Retail in St. Cloud – Does This Situation Annoy You Too?

This past weekend was full of holiday shopping.  There were more people out shopping and jumping on those deals that were happening more than in the past couple of years.  Retail numbers were up by quite a bit than compared to the last couple of years.  Great for Small Business Saturday too.

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With all of that shopping, and people being out in public instead of shopping online will also bring some challenges.

One of those things happens to be the cashier line.  We all know that there have been shortages of workers over the last few months and years.  But usually businesses beef up their employee help over the holidays for obvious reasons.  Having worked these jobs at various stores over several years, I do know how this is supposed to be done, and it seems that general courtesy has gone away.

Here is the situation.

There are a lot of people waiting in line.  Sometimes the wait has been significant, and sometimes there is an issue with a price, or an item not being the correct one, or whatever the issue is that causes a backup.  So, usually another cashier is asked to come up and open another register to help out and get the line moving again.  Great!

Here is the problem - when the extra cashier just announces that "I can help on register...whatever" and then the last people in the line move over.  WRONG!!  What should happen (and how I was taught when I worked retail) is to ask the next person in line to move over to the newly opened register. Then the next person is actually helped next instead of the person at the back of the line getting to move on faster than the people who have been waiting longer.

It's just simple courtesy.  Let's use that more this holiday season!