Service with a ... Please?

Seems to me that retail customer service is fast becoming a lost art form.

This lack of common decency bothers me. It shows just how important money has become in our society. It's all business now. The polite greetings and small chat we love as a community has disappeared.

A few minutes ago I was forced to visit the local grocery store. We were low on coffee, and I truly need my morning coffee. So off I trudged to the closest grocery store to pick up a can of the good stuff. When I arrived at the store and located the coffee isle I was not only astounded at the price of a tin of coffee, but when I got in line I was more surprised at the behavior of the clerk.

There were 2 cash lines open, and between 12-15 people waiting between the two lines. The cashier in the express line looked pleasant enough so I decide to fall in this line. While I'm waiting my turn, a couple of the cashier's friends dropped in and start to have a chat with my cashier... ignoring the fact that she's at work, ignoring the fact that they are interrupting her checking out a clients goods, and ignoring the fact that she was speaking to a client at the time.

Unfortunately, none of this bothered the cashier - she also decided to ignore these facts, and chat up her friends. Although, in between giggles, she did find the time to pass a few groceries. At one point the cashier's friend asked her for a lighter. So as not to be rude to her friend, she stopped serving the client, walked over to where her jacket was and - after fishing through her pockets for a few minutes proudly produced a lighter.

Well eventually, the friends went outside to show off their new fire-making skills and the cashier went back to serving the - somewhat peeved - client. I expected to hear a 'sorry for that', or some sort of apology, but nothing. Not a negative or positive word, no acknowledgment of her lack of service at all. The only words that came out of her mouth were '$34.95'.

She didn't say "$34.95 please" nor did she utter "Sorry for the interruption." She simply spouted - in robot like fashion - "$34.95."

After the client paid by debit card, she handed her customer the receipt and started to check out the next person in line. She didn't even say "Thanks", or even the moronic saying, "have a nice day".

Not only did this lack of manners stun me, but it seemed that the clientele at this store must have been trained to accept this rude behavior. No one seemed to be fazed by this at all. The client, who had been interrupted by all this, never said a negative word, just took back her card, grabbed her groceries and left, all in silence.

The next client was a mimicking of the first one.

I've been noticing this trend for a long time now. I pay attention to how often a customer service rep (read: cashier, clerk, store rep) says please when asking me for payment. In the past 2 years it's happened about 5-6 times. Rarely do they say 'thank you' when the transaction is complete.

Webster's must have removed the word 'please' from the dictionary, but yet, when I google the word it still shows up.....

So why has this lack of manners invaded our society - especially now as we are finally starting to turn the corner from a recession?

I have racked my brain, looked for answers on-line and cannot come up with any other answer than this:

It must be either a government conspiracy to make Canadians (who generally apologize for everything) a tougher - more demanding country, or an alien invasion and they have removed all our polite cashiers and replaced them with - androids who could not learn manners due to lack of available hard drive space.