As a former cashier, I know all too well how horrible a job cashiering can be. The hours are terrible, the pay is worse and to add salt to your wounds, then you have the customers to deal with. I don't know what it is about being a customer, about shopping in general that makes us lose our humanity. I've had customers scream at me, throw things at me and generally be hateful and unpleasant. Maybe that's just the kind of people shopping in my part of the world, but I have a good feeling that the problem of the hateful customer is universal no matter where they are shopping.
There is a well known saying drilled into every cashier's head: The customer is always right. Whoever came up with that never cashiered a day in their life. The customer is only interested in one thing. They want to get a lot, pay as little as possible for it and to do this as quickly as possible. Money and time consumes us all and it drives us to do some pretty ugly things. When we grab the wrong shampoo and realize at the register that it isn't the one on sale, we will throw a tantrum to force the cashier to give it to us on sale because we can't admit we're wrong and it's too big a hassle to go get the right item. When the store is out of cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving Day, we will demand that someone pull a can out of their ass because we want our cranberry sauce. And if the cashier is anything less than cheerful when we act like rude jerks and throw our tantrums, we don't hesitate to call a manager and demand they be fired.
We stop looking at people as human beings the moment they become our servants. They exist solely to do what we tell them to no matter how irrational it is. They don't have feelings. They don't have dignity. Being a customer is the ultimate power trip and everyone likes feeling powerful- especially those who aren't used to it. That doesn't make it right to treat someone like crap. You, even when you're a customer at the most high end store ever, are just as human and no better than the cashier.
People tend to blame their anger at the register on poor customer service. I say poor customers lead to poor customer service. People don't go into cashiering wanting to be rude. They're driven their by misuse. There's only so much crap you can take at poverty wages before you get angry and stop caring about doing a good job. It's human to rebel.
And it's easier to show kindness when kindness is shown to you. It takes a better person to show kindness in the face of hate, but we aren't all better people, are we. The bottom line this holiday shopping season is don't check your humanity at the door. Think of the person on the other side of the register (whatever side you happen to be on) and treat them with the respect you would want them to show you. Cashiers are humans too.
