Do all American stores have greeters?

Submitted ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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?

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mugita_sokiovt@discuss.online ⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
This would be good on !AskUSA@discuss.online if you want to get Americans to answer this question. From my experience, I hadn’t seen American stores with greeters that much, with some exceptions (one of them being Costco).

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IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, the vast majority never did that and now most American Stores barely have enough staff to run the registers.

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- ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Lol same here in the UK. If you go into the big supermarket chains like Tesco, Sainsburys and Asda, there are sometimes a whole bunch of registers but only 1 or 2 of them have a human working on them. The rest just sit there as a reminder that human jobs are being replaced by self checkouts.
  
  Even where I work, our company does absolutely anything it can to avoid having to pay people, so we’re often understaffed and overworked.
  
  Tangent over 😅
  
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  - IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The most absurd part is the stores haven’t done anything to embrace self checkout. They have not changed the carts to help the checkout process, they have not decreased the number of unused registers, and many of them have not even made the self checkout area bigger.
    
    In the states we have a big box hardware store called Home Depot and they really have done a great job with the self checkout process. I have not been in a single grocery store that has.
    
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Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Dude we don’t even have greeters at the stores that actually did have greeters in the past anymore.

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- dingus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I honestly did not realize Walmart ever had greeters. They’ve always had someone at the entrance/exit. But they just check my receipt to make sure I didn’t shoplift. I didn’t realize anyone acted as greeters there. Is it the same people checking your receipt for shoplifting or no?
  
  Also, in case OP wants to know…most stores do NOT have receipt-checkers at the exit, either. It’s just that Walmart does because it’s a store that is prone to shoplifting.
  
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  - blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨53⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    It was a thing when I was a kid. They would hire an elderly or mentally handicapped person to stand at the entrance and say hi to everyone. They got good PR for giving a job to someone “in need”. But the real reason was that they found that simply having someone say hi to you when you walk in the door made people feel seen, and therefore, made them less likely to shoplift.
    
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  - Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    They used to pride themselves on the fact they hired senior citizens to stand at the entrance and greet people for minimum wage. Personally, I only ever started seeing the reciept checkers in stores other than Costco when self-checkout became a thing.
    
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CCMan1701A@startrek.website ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, that customer is a cunt.

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Oka@sopuli.xyz ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
More often than not, retail workers behind the counter in smaller stores are required (by their employer) to greet customers as they enter. It’s a tactic to reduce theft. However, employees hate doing it. Most customers understand its a mandatory part of their routine and hate it, or at the least are indifferent. It’s an insincere greeting that nobody cares for, its just something employees have to do, or they get reprimanded.

Your customer encounter is not normal American behavior. Expecting to be greeted is a sign of entitlement (which is the likely case, due to asking for your manager) or possibly mental health.

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- Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I had to scroll too far for this. 100% accurate Oka!
  
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SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Greeters is a jobs program that keeps retirement age people working instead of them having to steal from the stores they work at.

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- LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Your first paragraph I know is humorous but what keeps them from stealing from stores they’re working at as greeters? Too busy standing around at the front of the store to steal anything?
  
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betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, it’s pretty atypical. There’s Walmart (as you mention) and a few others but more often, somebody stationed at an entrance/exit is security, a receipt checker (less common), or a cart-wrangler.

Sounds like you met one of our distressingly many entitled weirdos. Sorry about that.

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- relativestranger@feddit.nl ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  ‘greeters’ are also part of security or ‘loss prevention’, even the old guy who can’t stand-up during his shift and needs to sit on a stool at his post.
  
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morphballganon@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not at all. That customer was hunting for something to complain about so they could negotiate freebies from your boss. Sounds like your boss fell for it.

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el_twitto@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, most stores do not have greeters in the United States. You encountered a “Karen”, a rude entitled American woman. There are so many of them in the US now. I used to love my country but every day I despise the bulk of the US population more and more. There are so many uneducated self-important assholes here now.

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blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Was she expecting

“Welcome to Costco, I love you”?

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DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
lmao wtf

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BassTurd@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
When I worked at Best Buy, if a customer entered my department I was expected to address them. We were trained to make it seem natural, just a greeting and naturally segway into asking if you can assist. It was to prevent theft but also the chances of closing a sale go up significantly.

My understanding is nobody likes doing it and most customers aren’t big on the pushy sales people.

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- TAG@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  It seems like Massachusetts Best Buys did not get the memo. I hear all these stories about people hating Best Buy over pushy employees and have the opposite experience. The stores only have 1-2 employees on the floor and the duty of those employees seems to be to hide from customers. If I ever need help finding an item or want something from a locked display, I have to spend 15-20 minutes running around the store trying to catch a ninja.
  
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  - BassTurd@lemmy.world ⁨59⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Admittedly, my BBY experience is… Fuck me… 12+ years ago. Feels like a couple of years ago, but it’s not. I’d imagine employee count has dropped and by proxy, helpers when you need them.
    
    I don’t go in very often, but when I do, I know exactly what I want, and sometimes that item is behind a locked window, and finding someone isn’t easy.
    
    I tried to walk the line with greeting people and then letting them know that I’m around if they need help. I hate salespeople and being one was the worst job of my life. It wasn’t high stress or anything, but having a job where my role was to try and take all of the money from my customer was not something I enjoyed.
    
