About a year ago, I was working two part-time jobs. The first was staffing the gift shop in really a fairly nice, big downtown hotel. The second was as a cashier in a very busy gas station.
The first was obviously quite a bit classier, but – after about four months of juggling the two – I quit the gift shop to go full-time at the gas station. One reason was economic: they both paid a pittance, but six days at the gas station meant eight hours of overtime, which never happened when I split my time between the two.
The second reason I described as that the gas station was “more fun”. By that I meant it was looser. Paul and I, the primary worker-bees, each felt free to kid around with customers – especially our many “regulars”, but not just them. With the guys, we used lots of what I call “buddy”isms – “man”, “guy”, “bud”, “buddy”, etc. Not being southern, I had a little more difficulty with terms of endearment for women customers, which flowed easily out of Paul – “hon”, “dear”, “sweetie”, etc. But, somewhat to my surprise, after a few months, the occasional “hon” just popped out of my mouth, unbidden. A couple of my favorite regulars even sometimes got a “darlin’” – again, pretty much to my surprise, but it also felt really natural.
I’ve written at length about how sweet those interactions could be in “Keeping It Human”, an “Article” at my Authentic Customer Service web site – (see adjoining link). I also wrote about how satisfying it was to sometimes not be so nice, when the situation warranted.
I now have left the gas station (more about this in an earlier post) and am again doing 2-3 shifts a week back at the hotel gift shop. Returning there after almost a year away, I have observed three things about this job.
1. Working in the hotel (though I am not a hotel employee - my boss is the guy who leases the gift shop) is more conservative, more corporate. Whereas at the gas station you were usually alone and free to basically create your own little culture, here there are lots of other watchful eyes, including various managers who somehow feel it is their responsibility to watch over what is going on in the gift shop.
2. I’ve learned a lot in the intervening year about being a “host” – partly from working at the gas station, where I really did consider people “my customers”, but also from watching other folks who are good at hosting in a retail environment. (See my post about Khawla, the manager/host at our downtown drug store.)
3. I’m having way more fun this time around. Having played so much with my customers at the gas station, I seem able now to feel my way into just what are the boundaries of fun here in this more corporate hotel. I don’t use near as many “buddy”isms – and so far no “sweetie"isms. But I have let loose with a few “man”s. Somehow I have an intuition - so far accurate, I think - of with whom this relative looseness could work. A couple of these guys may have been a little surprised by my familiarity, but hey, this is Asheville – my orthopedist calls me “Man”.
But the looser modes of address are just the tip of the fun iceberg (definitely the wrong metaphor). I am just looser with people in general. I know it comes through in my tone of voice. I’m liking myself more and liking them more.
I think I’m shaking the job title of “Cashier” or even “Sales Associate”. I’m not just a host, but I’m more than ever a person – who just happens to be playing the role of “Cashier”, etc. I am meeting people, more than ever, person to person. As I do that, I can more just sense to what extent that person or family is ready to have fun – and I, these days in this job, am almost always ready.
The other day, one of two 12ish girls, themselves clearly having fun roaming the hotel, said, “You’re cool, John”. I think she liked the full way I showed up for them - like they were real people, not just kids. And I think she heard the subtle playfulness in my voice. I responded with, “Great. Come on back and we’ll hang.” They clearly loved that – and did breeze by several more times that day, giving big waves and an occasional, “Hey, John”.
A 12 year old girl clearly having a good time with a 60 year old man who isn’t her grandfather - it can’t get much more fun than that.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Getting Canned
I guess I picked a good day to die. That woman last night was so fundamentally disrespectful that I mostly don’t regret calling her a bitch. If she had been a little less nasty, if I had been a little less angry, I might have come up some more elegant response, but I really was not able to sort through my options at that moment. I think I might like to have stood toe-to-toe with her and said something like, “Do you know how completely disrespectful you are being? This is totally unacceptable.” And then to have found some good way to respond to what she threw at me next.
As it was, I think I knew I was abut to blow from the extraordinarily hostile way she said, “Oh, so I get delayed because you screwed up”, so moved away from her quickly, dropping behind me as I went my typical sarcastic/harmless, “Thank you, have a nice day.” I really did not intend to have her hear my “bitch”, muttered under my breath, but she did.
