Retail Makes You Racist (long post)

It seems like everywhere I go I can find someone joking about someone else's race. Most mature people will come back with a witty line and that will be that. There will be no harm done.

In many work environments I see this, even though it goes against the harassment policy that most stores have. I have yet to see any employee punished because of this. People will joke about it all day, poking fun at the typical stereotypes. It usually doesn't bother me unless someone is going over the top with it or doing it while customers are around. Though I don't think I should be ok with this behavior I think most people tend to get sucked into it after working at a place long enough. I will think on it some more...

What my post is actually about is how people in retail environments tend to act towards customers or clients of a certain race. It doesn't matter what race the employee is, certain trends tend to pop up. I notice that employees are typically more welcome to help white customers and less so for other customers. I think the most noticeable is when you see a customer of indian or asian decent. In my observations, retail employees, tend to avoid these people like the plague. (Yes I am generalizing by saying "these people" if you take offense to me not being perfectly PC, you're welcome to stop reading) Most employees will say that these customers will never buy any sort of warranty, they want free stuff, and will complain about the pricing.

It gets to the point that when you see a customer of asian or indian decent associates need to be elsewhere or suddenly have something else they need to be doing. They won't offer assistance until they are hunted down by the customer. I see these same trends with these types of customers too. I believe it stems from how they are raised in their culture. While something can be perfectly acceptable somewhere, it may not be liked somewhere else.

I think the biggest problem in a retail environment is that associates are consistently getting hammered on about how they need to sell warranty, services, accessories, etc. The associates can no longer focus on good customer service because they are trying to remember 50 different things they need to offer to the customer that customer service is pushed to the bottom of the priority list. It would be so nice to be able to see a customer, ask them what they want, have them point at whatever item they want, ring them up, thank them and let them be on their way. We are constantly being brainwashed about the customer experience. We need to provide the customer with the full solution, make sure we offer 50 things to them so that they will enjoy the product better. In other words, lets make more profit from this customer.

I'm going to stop now before I get out of hand.

"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police." -Jeff Marder