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- stinerman@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This is kind of why I like going to Microcenter. They do the “hey, how’s it going” thing, but it’s in a really professional way. And if you tell them you’re just looking they back off and let you stand there for 20 minutes. And if you ask for advice on something, they’ll give you suggestions and detailed explanations about why they think that way.
  
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- fakeplastic@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    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.
    
    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. I miss that
    
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theneverfox@pawb.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, and the funny thing is the purpose of the greeter (at least at this stage) is to lower the chances of shoplifting

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cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No; in fact, most don’t. Walmart is generally the exception, not the rule. And as much as people (myself included) like to shit on Walmart, if you actually look at the greeters, they’re people who generally would not work out in any other position. So why are they there? If they weren’t, they probably would not have a job.

There’s another concept at play, though. In stores that do not have a greeter who stands at the door, a lot of places that pride themselves on customer service and community will have front-end staff call out to new customers to greet them. This practice is far more popular. Heck, we used to have an ice creamery that would have the entire staff sing if you put a dollar (or more) in their tip jar. Cold Stone Creamery, there might be a few of them around, but they used to be everywhere. Like Subway, Quiznos, and more. You might still know where one or two are, but you used to know where a lot more of them were.

Anyway, it’s weird that an American visiting abroad would be upset that she was not greeted upon entering the store.

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QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, but common retail etiquette is to say to people who come in the store.

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davidgro@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No. A typical “supermarket” (grocery + clothes, housewares, etc.) does not, nor do smaller stores that are mostly just grocery. Walmart is an exception.

Costco has people who could be called greeters, but they are just checking that you, or someone you are with, has a paid membership. Some stores have security guards at the entrances, but that’s a different thing.

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casey2586@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Other than Walmart and stores that have memberships like Costco, there aren’t really designated greeters. That being said, when I worked for a gas station, the area manager, the person over a couple dozen stores in our part of the state, mandated that we all give some sort of greeting to every customer that comes through the doors. This is because, as middle management, she had nothing better to do than read google reviews of every store and make sweeping mandates based upon them. Obviously, we ignored her and continued greeting almost nobody. So, there are some crotchety people that will complain about anything.

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- zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Welcome to Moe’s!
  
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  - eksb@programming.dev ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The number of times I wanted to go get a burrito for lunch (Moe’s was next door to my office building) but went hungry instead solely because I did not want to hear “WELCOME TO MOE’S!” is very non-zero.
    
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Sendpicsofsandwiches@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
A ton of stores do this in the US, but I’ve never once found myself been upset that someone didn’t greet me. That person sounds bat shit insane

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stephen@lazysoci.al ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not by a long shot. It’s mainly just Walmart. There are others, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

I worked in retail for about ten years. The company I was at did make a big deal about making a customer feel welcome, which might incidentally involve greeting a customer at the door, but we certainly were too busy to have someone perpetually posted up at the door like Walmart. Any sort of “greeting” we might have done would be the same as I what I experienced in Ireland or Italian retail where if I was approaching an employee, I’d get the local version of “hello”. Didn’t strike me as being very different.

So, no, the American retail space that has a dedicated greeter is fairly uncommon.

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Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
No, Walmart is kind of an outlier by having a greeter. In other places that have a “greeter” it’s usually an extra layer of security/theft prevention, or it’s a place like Costco where you need a membership to shop there. That said, it’s basically standard for an employee to seek you out and ask if you would like help finding anything fairly soon after you walk in the store. It’s generally seen as good customer service, and in larger stores it’s not uncommon to be approached by several employees asking if you’d like help finding what you’re looking for over the course of your time in the store.

American customer service culture tends to be a little extra. There’s a premium on going the extra mile that’s tied into America’s self-image of the “land of opportunity,” and the hustle culture that goes with that. But when that’s what you’re accustomed to dealing with, the customer service cultures of other countries can be kind of jarring. I know from my own travels through Europe that shopping in some countries can range from feeling cold and indifferent, to feeling actively hostile.

That said, most Americans wouldn’t think of complaining to your manager about it. It’s only a specific kind of over-entitled asshole that does that. Sounds like you had a real karen on your hands.

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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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

I’m sure she also went to the subway driver with the same complaint after she entered the train…

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YaBoyMax@programming.dev ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As other commenters have said this is basically only a thing at Walmart. Sometimes in very small shops someone will say hello as you enter, but that’s a much more informal thing and as I said only really happens with tiny mom-and-pop stores where there might only be one or two people working.

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scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
In most stores, greeting is just a task that all staff are trained on. The store has to be over a certain pretty large size before that one task becomes an entire person’s job. They also fulfill other functions like giving directions that make more sense at larger stores.

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SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
c/AskUSA

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DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
New York City. Many places have a security guard near the front, but not a greeter.

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False@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve only ever seen this at Walmart

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Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not all, but many in my general region do.

This article references Walmart, but you can apply it to most stores that employ greeters:
https://www.historytools.org/consumer/why-does-walmart-have-greeters

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Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So, like most people are saying, no. Most stores don’t have dedicated greeters. However, I would say many, if not most, staff will greet you when you come in if they aren’t busy and are near the entrance. It’s not an expectation, rather just a friendly “hello, welcome…” sort of thing.

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