She came over to the booth then, her aggressive tone undiminished. “What’s your name?” “John…you weren’t supposed to hear that.” (I don’t know what good I thought that might do.) Her following words were ok in themselves, it’s just that they were delivered with the same icy aggressiveness. “It’s not professional to call someone a bitch.” I might have gotten away with it all (she might have cooled off and not called HQ), had I not then said, “Sometimes it just fits.”
Like I said, I’m not going to second-guess myself. I did what I did, and mostly I’ll stand behind it. And I have known for the last few weeks that I was overdue to get out of here. The late nights play hell with my body and mind. And the repetition of the interactions has finally reached a point that I finally can’t find my way around it any more. So life helped me unhook.
Jim, my boss, was so nice about it: “It could have been any of us.” His boss had said to him, ‘I’ve been letting too much slide at your store. Not this time.” I expressed to Jim my primary concern about the loss of my good reference. He said, “Have them call me.”
Paul was totally understanding and playing to the light side, “You bad boy…I was lucky to slide through.” Really very nice connections with both of them. I meant it when I said that I will stay in touch. And I agree with Paul that, “When one door closes, another will open up.”
I liked saying to Jim – and even clearer to Paul - how nice it has been working with them, and what exceptional men I think they both are. Paul made it clear that he felt the same.
So, overall, I’m not feeling very bad, considering. I actually am glad to have gone out with a bang, not a whimper.
As it was, I think I knew I was abut to blow from the extraordinarily hostile way she said, “Oh, so I get delayed because you screwed up”, so moved away from her quickly, dropping behind me as I went my typical sarcastic/harmless, “Thank you, have a nice day.” I really did not intend to have her hear my “bitch”, muttered under my breath, but she did.
She came over to the booth then, her aggressive tone undiminished. “What’s your name?” “John…you weren’t supposed to hear that.” (I don’t know what good I thought that might do.) Her following words were ok in themselves, it’s just that they were delivered with the same icy aggressiveness. “It’s not professional to call someone a bitch.” I might have gotten away with it all (she might have cooled off and not called HQ), had I not then said, “Sometimes it just fits.”
Like I said, I’m not going to second-guess myself. I did what I did, and mostly I’ll stand behind it. And I have known for the last few weeks that I was overdue to get out of here. The late nights play hell with my body and mind. And the repetition of the interactions has finally reached a point that I finally can’t find my way around it any more. So life helped me unhook.
Jim, my boss, was so nice about it: “It could have been any of us.” His boss had said to him, ‘I’ve been letting too much slide at your store. Not this time.” I expressed to Jim my primary concern about the loss of my good reference. He said, “Have them call me.”
Paul was totally understanding and playing to the light side, “You bad boy…I was lucky to slide through.” Really very nice connections with both of them. I meant it when I said that I will stay in touch. And I agree with Paul that, “When one door closes, another will open up.”
I liked saying to Jim – and even clearer to Paul - how nice it has been working with them, and what exceptional men I think they both are. Paul made it clear that he felt the same.
So, overall, I’m not feeling very bad, considering. I actually am glad to have gone out with a bang, not a whimper.
Mike
Mike is my third colleague at the gas station. He’s the newest here, but he has done a lot of this work over the last few years. Mike is clearly burned out from this work – as is Paul, and as I am more and more becoming, after a year at it.
Mike’s way of handling his burnout it to keep his energy tightly held in, to extend as little as possible to customers. One day he said to me, “My policy is to interact with these people as little as possible. I take their money and give them their change. Otherwise, they’re on the other side of the window and I’m going to keep them there.”
He is not totally consistent about this policy. Some people come in that he knows – either from other jobs or from here – he will be friendly and goof around with them. And clearly – maybe he’s in a good mood – something motivates him to be friendly or nice with some other people. But otherwise he is just amazingly flat – his voice is frighteningly dead. “Yes, ma'am”, as if he was dealing with something other than a human being. The other day, a cute little girl, maybe all of six, came to the window, bringing up her mother’s gas money. “Surely he’ll give her a little extra juice,” I thought. Nope. The same – just “no ma’am”.
Mike also has some choice labels for our customers, like “crackheads”. There certainly are some crackheads in this neighborhood. (A twentieish girl came in one day to retrieve the drivers’ license her mother had left. “She’s a crackhead – always has been, probably will be until she dies.”) So he may sometimes be right. But I don’t know how he can tell in each case.
(I also mostly don’t like the word. It feels pretty disrespectful. Even the more simply descriptive “drug addict” leaves out so much of who they are. Drug addiction is not who they are, but something the do, or are struggling with.)
