Mind Your Decisions

Line Etiquette Pays: How I Accidentally Saved Money at the Grocery Store

image source: Jimmy_Joe’s via flickr

Recently, the supermarket gods have rewarded me twice with free food. I would like to say I planned this, but it really came about by accident. It happened because I was practicing good etiquette, and I like to think that no good deed goes unrewarded.

What are good manners?

I will take a moment to describe what I mean by etiquette, as it differs from the common meaning. To me, etiquette is not about rules like eating your soup by sailing your spoon away (though these articles are amusing to read). The real joy of etiquette is being considerate to everyone around you and spreading joy. These are things like speaking softly on your phone or giving your seat on the bus to someone needy.

If we all practiced etiquette, we could improve the worst part of shopping: waiting in line. It’s a situation that no one enjoys: shoppers are in a rush to get out, cashiers and baggers are tired from repetitive tasks, and managers are frantic to keep the whole system in order.

Good line etiquette

These are things that speed the process up and don’t bother other shoppers. Here are some things I try to practice:

1. Saying hello and good bye to cashier
2. Avoiding cell phone conversations
3. Having payment and store cards ready
4. Helping to bag own items, if no bagger is available
5. Offering help to identify rare produce

And by far, here is the most important one:

6. Not questioning the price while in line (go to customer service instead)

The first five are common sense. A shopper should be responsible and considerate to keep the line going pleasantly. These things keep everyone’s blood pressure down.

It is the sixth tip that even I sometimes forget, but it’s the most important one.

Tales of bad etiquette

We’ve all seen what happens when someone doesn’t follow the advice. The cashier has to call for a price check and someone runs to the aisle to check the price. During this time, the line is not moving, and everyone gets edgy. Some people try to change lines. Ultimately, the price either gets fixed or the customer indicates it’s too expensive and should be restocked. No one can win in this situation. The shopper looks bad for holding up the line, the store looks bad for having a possible price mistake, and all other shoppers get angry in the meanwhile.

What I do instead

This is why line etiquette goes a long way. I actually ignore the entire price scanning process. It’s becoming harder to do now that stores have installed monitors for me to verify prices, but I try to turn my eyes away. I instead take a few deep breaths while I help the bagger place my items in the cart.

After I’m done, I check my receipt for errors. There is rarely anything wrong. But if there is, I simply walk over to customer service, with the item and receipt in hand and ask:

“Hi, I think this item scanned for the wrong price. Can you help me?”

By going to customer service, I’ve already done the other shoppers a big service by not holding the line. But even better, I am doing myself a service. This is because customer service is exactly set up for these problems. The customer service managers have the tools of:

• intimate knowledge of store sales
• bins to hold rejected merchandise for restocking
• experience that happy, repeat customers should be taken care of

These are things not available to cashiers who work on speed and constantly serve volumes of customers.

This method has worked. I typically get a price adjustment, but I some times get more. Twice recently, store managers have given me a free item because for pointing out the scanning error. I’ve gotten this even when it’s not a posted store policy.

I don’t want to focus on the money since it’s not appropriate to practice etiquette for that reason. We don’t get monetarily rewarded for 99 percent of the nice things we do, like helping a bagger, or being friendly to a cashier. But it’s those rare times we do that should remind us etiquette can pay. Besides, good habits are their own reward.