More flies with honey

I have to confess it kind of creeped me out when the supermarket checkers started thanking "Ms. Car Bonnet" for shopping at their store. Not just because they butchered my name, but because I felt it was a strange attempt to create a relationship more meaningful than the one that could ever exist. I don't shop very often and when I do I rarely get the same checker twice. We don't know each other and we're certainly not friends. This insistence on personalizing my experience was clearly the brainchild of a marketing person who probably felt that recreating the "we know you" shopping experience might encourage loyalty. It can, done well and under the right circumstances. Reading my name off a grocery receipt is neither.

Funny then, now that we are going to the farmers' market every week, to discover that many farmers also need help understanding this idea of being personable. In the Bay Area the food at the farmers' market is rarely cheaper than the market. It's usually good quality and fresh, often organic and we pay for all of that. At times the prices are even higher than Whole Paycheck's. The people we meet at the market are the same every time, and this familiarity often brings a sense of friendship or at least affinity. Take, for example, the woman who works at the Afghan food stand, one of my favorite places. She dresses in tight, rhinestone studded t-shirts and says things like "Come here, let me feed you." The whole family adores her. She remembers us, is nice to the kids, feeds us delicious combinations of bread and sauce and has been, in her friendly way, opening our eyes to the diverse flavors of Afghanistan. And so we have become loyal customers.

Another guy I love is a vegetable guy. His prices are reasonable, his veggies fresh and delicious and he offers the girls cherry tomatoes. When I asked recently about the lemon cucumber, he picked one up, told me how to serve it and dropped it in the bag - for free. Now whenever we buy veggies, we go to him first.

Then there is this baker. Stereotypically French and surly - right out of a Disney movie. I saw him chew out a woman because her kid touched one of the pastries. Sure, he shouldn't have touched it, but the kid was like three years old and this guy served up a lecture that gave proof to the idea of a haughty, intolerant French people. In a few words he turned that mother into his enemy, you could see it on her face even though she said nothing. Afterward Xavier talked to the guy in French and gave him our order. I thought this might soften him up a bit, to have a fellow countryman to talk to. Not a chance. He complained about his work, the people who buy pastries and how awful it all was. We tried again another time and got the same reaction. Now we don't want to talk to him in any language, much less buy his expensive pastries.

Nearby are the egg girls. As lovers of farm eggs, we started out as very enthusiastic buyers. It didn't matter that the eggs cost twice as much as other eggs, they were totally worth it. The women sold strawberries too. Delicious Albions that we bought repeatedly by the flat. We asked if they wanted their egg boxes and strawberry baskets returned to them and they said yes. We brought them back, even though it was kind of a pain to do it. I didn't expect much when I returned the items, a smile perhaps, a quick thank you. But no. The women will hardly even look at us. They accept the boxes almost without a word and get visibly impatient when we take too long trying to figure out which strawberries to buy and do we need one box of enormously expensive eggs or two.

In a word, these people are not nice. And consequently, now we only buy eggs from them. Nothing more - certainly nothing that can be purchased anywhere else.

Xavier, when he's in France, always goes to les halles to purchase food. More like a permanent farmers' market, les halles exist in most french cities and it's where the majority of people buy their produce and meat. Supermarkets are for cerial and aluminium foil. A necessary evil but not really useful for food.

Once when Xav was shopping les halles in Tours with his father, they went from stand to stand, bypassing others who had, by the looks of it, delicious things to offer. "Don't go to that one," his father advised "they are not nice." And by nice he did not mean anything about the food, he was talking about the people. Now the French, you may know, are not known for being "nice" in the American sense of the word. They are, however, exceedingly, wonderfully polite. Almost without fail, they greet you, thank you and bid you a "bonne journee.' So when a french guy says the people in the french market are not nice and he won't buy from them, well that's saying something.

It seems so simple and obvious: when you are selling to people and you want them to come back, it's an easy thing to make them feel welcome. There are various level of niceness, ranging from Miss Bling Bling Afghanistan to the tamale guy who simply asks how many you want and thanks you for your money. Xav and I are not particularly needy people. We don't need anyone to tell us how fabulous we are and we're certainly not at the market for small talk. It doesn't take much to win our loyalty, just don't be jerks. Say hello. Say thank you. Say goodbye. Or even just one out of the three.

The farmers market is supposed to represent old-world community. The farmers are the same every week and the customers are mostly repeat and local. While these customers may be committed to the idea of buying from the market, that doesn't mean they are loyal to any one stand. Loyalty must be won, today more than ever. And once you have it, you have to win it again every time in order to keep it. A smile, or a word of greeting, is a small price to pay in my book. 

As the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you can't muster up a real smile to be nice, at least be polite. If only for the sake of your pocketbook. 

 

Ps. to the egg girls: the minute anyone - and I do mean anyone - starts selling farmers eggs in San Carlos, we'll be there with our wallets open.   

Comments

[country_cinderella]

[this is good]

[Lilia]

[this is good] Amen! Some people in the service industry don't even bother to greet you when you get to their counter, and what's worse, they don't even say thank you when you make a purchase. That's the worst to me. Too bad I don't live closer to San Carlos, I'd love to check out the Afghanistan lady's food, sounds yummy!

[karen]

You know, every time I enter and leave a store - any store, I say thank you on the way out, even though I'm the shopper. I figure it was nice of them to let me in and look around, it's only nice to say thank you on the way out.
This has becomepolicy at our fly shop, we always greet every customer, just so they are sure to feel welcome.
The Afghan stuff can be found in other places too, here is their web site. I highly recommend the spinach bolani, garlic mint cheese, basil pesto and sweet jalapeno sauce. I pile them all up together on a few slices of spinach bolani and it's delicious!

[Nancy Mitchell]

[this is good] I am so with you on this. Rudeness is the bane of my existence...especially when it happens in a customer-service setting.
Just this weekend, Dan and I were at the grocery store and the cashier actually acted as though we were bothering her...simply because she had to ring up our purchase.
As I said "thank you" when we were leaving and she said nothing...I looked at Dan and asked "isn't she the one who is supposed to say thank you?".
Apparently not.