Taking employee-customer relations to the next level
If you have ever worked retail or in the hospitality industry, you have probably had regular customers who are polite and easy on the eyes. Seeing them can be the highlight of your shift and you may wonder what an interaction with them that lasts longer than 90 seconds might be like.
A few weeks ago, I was hoping to make the leap from just employee-customer to something more with a regular. Truthfully, this was going to be a how-to article, but things didn’t pan out as I’d hoped.Before making a move, I did what I always do before trying something new — I Googled it. It didn’t take long for me to see that there are two groups of people offering advice on the subject. Group one is comprised of people who think that under no circumstances should you try to flirt with customers. Group two offers advice that is nothing short of harassment.
No one should be made to feel uncomfortable when they’re buying their lunch. Workers shouldn’t equate someone being nice to them with expressing interest.They’re being nice because it’s Monday morning and you are giving them coffee; they are trapped in a social contract with you until they cash out. Still, I hoped there was a happy medium between being completely inappropriate and doing nothing. So I decided to start with gathering a very basic piece of information — his name. To keep it casual, I offered mine first, which you wouldn’t think would go terribly wrong, but it did.
The exchange went roughly like this:
“We see each other so often, I feel we should know each other’s names. I’m Felicia.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re wearing a name tag.”
Well I took that as a huge sign to back off and very quickly got busy making his coffee.
As mortified as I was in the moment, do I still think that initiating more than just a customer relationship is possible? In comparison to how I was in high school, where I would secretly crush on someone for months without any action, my university dating philosophy is to speak up and move on quickly if rejected.I was laughing about the situation less than five minutes later and reverted back to regular small talk with the next customer who came in.As long as you take rejection in stride and are prepared to see the person every day again after the potential embarrassment, I don’t see why you shouldn’t try to initiate a conversation. May you have better luck than I did.
Photo by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion