Same for the wife eh? Bit of a back-hander to get her back to the ironing?

Not until she has got the dinner ready

See....I am learning to be an Australian

Quite right too, then back to the cage.

I'm ****ing friendly maaate... and I'll chin the first bastard who say's otherwise.


Back on topic... used to find the 'chat at the counter' a bit odd when I first arrived, but it's second nature now.

A cage,you mean you let her have her own personal space.I wish I had that.

Not the norm for australia though

Someone once said to me regarding the "how's it going?" "how's your day?" it's a greeting not a question.

So if I fancy a chat I can ask them back how they are etc but if not just smile and say "hi" but to just scowl or ignore them is rude I think.

What part of the South of England were you from? ;-)

Pretty effective as well

Wow! Just 'WOW' at you.

Really?

FWIW, it's not 'false' but yes, Woolworths does expect you to greet and bid the customer goodbye. If a member of staff doesn't go through that routine and they get the 'mystery shopper', then it's their responsibility that the entire store gets marked down.
For many people, it is not 'false', but the desire to do their job properly, and to be a good employee and representative of what is a very switched on company.

You're what Woolworths calls a 'Red Light' customer at the tills. Someone who wants no talk, no interaction and you're not going to be led into a conversation either. That's fine because if that's the way you are, Woolworths respects that and knows that there are different people in the world.
It's amazing that Woolworths has put in hundreds of thousands of dollars into understanding YOU and you can't afford a moment of YOUR time to understand that the person at the till has probably been standing there for quite a while, doing repetitive work and trying to maintain a professional and correct attitude to help you EAT and LIVE.
If their service offends you so very much, why not tell them? Make a complaint at customer service and tell them that you're sick of their patter, their training manual (which I bet you've never even seen) and then we'll see what they say.

As for insulting your intelligence, I'd at least respect you more if you shut your yap and didn't slag off people for doing their job.

With BO.

I did write a letter complimenting a checkout operator for their excellent service recently.

It was so refreshing.

And rare.

At Woolworths, they're paid to greet you, talk with you and say goodbye to you.

Contempt? Wow, go you! What a guy.

I guess that depends on the mgt of the store and how well they run the place.
It's rare people comment on how good things are but quite happy to look down on people in service industries and moan on expat boards. They would have been very happy to get that letter.

Incidentally, Woolworths regularly scans the internet to see how people are talking about them so that they can fix issues or gauge general attitude and therefore fix issues at the training point. So they'll read this.

I wish I'd written this.... One of my all time favourite BE posts Great stuff TP

Imagine what those poor buggers at those checkouts have to endure, must really grind you down after a while. I've often wonder what makes some ahem 'people' tick... not much by the looks of things.

..

In that case, I would like Woolies to keep the friendly checkout operators who understand it's dumb to pack fresh bread under potatoes... and get rid of the ones with attitude who are miserable with every customer that has the misfortune to pass through their counter.