Superior Service With a Smile

I'm fidgeting in the produce section of the supermarket, palpating melons with the density of bowling balls, trying to extract an edible tomato from a three-foot pyramid without causing an avalanche, and wondering on which agricultural disaster I can blame the $1.69 unit price of the adjacent avocados.

"May I help you with something, Sir?" I look up just in time to catch the full impact of an employee-generated million-kilowatt smile. Looking behind me, I conclude the full force of all 32 teeth is beamed directly at me since there's no one else nearby. What would you do? Of course, me too; we're all dental professionals here. I nimbly close the distance between us, peer intently at her teeth and reply, "You have a lovely smile. What did you have in mind?" That's when she calls the manager.

I'm willing to take a little of the heat here since dentists have been plugging cosmetic smiles as a raison d'etre, but the blame for this aberration of our good intentions must be placed on the corporate shoulders of Safeway, North America's second-largest supermarket chain. I could have saved myself the humiliation of being ejected into the market's parking lot if I had only read the Associated Press article appearing in the paper the other day.

It appears that some bright MBAs convinced Safeway management about five years ago that a "Superior Service" policy should be implemented as the alpha weapon in the perpetual supermarket's battle for customer attraction. Double Coupons wasn't enough; Reward Cards and Three's A Crowd didn't do it. Even strict enforcement at the "10 Items or Less" checkout station was failing to cement customer loyalty.

So Safeway began phasing in its new policy in which employees are "expected to anticipate customers' needs, take them to items they can't find, make selling suggestions, thank them by name if they pay by check or credit card and offer to carry out their groceries."

Obviously, this 180 degree shift in the traditional customer/clerk relationship that has existed since World War II (Wassamatta witchoo? Don't you know there's a war on?) has not been entirely satisfactory from the service personnel's standpoint.

Since January, the market chain began to enforce compliance with the "Superior Service" directive by using undercover shoppers waving sheaves of manufacturers coupons, caroming off each other with their square-wheeled carts. Bosses warned employees that negative evaluations could be serious enough for them to be given the sack and they didn't mean paper or plastic.

Recently a dozen women and one lonely male expressed their disapproval of company policy to Safeway executives. Richelle Roberts, a produce clerk, said she is hit on every day by startled men who think she is coming on to them. The lone male who smiled too well, if not too wisely, was pursued by a middle-aged lady pushing a walker. She offered to buy him anything he wanted from the shaving cream and after-shave section.

"You can't make eye contact with these guys," the women clerks averred, "and no way we're going to carry groceries out to a man's car." Roberts complains, "Let me decide who I am going to say hello to with a big smile." The workers' union has filed charges with the Labor Relations Board and battalions of lawyers are smiling without being asked.

This is a sobering turn of events. We dentists had no idea when we started pushing the Perfect Smile as the logical entitlement for every man, woman and child that it could turn out to be a two-edged sword. Are we going to have to issue an owner's manual with every set of porcelain veneers warning about the potential for misuse? What's our legal liability here? Perhaps we should consult the Maybelline people who must have had similar problems with eye enhancement.

In the meanwhile, if approached by a clerk intent on implementing the Superior Service policy, beat a hasty retreat to the automotive section and protect yourself the best you can with the $7.98 ball-peen hammer with the genuine simulated walnut handle and hand-forged pot metal head ($6.75 with your card).