Employees say 'service
with-a-smile’policy is
causing shoppers to
proposition them
By Kim Curtis
The Associated Press
MARTINEZ, Calif. — Service
with a smile has become a night
mare for some Safeway employ
ees who are grimacing at the su
permarket chain’s policy of
cheery customer relations.
Thirteen workers have filed
grievances over Safeway’s smile
and-make-eye-contact initiative,
complaining they’ve been propo
sitioned by shoppers who mis
take the company-imposed
friendliness for flirting.
“Let ME decide who I am go
ing to say hello to with a big
smile,” said Richelle Roberts, a
produce clerk at a Lafayette store
who complains she’s proposi
tioned daily by male customers.
“A woman knows where and
when not to open that door for
certain men.”
Under Safeway’s unwritten
“Superior Service” initiative, em
ployees are expected to antici
pate customers’ needs, be courte
ous, escort them to items they
cannot find, make selling sugges
tions, thank them by name if they
pay by check or credit card and
offer to carry out their groceries.
Safeway, which is based in
Pleasanton and is North Ameri
ca’s second-largest supermarket
chain, with 1,378 stores in the
United States and Canada, began
phasing in the policy five years
ago.
But it was not until January
that it began enforcing it by using
undercover shoppers and warn
ing that negative evaluations can
lead to remedial training, disci
plinary letters and termination.
None of Safeway’s 150,000 em
ployees has been fired for failing
to be friendly enough, but 100
have been sent to a daylong class,
a sort of Smile School in which
clerks are given pep talks and
suggestions for enhancing the
customer’s shopping experience.
“We don't have any set rules
regarding personal behavior,”
Safeway spokeswoman Debra
Lambert said. “We’re not asking
an employee to smile in a certain
way or make eye contact in a cer
tain way.”
But 12 women aired their
grievances to Safeway executives
in August and a male employee
who said he has been bothered
by a female customer joined the
effort this week.
The United Food and Com
mercial Workers union also filed
a complaint in May with the Na
tional Labor Relations Board, al
leging that the Safeway’s cus
tomer service policy was illegally
imposed.
“They’ve got battalions of
MBAs who are coming up with
these policies at the corporate
fort in Pleasanton who don’t take
into account the real-life implica
tions,” said their lawyer,
Matthew Ross.
The union wants workers, es
pecially women, to have more
freedom to choose not to make
eye contact with a potentially
threatening customer or to refuse
to carry groceries out to a man’s
car at night.
Ms. Lambert said the com
plaints are coming only from the
two San Francisco Bay-area
union chapters in Martinez and
Vallejo and that a survey of work
ers in Northern California found
them generally happy with the
policy.
Outside a San Francisco Safe
way on Wednesday, shopper
John Kruse said that the service
is so uniformly smiling and at
tentive, “you’d have to be very
narcissistic or stupid to believe
that the flattery was personally
directed at you.”
“I think if the women are being
professional, I think it’s a prob
lem with the male customers, not
the employer,” said Brad Becker,
who recently moved here from
New York. “I think it’s a shame
that someone would interpret
courteous as flirtatious. It's not
the same thing.”
“I didn’t feel like anyone was
coming on to me,” added 41
year-old Daniel Woods. Still, he
said, the results of Safeway’s pol
icy can be unsettling.
“It’s strange. It doesn’t feel nor
mal,” he said. “I’m used to shov
ing and pushing my way through
the aisles. It was really funny to
have someone walk me to the
plastic fork section.”
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