Politeness pays a dividend

As the Disney classic goes, ‘Spread a little happiness as you go by’ – if only that were true for all who work in retail. There is certainly something wrong when the customer is more polite than the person who is serving you.

And why? As miserable as your job may be, I guarantee it will be 100 times better if you smiled and did the best for the customers you are serving.

There is a member of staff in the Humanities Cafe who is the perfect example of this kind of person. Rain or shine, Monday or Friday, 8am or 4pm, she is beyond cheerful and genuinely brightens up your day.

She doesn’t thrust her hand out with nothing but a “that’s two-eighty”; she remembers her Ps and Qs, asks how your day is going, helps you out in any way she can, and wishes you a good day or a good weekend at the end of the transaction. And she does this whilst rattling through the queue at the speed of a blue-arsed fly. What isn’t there to like?

If only all were like our jolly Humanities barista. When you’re in a certain campus supermarket and the bloke on the check-out isn’t even looking at you as he serves you, you have to wonder what childhood trauma has caused him to act like a complete impolite imbecile.
Few of us students aspire to be a stock-rotation supervisor at the local Aldi. Working full-time in retail isn’t the most rewarding of jobs, but it certainly can be much more bearable with a smile and a polite chat with a customer.

Quitting my job two weeks ago, I decided I must defy the rules and be super rude to a customer. I was ready: no ‘please’ or ‘thank you’; thrust the coffee in an impolite manner towards the gentleman’s hand; don’t apologise for the queue. But I couldn’t do it – why would you go out of your way to irrationally make someone else’s day worse?

Come on everyone working with the public. Smile, laugh and have a little chat. It makes everyone’s day brighter – popping into Humanities at 9:55am on a Friday certainly prepares me for a heavily dull seminar.