rrj
rrj
Nov 3 · 3 min read

I went to the supermarket to buy some food ingredients and bread around 1 pm on Thursday. Because it was during lunchtime, there were just a few people in the supermarket. After I stepped into the supermarket, I saw only one customer was paying at the cashier counter. The other cashier at another cashier counter behind was playing her phone, and no one was on the other counter. There were few students, middle-aged people, and elder people in the supermarket at that time. When I approached a free counter, the cashier put her phone into a pocket and said “Hi” to me. She was likely in her twentieth and wore a light pink sweater and blue jeans. While she was scanning all products and putting them into bags, I found that a middle-aged woman was standing behind the counter where no one was there before and talking to an elderly woman with a smile.

Then, I ate in a Chinese restaurant on Friday afternoon. There were a young waitress and a young waiter, who looked like students, talking to each other in a corner near the kitchen when my friend and I just went into that restaurant. There was no other customer at that time. After we sat down, the waitress approached us. She kept her sweet smile the entire time when she was serving us, including when giving us food and processing our payment on a pad. While we were eating, there were two groups of people came in at different times. The waitress served the first group who were all Chinese students, and the waiter served the second group which consisted of middle-aged and elderly Hispanic women who seemed to be a family. I heard the waiter explaining the composition of dishes on the menu to them, and his voice sounded patient. Nonetheless, the waitress and the waiter were talking all the time when they did not serve customers, and they even did not notice when we wanted to pay and raised our hands, which made us a little uncomfortable.

The supermarket cashiers do not need to take care of customers’ emotions actually because their job is to receive payment and issue receipts. Although the cashier who received my payment said “Hi” to the next customer and the other cashier kept her smile, this job does not get tips. However, one of my friends who worked in Starbucks as a cashier near her campus told me that one customer gave them a bad comment because she was too busy to serve the next customer until that customer left and that person felt disrespected and hurt. Meanwhile, the waitress and the waiter are required to treat customers nicely so that they can get tips and good comments. I was ever doing billing in an ophthalmology doctor’s office, but sometimes I was told to do translation for patients who only spoke Mandarin and the doctor who only spoke English and Cantonese. Most patients were elderly people who had bad hearing, so I had to tell them what the doctor asked for several times with patience. I often heard assistants repeating the doctor’s instructions aloud but patiently, and the doctor always treated patients nicely and patiently. Thus, I felt like every serving job is required to treat customers nicely, but the personalities of workers decide the way they interact with people. Some people would like to talk nicely and softly, thus comforting people’s feelings. But some would be impatient if they feel constrained to always have a good attitude towards customers. Since these jobs interact with people, they have emotional reactions to the performance of workers. And customers may have the feeling that workers should treat us nicely because they pay.