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mdlbearWent to Safeway earlier this evening to get some tomato paste. At checkout, the clerk asked me for my last name! After a bit of appalled confusion I refused, picked up my bag, and walked out.
Just outside the door I realized that, no, this really needed to be confronted and went back in. After a brief exchange with the clerk, in which he basically said that it was company policy to thank people by their last name, I got a manager.
Yes, it really is company policy for the checkers to thank customers by their last name (apparently when they were using first names, the female customers thought they were being hit on -- no surprise). I knew that they did that when you used your Safeway card, which is why I had my name taken off the damned thing: I don't like hearing people I've never met mangle my last name.
What I hadn't realized was that if I didn't use my card (I didn't expect a huge discount on two cans of tomato paste), the clerk would ask me for my last name so they could mangle it back at me to 'thank' me. Right -- like this is going to make me want to come back.
<rant>
The whole incident got me surprisingly angry. Tomorrow morning I'll be calling the customer service number the manager gave me, though I don't expect much to come of it.
Am I the only one who doesn't like hearing their name mispronounced by strangers? Who finds it somehow infuriating when sales droids try to be 'friendly'? Who finds a complete stranger demanding my name after making a $2 purchase to be unbelievably intrusive?
</rant>
Just outside the door I realized that, no, this really needed to be confronted and went back in. After a brief exchange with the clerk, in which he basically said that it was company policy to thank people by their last name, I got a manager.
Yes, it really is company policy for the checkers to thank customers by their last name (apparently when they were using first names, the female customers thought they were being hit on -- no surprise). I knew that they did that when you used your Safeway card, which is why I had my name taken off the damned thing: I don't like hearing people I've never met mangle my last name.
What I hadn't realized was that if I didn't use my card (I didn't expect a huge discount on two cans of tomato paste), the clerk would ask me for my last name so they could mangle it back at me to 'thank' me. Right -- like this is going to make me want to come back.
<rant>
The whole incident got me surprisingly angry. Tomorrow morning I'll be calling the customer service number the manager gave me, though I don't expect much to come of it.
Am I the only one who doesn't like hearing their name mispronounced by strangers? Who finds it somehow infuriating when sales droids try to be 'friendly'? Who finds a complete stranger demanding my name after making a $2 purchase to be unbelievably intrusive?
</rant>
