Hello shoppers...
Have you noticed how happy everyone seems this week?
Maybe everyone seems so happy to me because I'm so happy. Guess I've been too happy to think about it.
Maybe it's The Christmas Effect.
It has been such incredible fun to walk - okay, float - through malls and stores this week (to really shop, not secret shop) and see hundreds of smiling faces - employees and shoppers alike. You see those smiles, you want to smile right back, but you were smiling, anyway, so there's no need for reciprocity.
There are huge crowds (as the "last minuters" edge closer to becoming the "last seconders"). But shoppers are pleasant, patient and polite; they say "excuse me" and smile as they squeeze by, hands carrying bags full of gifts.
The store employees in the aisles and at registers are busting their backsides to keep up with the massive shopping throngs, but are still smiley and engaging, exchanging pleasantries with customers, offering help (with closed-ended questions but I'm too stinkin happy to notice) and meaning it, and sending shoppers out the store door with Merry Christmas wishes. (Okay, so it's usually "Happy Holidays!" but we know what they mean.)
It's been just one big fat wet happy week-long non-stop gift-buying card-sending carol-playing bell-ringing Santa-ho-ho-ho'ing church-going cookie-eating holiday TV special-watching love fest.
Does everyone else seem so happy because I'm so happy? I don't know - I've been too happy to think about what came first, the happy chicken or the happy egg.
I normally post an Unsecret Shopper Goes Shopping review of a business on Thursdays. But there's not a critical/analytical/cynical bone in my body right now; I'm just one big blob of happy mush.
May you feel as happy as I feel. May Santa bring you everything you asked for, plus two things you never thought of. May the music, the food, the celebration and the joy last and last and last and last and last...
Merry Christmas, everyone. He said with a smile. :)
Jonnie Wright is a customer service evaluator and trainer, professional secret shopper, marketing strategist and host of The Unsecret Shopper Radio Show, Saturday mornings 8-9am, on 1350, KRNT.
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Phone: 515-480-4190
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