I totally don't fall for this facade of pseudo-friendliness that's so popular for corporations like Hy-Vee, Sprawl-Mart, or even Chipotle to force their beleaguered workers to act out in an effort to appease the moronic, lifeless, soulless kinds of people who apparently troll around retail in America (or what's left of it) day in and day out expecting their asses to be kissed by total strangers.
"Hy-Vee, where there's a helpful smile, in every aisle..."
Kill me gently with a chainsaw. To chain store management drips who come up with these obtuse ideas - pull something innovative out of your pea-brains for once instead of regurgitating all the worn-out crap they've been peddling in business school forever.
In high school I quite stupidly applied for, and accepted a job at Hy-Vee in Prairie Village. I still have the utterly cringe-inducing and ridicule-worthy customer service training video burned into my memory. Even though over four thousand days have passed since that time of personal tribulation, l still find myself waking up at 3 AM in a cold sweat, hearing the voice of that damnable "Shirley the friendly waitress" searing through my antediluvian recollect, haunting me like the perpetual tormentor she is.
Another great source of fun and laughs in my high school working times was a similarly putrefactious part time job in the veritable moron crescent that is AMF West Lanes on Metcalf. It was there I first realized that the customer is in fact quite often wrong, and even on occasion someone of such contemptible character that he or she should never be allowed in public or to associate with other human beings.
A third high school employment - Marsh's Sun Fresh in Westport. Actually this job wasn't quite as idiotic to the same degree the others I mention were, however, a couple of customers stand out in particular even after all this time.
I was a cashier at the store. Apparently these two customers didn't think I was "friendly" enough. One was this very likely sexually repressed old fart who sputtered on how Marsh's was supposed to be "a friendly store," because when they built the damn place some moron had the great idea of hanging dopey signs from the ceiling that said "the friendliest stores in town." Sorry, you old coot, this ain't a friendly store despite what the sign says, so shut the fuck up. Same goes to the fat fuck who berated me on a Sunday morning rush because I apparently wasn't friendly enough then either.
And when I'm at Chipotle, I don't want to hear "what would you like on your chicken tacos today?" in that infernal, perky voice that exudes far more "friendliness" than is warranted in a chain burrito shack. And why do retail employees say the word "today" so often? Manufactured friendliness, much like manufactured merriment, is so transparent that I would hope most people can see the dopiness of it. If only George Carlin were still alive.
*serious note* -- I understand the appeal of not having rude, nasty, useless employees in a retail store. I was not, nor are most other people who work retail of that variety. And these last few years I feel fortunate in that I haven't had to work a job like this, but likewise when I go somewhere now and have a retail employee putting on this suck-up routine of friendless, I want to slap them for their own sake and send them to some kind of self-esteem class.
And, it's that there truly are some people comprising the public at large this daft about relating to other humans. I guess that's no shock, but I felt like writing this afternoon.
