I've spent a great deal of my adult life working for crappy retail companies. This chronic underemployment, coupled with my own codependence, have given me the unique ability to offer a customer experience that exceeds all expectations. All of these jobs have netted me many compliments to my superiors. I'm proud of that. I have been increasingly dissappointed with H-E-B here in New Braunfels, so have started shopping at Albertson's lately. The lines are shorter and the store is cleaner. ANYWAY, I have noticed that every time I check out, the cashier circles this number on the bottom of my reciept and says "you saved $xx.xx today!" Poor girl. I KNOW she does that because somebody in the corporate office has declared that every customer shall have their reciepts circled and presented to them. I wonder if she feels belittled and demeaned everytime she does it? I pride myself on being a good employee, and I always do as I'm told, because I feel that the people who work above me should know what they're talking about, right? When I was working for one company, some executive read some marketing report that said that customers liked having their feet measured. I spent two years of my life saying THIS to complete strangers: Welcome to Craptastic Footwear! You came at a good time, because it's our Half Price Sale!! That means that EVERY SHOE is buy one, get one half off! We're so glad you are here!!! DO YOU WANT ME TO MEASURE YOUR FEET?!" I felt like a creepy foot fetishist every time I said it. Hundrends of times a day. Really. And the thing is, I don't think it helped build loyal customers at all. I think that it actually made people remember us as "that store with the creepy guy who's obessesed with measuring our feet." I don't think that's good. At all. I have been in their stores recently. I notice they don't do that anymore. In fact, all the shallow customer service they used to make us do is now non-existant. Thank God. I'm still in a customer service business, but I don't really have a "script" I have to follow. That's a good thing, because I have the fleibility to 'read' my customers and figure out what level of service they would like. And isn't that what good customer service is really about? By the way, after six years of selling shoes (no Big Gay Al Bundy jokes, please) I can now look at a person's foot and tell you their size. What a great life skill! I'm all set to be carnie or something. Just kill me. Or let me measure your skanky foot. Whatever.