are you being served? or barely tolerated?

I did a bit of late night shopping at the supermarket opposite our office on the Thursday before Good Friday.

OK, it was 20 minutes before closing and I guess the staff were demob happy.

I got to the till at 8.54 approx – they close at 9. There was a gaggle of girls gathered around one of the two tills still in operation. Not a hello, nothing. That didn’t bother me. But I did object to them slagging off their employer’s corporate literature in front of me while ringing up my items – ‘forget this “corporate jargon about development” – I hardly think my part-time job and its development programme will get me through my University course’ – was the gist of the conversation.

Once that theme was exhausted – it took a while – the girl serving – who until that point had not acknowledged my presence – moaned to me about it being one minute to nine and how she would have to serve the last person in the queue even though it would take her past nine o’clock – something about company policy and having to serve whoever was in the shop at that time.

I wished her Happy Easter – I was in a forgiving mood – she did not reply.

It just goes to show that however great the brand, and the product offer, the smallest things like the attitude of a part-time or temporary worker can blow the whole plan sky-high. I wanted to shake the girl. As an employer I dearly wanted to give her some advice. Show respect to your employer. It might be old-fashioned, but when you get your degree and start looking for work in earnest, that sort of attitude will cost you big time. I guess she’ll learn the hard way that the world does not owe her a living and that she should be grateful to her supermarket employer for giving her the chance to get involved in their corporate development programme. A lot of students would give their eye-teeth for the sort of experience she was sneering at.