'Why are you still waiting?'
On taking the cue instead of setting it.
I matched them. Whatever was hanging over them when I walked up,
I made sure it was still there when I left.
‘Why are you still waiting? There’s a counter free.’
That was the greeting. It arrived before a hello, before eye contact had properly settled. A question about my pace was put to me by the person whose job it was to serve me.
I walked over very slowly. Gently put my things down in the same slow motion, said nothing at all, and looked at them with a blank face. I let the silence sit on the counter between us, and made sure they were in it with me. Two can play at this rude and awkward game, I thought.
It seemed fair at the time. They’d set the vibe, and I was matching it. There’s a small satisfaction in that which I’d rather not admit to, and am going to have to. Because I wish I’d done it differently.
I spent years on the other side of counters like that one. Retail, phone lines, service desks. It’s why I notice how people in those jobs conduct themselves, and why the noticing has been unhappy lately.
Shorter greetings, if there is one. Less warmth. More attention to closing the transaction than to the customer. Thinking about it more, I’ve felt myself starting to form the sentence that begins ‘In my day’, which is usually the sound of someone about to be out of touch.
Because the job of today isn’t the job I did thirty years ago.
Nearly nine in ten retail and fast food workers were verbally abused by a customer last year, the number reporting physical violence has doubled over the past three years, and their pay has gone backwards over the past five years. The person in front of me that day had less money in real terms than the job paid not long ago, no time spare, and a fair expectation that someone would have a go at them before the shift ended.
None of that was information I had at the counter, and all of it was true anyway. What I did with my three or four seconds was decide the exchange had already been set, and then help it stay that way.
Nothing had gone wrong for me that day. I had every bit of the warmth that was missing from the greeting, and I chose not to offer it, because at the time it felt like letting them off for being rude.
In the time since, I’ve come to feel that regardless of how the initiator starts an interaction, we can choose to shift it.
No one is the official boss of conversation tone, but we can take the lead any time we want. That afternoon it could have been me. But I took my cue from them, and all that did was keep the vibe where it was.
Some warmth from me might have moved them half a step. A ‘Hello, how’s the day going?’ without an edge does that sometimes. I’ve been moved by it myself, standing behind a counter at the end of a long shift. Sometimes even at the start of one.
It might also have done nothing. They may have been three hours from the end of a shift that had already had two people shout at them, in which case my small offering could have gone unnoticed.
What I know is which of us had the capacity to bring the warmth, and it wasn’t the person on shift.
That slow walk from me... nobody walks that slowly by accident. I wasn’t being calm… I was performing something at them, and it happened before I’d said a word.
Next time I’ll try harder to be warm and gentle, and set the standard.
Three things to try.
1. Notice the second before we match
There’s a small gap between reading someone’s tone and choosing to adopt it. It’s short, and it’s real, and most of the time we move through it without knowing it was there. Catching it is enough to start with.
2. Consider their context
The people who serve us get a few minutes with whoever turns up, and no say in who that is. Guessing at what the last customer was like is a fairer starting point than assuming their tone is about us.
3. Work out who can set the standard
In any short exchange, one of us usually has more capacity than the other. When it’s us, we can spend some. It might change nothing. But we can choose to do it anyway.