Home Depot has been like that lately too. No means no, people. I see you there. If I want help, I can find one (ro twelve) of you. Now just let me shop!

Holy hell, this just happened to me this weekend. I went to pull out some money and I had four people talking to me at once, one even asked me if I needed help filling out a deposit slip (!!!).

I was scared and uncomfortable at the same time. I felt like I could turn around and see Donald Sutherland pointing at me open-mouthed at any time.

Man, people will bitch about absolutely anything. YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE PEOPLE ARE _TOO_ FRIENDLY! wtf? Seeing as every single person probably has different standards for what's not friendly, just right friendly, and too friendly, no wonder customer service is a dick job.

@henwy: Dude, you can have great customer service without being needy and co-dependant.

ONE person going, "Hello! If you need any help, please let us know!" and if need me, the same person or another person can check-up on the customer if they have been there or a while or seem to be having trouble: "Hello! How are things going? Do you need anything?"

I mean, really.

@nakedscience: " if need me" should be "if need be"

I have a major problem with physical contact. If you touch me, especially suddenly, I am likely to jump a foot and then leave your store immediately. If someone grabbed my withdrawal slip, I'd grab it back and make the hastiest escape I could.

In general, you shouldn't touch potential customers as they walk by (I'm looking at you, nail-buffer mall-kiosk bastards).

Makes you wonder what kind of motivation was used to get them to be this "friendy"

i wonder if he is talking about Chase plaza in lower manhattan, they do that all the time. I enter the branch they pounce on me, I am waiting on line they ask me if I would like a chase account, i am at the teller, same question asked, leaving, same question asked, out in the lobby, they have a woman set up with a table with chase promo crap asking if i want to open an account. Enough!!!

You are scared because you have not run into good customer service in years. It is OK to be frightened at first. I have found if you walk by casually, whistling and not making eye-contact you will be safe. Hopefully they will go back to grazing around the waterholes (water cooler). It may be safer to go with several friends so only one may be singled out: the slowest and weakest while the rest of you run.

Let's put it this way. Chase made me so uncomfortable that if this was a car dealership or Best Buy, I'd flip out and leave.

Bank of America does this right. One manager in the front of ther store. They ask you if you need help. If you say no, they let you go on your way. Chase went waaaaaay overboard in my experience. And I APPRECIATE good customer service. This was "trying too hard".

@nakedscience:

Ya, but the problem is what you view as needy and co-dependent I will guarentee someone else thinks of as friendly and going the extra mile. I'm also certain there's some douche out there who thinks it's not friendly enough. So WTF?

Your half-assed under customer servicing was way better than your half-assed over customer servicing.

@henwy: There's friendly, and then there's someone in my face or following me throughout the store, or interrupting my browsing experience by asking me if I need help incessantly. It is very clear from the OP's experience that his personal space was violated, especially by the one who took the withdrawal slip out of his hand. I'm okay with someone asking me if I need help...but I draw the line at people following me, asking more than once (per person), and trying to "help." I was buying fish the other day, and the fishmonger actually stepped away from behind the counters to show me a kiosk with printouts of the various recipes that could be made with the fish I purchased. That was cool, I liked that. But if the fishmonger had given me the fish and then followed me until I was near a kiosk, or had taken the fish out of my hands once he gave it to me, that would have made me uncomfortable.

I have the same Chase experience on the phone, where I can't end the call. Everyone is "have i helped you ok?" "is there anything else?" - to the point where i end up hanging up on them after saying "yes, it's fine, everything's good" and "thank you but I'm on my break and really want to go"

no joke.

@savdavid: Maybe if you drop some deposit slips they'll focus on that and you can make a getaway.

No sugar in the tea, not good.
Too much sugar, not good either.
Just right means the right balance of sweet and sour.

I believe that management has overreacted to the whole situation and pretty much threatened their peons to be supportive, or else!
So the peons, being peons, kick it in Full Panic mode, tumble head over heels to help folks out.

There's an old comment from wayback in the early 90's, Pres. Bush (the first and good one, not King George I) put it; "A kinder, gentler nation."

So I say take advantage of it!
You run into some of them at your local store, tear the bottom half of your grocery slip in two, hand it to a helper; "Get this half and I'll meet you up front in 15 minutes, fair enough?"

Oh, and tip at least 15% for the poor soul doing their job at little more than bare minimal wages.

