I am one of the most lenient people in the world about cell phone usage in public. I don’t mind if you’re chattering on it while walking down the street, I don’t mind if you’re using it on the train, I don’t even mind if you’re using it in a restaurant. My theory is, any time you could politely be talking to a human being who is physically next to you, it’s okay to be talking to a human being who is not physically next to you. Therefore: waiting in the ticket line is fine; inside the actual theater is not.

However. When you are in my store, put it away and leave it away until your business is done.

I didn’t always have that rule. Something I enjoy about my job, and about customer service in general, is solving peoples’ problems. This includes being as helpful as possible when the customer is juggling a credit card and a cell phone and a laundry bag and a dry cleaning receipt and trying to communicate politeness to me while being distracted by the person on the other end of the line. I can just whoosh around making dirty clothes disappear and clean clothes appear while in my other hand I’m ringing up the pickup on the credit card, and all they have to do is sign and smile and they’re on their way. Most of the time they appreciate it and it shows, and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Even if they don’t, I’m pleased with myself for making a transaction smooth and efficient, and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling too.

It turns out that being able to juggle all those things, or in fact be useful at all while on a cell phone, is a skill which not everyone has. I don’t know whether it can be learned, because I’ve never tried to do it–as lenient as I am for other people, I’m pretty strict about my own use. (This is, I understand, a good rule for input and output interfaces too.) Most of our customers who try to interact while on cell phones are capable of doing so, but it only took one that wasn’t to change my mind.

She came in on a typical quiet mid-afternoon. Maria was marking clothes at one end of the store, and I was marking shirts at the other. I took a moment to get to the counter I was signed into, by which time the customer had stepped forward to one of the two empty counters. She was staring into space and talking, of course, on her cell phone.

“Ma’am, I can help you over here,” I said.

She wasn’t just distracted, I think she physically didn’t hear me. I waited a few seconds, expecting her to realize (as people normally do) that nothing was happening, look up and learn that she was the reason for this, and then fix it.

Point of note: I can’t just casually move over to another counter and help a customer there. A clerk who is on the clock is responsible for one of the three cash drawers, and those don’t move. If I really need to, I can use one of the other computers and then move the money to my own drawer, but it’s asking to make a mistake and we don’t like to do it. I certainly wasn’t going to go to the trouble for someone who was ignoring me.

She didn’t notice the pause or anything else. Maria told me later that, in my place, she would have just continued waiting until the customer figured it out. I’m not that rude, or else not that patient. I switched to plan B, which was to go over and pick up her things (clothes to drop off and receipts for pickup) and move them to my counter. Usually at this point the customer realizes she’s in the wrong place and comes over to where I’ve begun tapping on my screen.

Still nothing. She just kept talking like I didn’t exist. At this point I decided there was no chance of interaction, so I switched to just getting her out of the store. I pulled her pickups down from the conveyors and made her a quick receipt for the dropoff. Normally part of doing that is to confirm that the regular schedule is fine (as opposed to the customer wanting a rush order), but if she wasn’t going to talk to me, she had given up her opportunity to do that.

The customer’s only acknowledgment of where she was or what she was doing was to slowly fish a credit card out of her purse. I went over and picked it up–she was still at the wrong counter–ran the transaction, and printed both copies of the receipt. Again, if you’re not talking, you don’t get the option of letting me not print the customer copy. (Somewhere, a tree is weeping.) When she signed it, I finished the pickup, detailed the drop, and went back to marking shirts without pleasantries. She wandered away without having ever made eye contact.

After the customer left, Maria stuck her head out from around the corner. She gave me a “can you BELIEVE that?” look, and I rolled my eyes in agreement.

It was pretty slow over the next couple of days, so I took one of the shirt boards and lettered a direct but courteous sign requesting that customers not use their cell phones while in the store. It lasted for about a day before Mr. Lee noticed and removed it. I wasn’t there at the time, but apparently he told one of my coworkers that in his store, the customer is king. This from the guy who buys hard candy instead of the mini assortment everyone requests because it’s slightly cheaper and lasts longer. (It lasts longer because no one likes it.)

So we don’t have a sign that says it, but please put your phone away. You’ll get better service and be able to return to your conversation that much sooner.