In the retail world, a little courtesy goes a long way

I apologize for missing yesterday's blog, but I was called off to work.
No, nothing related to my former career or possible new career.
For the past year - in fact, yesterday was my first anniversary - I've been working part time at Sports Authority in Huntsville.
It started because last year I almost accepted a buyout offer from The Times but was convinced to stay - that's another story for another day.
Anyway, working in retail has been a real eye opener. The closest I came to that was in my junior and senior years in high school when I worked part-time at the old Salem Acme. I was a stocker and checkout clerk and enjoyed my experience.
At Sports Authority, I'm a "sales associate." In other words, the person on the floor who helps customers find items and helps pick out specific things - such as the right bat for the 8-year-old beginning ballplayer and the right shoe for the person who's on their feet 8, 9 hours a day.
It's fulfilling to help the young parents who are shopping for their first-time soccer, baseball or football player.
Having three boys who all played a variety of sports - hockey, football, basketball, baseball, soccer - helps give me a perspective that I believe is helpful.
But there's also another side to retail - customer relations.
I know there's an old saying "the customer is always right." Well, I'd like to modify that to read "The customer may be right - but not always."
We are all customers, or consumers, and we usually know what we want when we go to a store.
But that doesn't give us the right to snub or react coldly when a store employee asks us if we need help finding something.
Now, there are times when we can't find a sales person or are ignored by them. I've been in that situation and it leaves a bad impression of the store and I usually walk out and let someone at the desk know.
If someone asks to help, just say "Yes, please. I'm looking for ..." or "Thank you, but I'm going to such-and-such department" or something to that effect.
You'd be surprised at how pleasant that makes a customer and a sales person feel.
One of my peeves, though, is the mess that is left in a dressing room. It is not unusual for us to find  clothes that were tried on laying on the floor of the dressing room on tossed on the bench.
Granted, this isn't every night, but it is frequent enough. Thankfully, not everyone who goes in a dressing room leaves the clothes strewn and they end up buying them.
It's been a wonderful experience in the retail world - a complement to my former job as a business editor - and my co-workers are all great people and my dealings with customers have been, overall, great.
But, we all have our retail "horror stories" and those stories could be averted if customers would be courteous to the sales people who need to return the courtesy.
Happy shopping.