Maybe we should put this to the test and make unreasonable requests to Chase to see how far they'll go to fufill this.

"Can I help you with anything else?"

"Yeah, I want to date my next door neighbor."

@Rebecca Brown: I hate hate hate the one particular group of kiosk people at one of my malls. They're peddling some kind of skin product, and they always step out from their kiosk bubble to be just in your way that you have to step aside to avoid running into them. And with the way mall traffic goes, it's really hard not to get caught in their attempts at skin rejuvenation.

I remember seeing a demotivational poster with Giada DeLaurentis grinning ear to ear. I think the headline was "enthusiasm", and the tagline was, "Yeah, you're at 11, we need you at about a 6..."

@BuddyGuyMontag: "Do you need anything?"

"Actually, yeah, that is a really nice watch. May I?"

@BuddyGuyMontag: My dry cleaning should be picked up after 4 p.m. but no later than 4:03 p.m. I expect it to be back here by 4:25 p.m.

See, I had the opposite problem. I was trying to deposit my paycheck without my account number, handing over my license. In a bank crowded with people, she asked me for my SSN - and I asked if she could just look it up from my liscense, I got attitude, and then 'Look! See! I have your Social Security Number already!' and she WROTE IT ON THE BACK OF THE DEPOSIT SLIP TO PROVE IT.

The deposit slip that is scanned into my online account, that anyone could get a hold of. :(

Then I got a lecture and she wrote down my number again, and literally made me take it with me. I don't go to that branch anymore. -_-;

@larrymac: you gotta be careful though, right after I told someone "no thanks" I ran into something where I needed help and the store had gone from orange to black in no time.

@pecan 3.14159265: I have started to just become REALLY REALLY ENGROSSED in whatever shop window is in the other direction as I walk by. If I don't look at them or respond to their "EXCUSE ME YOUR CUTICLES LOOK DRY," I can escape.

@henwy: What pecan said. What the OP went through is creepy and annoying.

@Rebecca Brown: If someone tries to touch me with some kind of goop, I'm going to be like, "I AM DEATHLY ALLERGIC AAAAH I AM GOING TO DIIIIE" and see how they react. DO NOT TOUCH ME UGH!

i had a similar experience when walking into one Chase bank on 20th or so and 3rd avenue in NYC... 3 or 4 gents in suits were just standing there. Fortunately, I had a question for them! haha. I asked about WAMU customers and deposits and they directed me to the nearest WAMU and explained how the transition would work eventually. Nice guys... but it was def. a bit odd. I recall wondering "Why are there 4 guys just doing nothing but standing there waiting for customers... there's nothing to do at their desk?"

@Rebecca Brown: Exactly, I turn away, keep walking, don't even make eye contact, don't even look like I'm looking in that particular direction. They're right next to a store that I go to once in a while, and if I have to go to that store, I'll actually walk past them and when I'm a slightly safe distance away, I'll double back and slip into the store so they don't see me or think I'm part of the mall traffic that is going the other way.

@Rebecca Brown: Ugh. I had a teller at Bank of America reach over the counter and grab my purse to move it. I'm generally a mild-tempered person but I went off. There are personal boundaries that should not ever be crossed.

@Squot: That's just plain rude. I've had a teller look a little annoyed that I don't have my account number memorized and tattooed on my eyelids, but that was more because then she would have to look it up by social and I feel like they're increased risk in using your social to look up things. But she was really nice after that initial annoyance, and I'm not even sure if she was annoyed, it was only my perception she might have been.

HA!

I was in Chase this morning and the teller I had looked so slow and depressed that I was ready to cut his wrists for him. God I was annoyed. In the time it took to deposit my handful of face and ordered cash and two checks, the teller next to him did the same for 3 customers and she was in a good mood and very nice to customers which only made my teller seem worse. I'm still annoyed enough about it that I want to complain. He was freakin horrible!

@TinkishDelight: Yeah that doesn't fly with me. I went to one nail salon (won't go there again...) and because my nails weren't dry yet, the manicurist offered to take cash from my purse for payment. I thought that was extremely weird, but I understood the reasoning because I happened to be in a hurry, and I was paying with cash so I wouldn't be going to the front desk. But if I wasn't in a hurry, and didn't need help getting my wallet out, I would've been pretty mad.

@Munchie: cattle prods.

@Adrienne Willis: escalator...also Times Square?

