Typical corporate idiocracy. Next, they'll require "Welcome to Costco, I love you."

I have these at my store, too. I got docked for "talking to a friend at 11:30 AM." The only problem? None of my friends wake up before 12pm. None of them. My friendliness towards a customer was too friendly, apparently. Oh, and we can get docked for mispronouncing the shopper's name wrong (on the receipt it will show their name when the store card is scanned and we have to say it). They treat it like we aren't saying farewell at all.

@lexibro And the only thing worse than THAT is the people who pointlessly complain about people replying to the top for a valid reason, then rambling on for no good reason. Please, STFU.

@91: I love that movie.

even if you think "have a nice day, take care" is nicer than "thank you," the bottom line is that it doesn't mean the same thing as "thank you"! you're thanking the customer for patronizing the business. in this economy, you should be genuinely thanking customers because they are the difference between your store and the one that closed down the street.

Retail is one of the most micromanaged industries today. Middle managers who haven't dealt with a customer since the Cold War makes up these riduculous policies that have to be followed to the letter, even how to respond to customers because the employees who deal with the customers on a day to day basis apparently can't figure that out for themselves. They make uninformed decisions like cutting store labor hours and then can't understand why customer satisfaction drops, morale declines, and cleanliness gets ignored. Creating the store budget, from what I have observed, involves huffing paint. And God help the poor souls who have to work when the douche bag middle managers decide to tour the store. It's always the same, they act too important to acknowledge the staff beyond a perfunctory "You're doing a great job" then make snide comments about how certain parts of the store need more attention, meanwhile the store manager has to ignore the store operations so they can listen to this suit make uninformed comments about how the store should be run. One time I even had a district manager pull me aside and give me a serious talk because when customers asked me how I was doing I would respond with a playful "just another day in paradise." She said it sounded too sarcastic and negative.

i know the pain. i work at mcdonalds, and they do that shit all the time. we have to suck so much dick there. its a **** mcprison

fyl for being sincere. sorry about that.

Your mystery shopper fails. I've done mystery shopping, and if you had given me any kind of polite send-off, I would have marked 'yes' for that one unless I had specific instructions that any wording other than "Thank you" was not acceptable, and while I've seen some interesting special instructions, I've not seen that one. Companies want to know that their employees are treating their customers well and in ways that would make them return. If you're doing that, you ought to be golden.

Pain the arse, eh? My little brother works in a 7-11 whilst at Uni, and gets that crap all the time. He knows all his regulars, there are people he's been serving alcohol to for years, having seen their ID repeatedly, and he got marked down because a mystery shopper thought he should have IDed somebody in front. Another time he failed a customer service training test because he said he would treat a customer in a wheelchair the same as any other customer, rather than going over to see if they needed help. Having a wheelchair using sister (me!) he knew that it's infuriating to have people come and assume you need help, and if somebody in a wheelchair does want a hand, they'll ask for it!