Mike obviously thinks that he is somehow protecting his energy by relating to people in this distant sort of way. But I don’t think so. I think he’s killing his energy, and – at least a little bit – himself. There’s a way that treating other humans as if they were something less – even if we call them “customers” – takes away some of our own humanity.
Paul has done this work longer and is, also, clearly burned out. When he comes in to start his shift, he makes no bones of the fact that this is one of the last things he wants to be doing, but has to because he needs the money. Or, when I relieve him, he always says that he is “real glad to see you”.
But Paul handles his burned-outness in a very different way than Mike. He has a little game he plays with almost every customer. No mater what they ask for (“$20 on pump 4”), he says “No” – but with such a sweet little lilt, almost singing it, that people know he’s teasing. Some of these customers (usually young women, for some reason) will playfully sass him right back, saying, “Yes”, very definitively. But almost all seem to enjoy it.
(Not all – some just look at him like he’s speaking Greek. He shrugs it off, saying, “He didn’t get it.” And it does no harm and is just a little price from taking a little risk with people. I have worked in a couple of buttoned-down corporate retail situations where this kind of playfulness absolutely would not have been allowed. I actually got fired from one for just this kind of banter with a customer – who did “get it”, but the manager did not. Here, our manager does get it, and appreciates the way Paul is giving a little something extra.)
It doesn’t matter that what Paul is doing is not really creative or truly spontaneous, since he does it with almost every customer, for the whole shift. But still, he is injecting a little extra energy and people feel, I think, like they have been acknowledged.
Mike’s way of handling his burnout it to keep his energy tightly held in, to extend as little as possible to customers. One day he said to me, “My policy is to interact with these people as little as possible. I take their money and give them their change. Otherwise, they’re on the other side of the window and I’m going to keep them there.”
He is not totally consistent about this policy. Some people come in that he knows – either from other jobs or from here – he will be friendly and goof around with them. And clearly – maybe he’s in a good mood – something motivates him to be friendly or nice with some other people. But otherwise he is just amazingly flat – his voice is frighteningly dead. “Yes, ma'am”, as if he was dealing with something other than a human being. The other day, a cute little girl, maybe all of six, came to the window, bringing up her mother’s gas money. “Surely he’ll give her a little extra juice,” I thought. Nope. The same – just “no ma’am”.
Mike also has some choice labels for our customers, like “crackheads”. There certainly are some crackheads in this neighborhood. (A twentieish girl came in one day to retrieve the drivers’ license her mother had left. “She’s a crackhead – always has been, probably will be until she dies.”) So he may sometimes be right. But I don’t know how he can tell in each case.
(I also mostly don’t like the word. It feels pretty disrespectful. Even the more simply descriptive “drug addict” leaves out so much of who they are. Drug addiction is not who they are, but something the do, or are struggling with.)
Mike obviously thinks that he is somehow protecting his energy by relating to people in this distant sort of way. But I don’t think so. I think he’s killing his energy, and – at least a little bit – himself. There’s a way that treating other humans as if they were something less – even if we call them “customers” – takes away some of our own humanity.
Paul has done this work longer and is, also, clearly burned out. When he comes in to start his shift, he makes no bones of the fact that this is one of the last things he wants to be doing, but has to because he needs the money. Or, when I relieve him, he always says that he is “real glad to see you”.
But Paul handles his burned-outness in a very different way than Mike. He has a little game he plays with almost every customer. No mater what they ask for (“$20 on pump 4”), he says “No” – but with such a sweet little lilt, almost singing it, that people know he’s teasing. Some of these customers (usually young women, for some reason) will playfully sass him right back, saying, “Yes”, very definitively. But almost all seem to enjoy it.
(Not all – some just look at him like he’s speaking Greek. He shrugs it off, saying, “He didn’t get it.” And it does no harm and is just a little price from taking a little risk with people. I have worked in a couple of buttoned-down corporate retail situations where this kind of playfulness absolutely would not have been allowed. I actually got fired from one for just this kind of banter with a customer – who did “get it”, but the manager did not. Here, our manager does get it, and appreciates the way Paul is giving a little something extra.)
It doesn’t matter that what Paul is doing is not really creative or truly spontaneous, since he does it with almost every customer, for the whole shift. But still, he is injecting a little extra energy and people feel, I think, like they have been acknowledged.
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