@BuddyGuyMontag: I want Adam's Ribs. From Chicago. Delivered to Korea. AND DON'T FORGET THE SAUCE. Send it to Captain Tuttle.

@Rebecca Brown:

I dont personally have a problem talking with those people, but I agree with the touching thing, I would rather not be touched. They did get me once though, through my girlfriend. She decided to stop so they did the whole nail buffer thing on her while I was just looking around waiting for it to be over when he grabbed my hand from out of my pocket. Now in my head I was like "seriously? I wasnt going to buy anything in the first place, but definitely not now" then it turned comical when he said I had better nails than my gf.

Lessons learned: never let them buff one stupid nail because that stupid nail will bother you until it is no longer shiny

This sounds like the canned questions the girls at the Wells Fargo near me always ask. When a cute young chick asks me while we're waiting for the computer to do its thing, "Do you have any plans for the weekend?" I know it's a customer service directive conceived to make them appear friendly. I know better than to think they would even begin to care.

Having someone invade people's personal space is going to backfire.

@larrymac: My girlfriend works at Home Depot. After the mess left by "Big Bob" Nardelli, the new CEO is doing what he can to get the company out of the slumps. That means they are ramping up customer service ten fold. If an employee is seen not greating a customer they walk past, they get written up. They have a policy in place where they are not allowed to say no to a customer, other than situations that may be fraud related that is. The company is trying to 180 its image big time.

@pecan 3.14159265: I always thought you were a guy for some reason. Not that you couldn't still be a guy that gets manicures and carries a purse. I do not judge.

This is something the FBI is encouraging, actually. It turns out that if you greet people as they come in the door, they feel watched, and this discourages robberies.

@Adrienne Willis: I had the same experience at the fancy N. Michigan Ave branch in Chicago.

Sooo....we're complaining when companies don't talk to us and now when they do, we're upset at that as well.

Alright, then!

I actually asked a 5/3 teller why they were asking so many questions - They said it was part of a new policy where they had to hit 5 points with every customer. I forget specifically what they were, but it was something along the lines of

1. Welcome the customer to 5/3
2. Use the customers first name
3. Ask the customer a personal question (i.e. how is your day? what do you do? etc.)
4. Offer the customer a new service
5. Thank the customer for banking with 5/3

It's really annoying when I just want to deposit a check once a week.

@bornonbord: I figure that's what ATMs are for. I don't consider human interaction a vital part of the banking process.

not to go off topic much, but I've noticed an increase in helpful Home Depot employees as of late - to the point of them being obnoxious. I guess the trend is to be TOO nice now?

I thought they were only hyper-friendly with you if they thought you were going to rob them.

The account number thing happened to me at Chase when I went to withdraw some cash, the guy kept trying to sell me on their credit card. When I refused and he saw that I had no money he was pissed as hell then just gave us our account number and basically kicked us out of his cube.

It's just a trick to try to sell you something because the tellers don't need your account number, or they can look it up.

@BuddyGuyMontag: I've been really constipated lately...

Actually this worked for me once, though I didn't intend the guy to take it seriously:
A year and a half ago, I'd just moved into my house, and all the moving and packing/unpacking had put my back out of whack. I was sleeping through the pain pills when the doorbell rang.

It was some guy running for a local political office. He handed me a flyer, started to give his little spiel, but then cut it short when he noticed that I was holding on to the doorframe for support. He said, "I can see that you're not feeling too well." I explained that we'd just moved in that week, and I'd overextended myself. He said, "Well, I won't hang around and bug you, but I just want to let you know if there's anything I can do for you or your family, just call that number and let me know."

I jokingly said, "Sounds great - hey, do you do yardwork?" and waved at the front yard. (The house had been unoccupied for 6 months so the yard was a wreck.) We both laughed and shook hands, he left, and I thought nothing more of it.

The next morning, there was a crew of three young men in my front yard, in a truck from a local yard care service. One of them knocked on the door, gave me the politician's card, and said, "Mr. Politician says to let you know that we are at your disposal for four hours, so just tell us where to start." They cleaned up the front and back yards, fixed one of the back gates and the leaky outside faucet, knocked down a ?hornets'? nest, and hauled away a big load of trash and boxes.

He got my vote.

@David Brodbeck: Yeah, sometimes I have cash. I do NOT trust ATMs for that. I don't care what I hear/read about the process of a human counting it on the other end, I want to know in person that what cash I'm depositing is going into my account.