myself thinking that this was not all that was going on.

2) James’ customers tend mostly to be pretty affluent. They come down from their mountaintop retirement homes – or second homes – and stock up on wine. I see lots of folks coming out of there carrying cases of wine or followed by one of the staff carrying one or more cases. Not only was I clearly not going to be buying cases of wine, I actually walked out with one of the cheapest bottles in the store. I didn’t tell James that I could maybe afford one such bottle per week, if I pinch my pennies, but he may have guessed that. So he smelled that I was not going to be much of a customer. Thinking about it this way feels more offensive than #1. But #3 feels the worst.

3) This whole encounter reminded me that wine, in our culture, is interwoven with class. Wealthy people buy good wines. Students, blue-collar workers, etc. either drink beer or inexpensive wines – cheaper than anything in that store. I’ll bet that even lower-middle class folks, if they do go in this store (or the resort winery I referred to), tend to feel a little awkward, a little out of their element – a little outclassed.

As I walked away from the wine store, I couldn’t shake the idea that James’ cool response to me probably had some of all three motivations. 1) He believed that “wine tasting hosts” should know a lot more about wine than I could possibly learn in some little training program. 2) He was not motivated to invest much energy in someone who was never going to be a particularly high-dollar customer. And 3) he likes to spend time with affluent, higher-class customers – and did not, actually, value me as much as them.

These hypotheses – made up in my head as they were, without good solid data – left me feeling soiled about the whole wine business. I no longer want to work as a “Wine Tasting Host”. Once in a while I may buy a bottle of wine, especially – let’s face it – on a date. But I think I’ll mostly just go back to beer.

Khawla

Khawla is, I guess, the “manager” of a local independent drug store. To me, she is the “Manager of First Impressions” or, even more, a gracious hostess.

At work, Khawla (who grew up in Palestine) mostly uses the name Kathy, I imagine because it is easier for our American ears and tongues. I have this belief, though, that one very fundamental way of respecting people’s various diversities is to call them the name they would like to be called. I also think that we Americans tend to be kind of provincial in the way we get cranky if someone has a name that doesn’t come easy for us. So what – get over it. So I asked Khawla if Kathy was her given name (I suspected not). When she told me that her given name was Khawla, I asked her if she would like me to call her that. I thought she seemed pleased as she said, “Yes”.

Khawla’s drug store is in many ways outclassed by the “Big Box” drug stores. Their stock is mostly just medications and low-priced cigarettes (kind of ironic) – and not much beyond that. But they are the only pharmacy downtown and they are s-o-o nice. All the staff are nice, but Khawla is the queen of nice. It actually goes way beyond nice – Khawla makes you feel that you are a valued guest in her store.

Yeah, lots of restaurants, retail stores, etc., are picking up on the “guest” language and metaphor. But for Khawla it is neither an affectation nor a gimmick nor a metaphor. That’s just how she thinks about it. I mentioned this observation to her one day and she responded – with obvious sincerity – “That is the way I see it. Most of our customers are also very nice, so I am happy to see them come in.”

Another thing that seems significant about all this is how many of Khawla’s customers are poor and/or disabled. They live in rundown and/or subsidized housing downtown and don’t have cars to go to any of the more glitzy stores outside of the city center. These are folks who are often marginalized or devalued. Khawla treats them all with equal graciousness. If she even sees that the customers are poor, disabled, etc., she shows absolutely no sign of it in her manner.

I wondered if any of Khawla’s gracious manner stems from her cultural background. I asked her the other day and she said, "I think so - to respect each person for who they are." This is not something I knew about Palestinian culture - I am glad to know it now.

Jimmie

Jimmie is one of our goofiest customers. He is 70’ish, dressed typically in a dirty t-shirt, poorly or unshaven, scruffy hair. He drives a very old, very beat-up truck that you can hear coming before it pulls into the lot. No one in his family, including their two grown kids who live at home, can ever afford to get very much gas at one time, so we see them at the gas station one or (often) more times a day.

Jimmie is prone to making the same tired little jokes

· Ordering his cig’s, “Give me a pack of them lung-busters.”
· Asked how he’s doing, “I’d say I’m pretty good, but I ain’t a bit pretty.”
· Or “The old lady’s gone, so I’m doin’ good.”

He typically has a kind of vacant look about him that leaves me wondering just where he’s really at, anyway? His wife, Ann, seems so much more with it that I sometimes wonder just what keeps them together.

