I was reminiscing about my first interaction with an American customer I had when I had just started working (I don’t live in America, she was a tourist or something.) I worked in retail, and was taking care of a long line of customers. This American lady was at the end of the line. When she gets to me she asks to see my boss, so I head back and tell my boss a customer wants to talk to him, while I turn to some other work in the back of the store. A few minutes later my boss comes back and says the lady was upset with me and my behaviour, because I had not greeted her as she entered the store (because I was busy helping another customer.) The situation has perplexed me ever since, do all American stores employ greeters? I’m aware of the concept, how big stores like Walmart employ people to stand at the front door and greet people. But is it like that for every store in America?
I deeply hate going into Best Buy because of this. I don’t blame the greeters because it’s obviously not their decision. But I don’t go in there just for fun to browse around anymore like I used to. I only go in rarely when I can’t get something at a better price anywhere else. If I didn’t hate Amazon more I’d have ditched Best Buy altogether when they started doing this.
Yeah I used to have a circuitous path to enter Best Buy, so I could avoid those people. It just felt like high pressure sales or oppressiveness. Plus where are they when I do actually need a store person. I essentially never need them when entering the store so I wish they’d leave me alone
Home Depot used to be really good at this (not in several years though). They used to have people in each department (not anymore) who knew what they were doing (not anymore) and offered to help (now the few remaining salespeople don’t know anything and actively avoid customers). It used to be so nice that I could freely enter the store, goto wherever I needed but if I was stuck there’d be someone offering to help and who could usually help. I miss that