DailySusan Humor Blog

LET'S SEE, NOW, THAT WAS TWO THUMBS UP. . .

Our 18-year-old is now working retail in an upscale store that sells mostly shoes. It’s her first retail job and so far, she really likes it. While she is a smiling, pleasant young woman most of the time, she is just not the happy, peppy, positive, bouncy, overmedicated type. She can’t fake enthusiasm and cheerfulness; it’s just not her style.

Well, she and her new manager have been having some pretty good laughs over the training manual’s exhortations to sales clerks to give what Eden calls “cheesy” greetings to the customer. The customer’s always right – but you don’t have to be an obsequious Stepford Clerk to get every sale, do you? The manager says she doesn’t have to act like that if she doesn’t feel like it.

Eden has come up with a happy medium. It’s a nonverbal routine she may use when a customer has finally expressed satisfaction with one of the 14,000 pairs she has slogged out to their stinky feet for them to try on. It goes something like this, all at the same time:

Two thumbs up

Head tilted

Happy smile

Li’l wink

You can’t even tell she’s being a bit sarcastic. Oh, well, as they say: if the shoe fits. . . .