Tonight, Jimmie was at the outside pump, filling up Ann's new-to-her little, relatively less beat-up red car, while she came over to the window to pay. Then, when their car was full, I suddenly saw Jimmie at the pump directly in front of me, helping a woman with a walker who was having a hard time using her credit card at the pump. I asked Ann if he knew this lady – I was sure he must, from the way he went over to help her.

Ann said, “No, she was having trouble, so he went over. That’s how he is. He just can’t see anybody having a hard time without trying to help them.”

Go figure….

Next day: Jimmie comes to the window and I mention him helping that lady.
“Hey, that was really nice of you.”
“Well, she needed help.”
“Ann says you do that kind of thing a lot.”
“Well, you never know when you’re going to need their help.”

So much for “vacant”… how much more is going on under the hood with this guy that his manner does not tip off?

Taking Care of Your Money

Sometimes people pay with bills that have not been well cared for. Sometimes the money has clearly just been balled up in the person’s pockets. I have, more than once, been given a $100 bill that was wadded up not much bigger than a dime.

Now I admit that cashiering has activated a little latent anal-retentiveness in me. When people give me a bundle (even five) of dollar bills, I do wish they were all facing the same way (and my boss requires this of me). I will typically put these disorderly singles in the little basket on the right side of the cash register (away from the window) for later arranging, and take some moments to get the larger bills in their appropriate slots.

But today a guy laid down a little bouquet of rolled up bills and said it was $30. I did take care of myself by saying, “Let’s see what we’ve got here” and then took the time to count it. When people hand me better arranged bills, I will often just eyeball them and not actually count the singles – don’t tell my boss. When I do get around to counting them, lined up the same way, before putting them in the drawer, they are almost always correct. But the chaos of this pile told me I should count it carefully, which I did.

This obviously irritated my young customer. But I realized as he walked back to his car that I really had let him off too easy. I allowed him to get about his business, but I was still faced with that bundle of wadded up bills to be put away, while I had other customers in front of me at the window.

What I really needed to do was to patiently straighten out those bills and put them in the drawer before turning on this guy’s pump. He might then express more irritation – verbally or nonverbally. (It actually occurs to me that this guy really was in a passive-aggressive mode – frustrating him could easily take out the passive part.) I could then have explained, in my most matter-of-fact way, that the money has to go in the drawer before I complete a transaction. I might or might not add, “If you want it to go faster, you need to pay with bills that are in better shape.” (Oh, let’s not. If he’s not catching on at that point, the two-by-four is probably not going to help.)

I feel good about this approach. It’s neither punitive nor arbitrary – it’s simply letting the customer take the consequences of balling up his money.

SMALL TALK

“Small talk” has its own little niche in ACS interactions. It tends to be more engaged than “matter-of-fact” interactions (see previous post), even while it can be ridiculously repetitious, dealing with gas prices, the weather, cars, etc. But it also tends to have less humor and edge than “easy banter” (see previous post).

It’s the kind of interaction that I have at times viewed as “too superficial” or have said that I’m really not very good at it, because “I want real sharing”, or some shit like that.

It is getting clear to me at the gas station that this kind of “small talk” is the lubricant that keeps some relationships, at least (maybe lots of relationships, not just at the gas station) moving along. (In the song “It’s a Wonderful World”, there’s the line that goes, “I see friends shakin’ hands, sayin’ ‘How do you do?’ What they’re really sayin’ is ‘I love you’.”)

I am getting better at small talk – and I am seeing clearly its value. Much of the time, it’s what saves us from just standing there, awkwardly looking at each other. Awkwardness can trigger shyness, which can trigger avoidance. Small talk smoothes things, makes them comfortable. It’s actually pretty good stuff.

Not showing up 100%

I may be especially involved in a book that I am avidly reading when there is even a little break in the action. (Sometimes I just read a sentence at a time, but am so into the book that this is still, for me, worth the effort of going back and forth.) When lots of my energy is going to what I am reading, I have less energy available for interactions at the window, and I am more likely to be simply matter-of-fact with customers who present themselves at this time. It’s easy to make a case that I am then less fully focused on the here-and-now, not giving 100%, even a little like the robot I, overall, do not want to be. But this work can, honestly, be so boring – especially near the end of a shift, when I have already been doing it for several hours – that I kind of need to offer myself the carrot that, when things slow down, especially later in the evening shift, I’m going to give myself the little reward of reading stuff that I am really into. I feel no guilt about, at some time, “showing up” a little less for the work. Offering myself the carrot allows me to feel better about the shift and the job itself. It is part of what allows me to keep going for this shift, in this job