Last week I had a mid-afternoon appointment downtown and did not want to head back to the office after my meeting, so I made arrangements to meet my son at "The Elevator”. (I was in the mood for a stout brew.) My meeting ended a little earlier then I had anticipated and I decided to go to my son’s office first and we could walk over together. We arrived around 4:00; there were several groups sitting at the bar, with only a seat a two between the groups, so for the sake of comfort and the ability to converse with one another we chose a bistro style bar table for two. After sseveral minutes of our presence being ignored, I became a little fidgety and tried to get someone’s attention. This proved unsuccessful. So, after about 10 minutes, we decided to leave and went further up the street to another establishment.

After some thought as to what had taken place at "The Elevator”, it prompted me to ask myself several questions. Do they serve drinks at the tables we were seated? It was a bar table could they not have called out from behind the bar. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have anyone waiting tables and I can’t leave from behind the bar, but I’ll be happy to set your drinks here at the end of the bar for you.” I don’t have a problem with self-serve. I can understand when someone is busy, although there was more then one person working, that they can not immediately drop what they are doing. I don’t expect that. But, am I not a customer and should not someone have someone acknowledge our presence? Is there a manager on duty to monitor their employees? If there is a manager are they locked up in an office with no contact to what type of atmosphere is being created? What would the owner have said or how would the employees have reacted if he was present?

Many years ago I worked for a national retail firm at the Columbus home office. One of the regional managers received a telephone call from the owner of the firm, who happened to be at one of the Denver stores. The RM was told to get some employees from the other Denver store over to store #1 because he had just fired the store manager and all the employees. He had only been in the store 5 minutes, without someone approaching to help him, before he made his presence known to them. The next morning a meeting of all surviving persons was conducted. Needless to say, that was the last time a customer was not treated as a customer.

Acknowledgement, courtesy, and service to your customers are vital to survival in retail businesses.