Whew!

Oh thank you, dear Friends, who responded to what I wrote yesterday.  I was so nervous as I pushed the button to send, with that negative, nasty little critic in my head chirping that this was stupid, who cares what you have to say, blah, blah blah. But I did it anyway, and it felt good (eventually). So, whew!

Have you had the experience of going into a retail shop, and the clerk there acts as if you are an interruption to her/his day? That happened to me today, and I just don't get it. Why in the world in this economy especially are retail people not falling all over themselves with kindness and helpfulness?

I've worked in retail, and it's a hard, foot-aching job.  Some customers can be absolute nut cases, agreed, but in my limited retail experience I found that most people are nice and respond ever so much more positively (i.e., likely to purchase) if you smile and are genuinely pleasant to them. Whenever I'm in a store now, and clerks are rude-ish, I often just leave instead of buying there. Sadly, this is likely to happen in small, local shops just as frequently as in bigger stores. It seems like common sense to be nice to customers, but perhaps that sense isn't as common as it could be.

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"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet:  how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of.  There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."          
 --Mister Rogers