Originally Posted by BUYMECAR
i worked almost 9 hours today with no breaks and even though it was a nightmare like every other shift with blockbuster, i decided to look at what i do in another way.
maybe, just maybe, corporate has a point about who we are as employees.
the whole "blockbuster way" is most generally a load of crap but if applied with sincerity, you can turn a job with limited in-store resources, limited labor and unrewarded sales pressure into something a lot simpler than that.
today i decided to start a friendly discussion with any customer that had a question about a title. regardless of whether they wanted to know obvious details of where a title is located on the wall or couldn't even recall the name of the title, i decided that running movies didn't mean everything. not prepping pull point nor starting reprice reports wasn't going to make Nicholas Cage blast into the store with a highly-polished vehicle intending to save the world.
one of my regulars opened up with me when she had realized that i knew her name and that her husband wasn't with her tonight. apparently, he left her. they've been struggling with having children and everything they've gone through has come to some breaking point. she didn't really want a movie, let alone be in the store, but the thought of going home alone made her panic so she came into the store to wander and think. i tell her to sit tight, grab a rental copy of Mother and Child, hand it to her and tell her to watch it. i told her that it will do one of three things: make her feel better about her situation, have her burst in tears or put her straight to sleep; any one of these sounds like just what she needs.
so she rents it and several hours later, she's back in the store. she's confident and excited and glad to see me. apparently, she watched it in her van. she tells me that it did all three, except it didn't put her to sleep... it woke her up.
after exchanging thanks, she asks me what she could do for me. i am speechless... i really don't have anything in mind. i jokingly tell her that i need more awesome customers. she then remembers being pitched for sales by a coworker. so she asks me: what do you need to sell?
i tell her they're not important and that my top priority today is to let people leave with a smile. but she insists that she's going to buy a retail copy of Mother and Child anyway.
after prying at me, she ends up buying 8 sets of 3 for 3, two $9.99 subscription cards, and renews her rewards. my coworker was looking at me like i hit the jackpot, but i was very embarrassed! she tells me that with all the soda and candy, she's going to call over her friends and have a movie night. she also goes on to tell me that she's going to tell every one of them to start renting here and ask for me.
so, while this may be an extreme case of luck, i noticed that a lot of my customers really did leave with smiles and were more pleased to spend money in the store when WE realized they were people. they're not drones of consumerism. they are PEOPLE and they want to feel like people!
it's moments of shared understanding with anyone, including strangers, that should remind us that we are not asleep wandering in a dream. even in an industry that lives on fiction, we can still do a bare minimum for our customers to help them connect not just with us, but also with other people.
*bow*
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December 21st, 2010, 07:25 PM
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