I know I’ve talked about customer service being everything when you are running a business and it’s very important if you want repeat customers. You have to treat everyone special even the difficult ones and believe me I know how hard that is since I worked in people pleasing businesses all of my life except the past 6 years, which has been blissfully peaceful doing work from home except for my 5 month stint at Lowe’s.

When I worked at Lowe’s they were very strict with their policies and you have to continually learn things and take tests. Basically I simply wanted a part time job so I could be around people again, so I decided cashier would be okay. My big career days are over and I definitely did not have the ambition to learn every department in the store which they want you to do.

It’s a great place with really good benefits though and a young person could really grow with them, but dang I’m 56 now and when they asked me where do I see myself with them in 10 years, I answered retired. I kind of got use to being at home 6 years ago and being my own boss so the 5 months I worked at Lowe’s in 2006 was pure torture.

It was a new store with brand new employees all trying to prove they could do the jobs they had been assigned to. It actually felt like I was working under a Gestapo rule, it was a very horrible feeling. Smile at everyone, speak to everyone, stand here, do this, wipe here, straighten there, go help there, go climb that horrible high ladder and straighten light bulbs, etc., etc. oh and I loved that you couldn’t point.

Now, the Lowe’s that I worked at was a humongous store and you were suppose to know every aisle and what was on every aisle so you could tell the customer to go either left or right and which aisle, never, never, ever point in the direction, if caught you could get a spanking, well not really, but you could expect a very stern talking to. Like being called to the principle’s office.

Cashiers of course were not expected to leave their position in front of the aisle unless they were straightening something, but if you were working on the floor you never told a customer which aisle, you were expected to take them to what they were looking for. I felt like I was in the Army and there are always cameras on you and everyone else and you feel like you are being scrutinized every second.

I was used to the camera’s because I worked in Reno years ago so I simply ignored them and did my job as I normally would. The really fun part was the department meetings when everyone is expected to be there, even if it’s your day off, you do get paid for your time though and thank goodness it was usually only an hour unless someone had some really heavy grievances.

Back to the fun part of those meetings, the all seeing video, seemed they loved showing video’s especially of some forgetful employee doing some no no and breaking some rule. I really didn’t see them as funny to have someone totally humiliated in front of all their peers unless they had been hateful to me of course and thought they knew everything and could do no wrong. (Especially the new head cashiers that thought they were the boss.)

Needless to say 5 months was as long as I could take there and I’ve been happily at home ever since, but they had secret shoppers come there every month some times twice a month so they could make sure the customers were being treated the way they dictated and that’s a good thing. Most of the reports they told us about at the meetings were okay, but every now and then there were reports of someone not saying thanks for shopping Lowe’s or something else stupid. I’m still considering the secret shopper option.