Glendale Shopper’s Rules of Etiquette 1


Shopping in America is not only necessary to supply our bare essentials for daily living, but also a popular past-time that can bring pleasure and renewal to our lives. In Glendale alone, several major shopping areas attract numerous residents and visitors alike. During the weekend especially, malls become very congested with people and cars.

Shopping can be stressful when shoppers are many and parking spaces and cashiers are few. Going to the market the day before Thanksgiving or going to the store the day after Christmas can mean subjecting one’s self to uglier sides of the human personality. At a Walmart store a couple of years ago, an employee was trampled to death by the mob which rushed in as soon as the doors opened. Such extremes are rare, thank goodness, but virtually every time I shop, I do see a violation of the rules of common sense and courtesy.

I would like to offer a list of rules of shopping etiquette to help make shopping a pleasant experience for customers and businesses alike. The first eight rules apply to customers, and the next four apply to businesses.

1. When looking for a parking space, don’t hold up traffic while waiting for someone else to pull out. Most parking garages have multiple levels for parking that have plenty of space even on the busiest of shopping days. These levels are connected with bridges and elevators so it is not a physical hardship.

2. While shopping, try to avoid looking at the same item or area that someone else is looking at until they are done. I sometimes see shoppers look at items just because they see someone else looking at it.

3. When you have a shopping cart, park it in such a way as to not block the aisle. Sometimes I park my cart very considerately, only to have someone else come and park their cart in the area which I had left clear. I then end up having to move when someone else comes along.

4. Do not expect people with more items than you to let you cut in front of them in line just because you have a few items. Go to the express line or just wait your turn.

5. Where there is open but limited seating such as at a food court, do not sit to reserve a table while someone else in your party goes to get the food. Someone who already has a tray of food in their hands should be able to sit and eat at the table while you are only waiting for your food.

6. Remember that your time at the cashier’s is not social hour. Too often I have seen customers and cashiers engage in unnecessarily long conversations. Discussing with the cashier at length how the color of the blouse looks on you or whether it can be work for a formal party is not appropriate when others are waiting in line.

7. Except when it can be done promptly, customers should not expect to leave a line and come back to the same place by asking someone to save their spot. Leaving means going to the end of the line upon return.

8. Stores are not playgrounds for kids. Some hyperactivity is to be expected, but a tag game in and out of aisles with loud yelling and laughter is not. When a customer feels they have gotten in the way of a child, it is the child who is in the way.

9. With the exception of supermarkets, cashiers should be instructed to have customers form only one line if there is more than one cashier open. They also need to continually reinforce this between sales because customers WILL try to form a second line as it gets them to the front of a line.

10. Cashiers must not wait till their line grows very long before asking for a second cashier to open. If there is only one person waiting, and the current sale is dragging, then that is time the cashier should request help from a second cashier. It is the first person who has been waiting a long time for assistance and the customer at the end of the line.

11. Businesses need to respect their customers’ space. One store I visited had 3-4 salespeople continually ask me if I needed help. While I told them that I would let them know when I did, they did not refrain from continually checking on me to see if that time had come. I eventually just left that store.

12. Businesses must be careful with the music they choose to play in stores and the volume at which they play it. Especially offensive are some of the teen-age clothing stores that play especially bad hip-hop music almost as loud as you would expect to find at a party. Even if this were to bring in business, which I doubt, it contributes to the numbing of a customer’s aesthetic sense. Our country is on such a campaign to save our bodies from the harms of smoking, we can’t we do the same for our ears from bad music? Of course the ultimate offense was when I saw a young girl walk into a store with her own music player, having the volume turned on high enough so that the rest of shoppers in her vicinity could also “enjoy” the “music.”

Let us put the courteous and thoughtful treatment of others at a premium so that shopping can be both an efficient and enjoyable experience for all of us.

Ani Bogosian has been a Glendale resident and shopper for over twenty years, meeting the all the material needs of a growing family.


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