VIDEO: Should Happiness Be Mandatory for Store Employees?

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BY:
User Experience Researcher
Additional contributions by Louis Ramirez and Dan Leadbetter.

Until just this week, cashiers at the pharmacy chain Walgreens were required to say "be well!" at the end of every transaction. And that's just one of many examples of corporate-mandated politeness.

In this brief video, our experts discuss if they'd rather have a person be fake-pleasant, or honestly grumpy.


What about you, readers? Do you like it when people are fake-nice to you, or do you not care how cashiers treat you? Tell us in the comments below!

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User Experience Researcher

Jeff Somogyi is the DealNews User Experience Researcher. Since working here he's written deals, features, promotional and newsletter copy, blog posts, as well as scripts for our videos.
DealNews may be compensated by companies mentioned in this article. Please note that, although prices sometimes fluctuate or expire unexpectedly, all products and deals mentioned in this feature were available at the lowest total price we could find at the time of publication (unless otherwise specified).
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4 comments
dorothyparnell
They are not children or robots, they should be smart enough to have good manners without being instructed or zoombiefied..djp
April 1, 2015
kramyugtaht
Put it this way, I go to the store to buy something - and that thing is not a pleasant psychological state from someone being nice. It's like upscale grocers that pay more attention to their image than selling food, where the products are neither better quality not better prices - no thanks.
April 1, 2015
HeyTiger
On the one hand, you can't force people to be happy, but on the other hand, I don't want to deal with anyone's BS. Professionalism is non-negotiable, but happiness, fake or otherwise, is optional.
April 1, 2015
kramyugtaht
I remember this one time I had a grumpy clerk wait on me at a middle eastern deli, and it looked like his boss pulled him aside and talked to him about it. Sometime after that I noticed him with this obviously forced smile, it looked painful. That was kind of funny (maybe not for him) but what I really don't care for is people who have that glued on smile that you KNOW they don't mean. To take it to an extreme I would say people who can't distinguish good service from just service with a smile maybe don't deserve good service. At the end of the day we want the person helping us to know what they're doing and get things done.
April 1, 2015