Shutterstock

Oh, boy, this sure sounds like a lot of fun…

On second thought, this doesn’t sound fun at all!

Have you ever worked at a place where the bosses wanted you to engage with customers in ways that were kind of…odd?

My brother once worked at a grocery store where they wanted customers to wear name tags, so employees could interact with them.

Yeah, that idea didn’t last too long…

In today’s story, a bank teller talked about how their bosses wanted them to interact with customers…and it’s pretty strange.

Take a look!

Bank customer engagement.

“Working for a bank chain as a teller I was strongly encouraged to make customers feel special.

That mostly meant balancing painfully awkward small talk and saying their name three times during the interaction.

But wait, there’s more!

Apparently that awfulness wasn’t enough.

To help with boosting customer engagement, regional management in their great wisdom unrolled the celebration token. Every branch would be equipped with a clear plastic obelisk half full of red plastic coins.

Every teller/banker was instructed to hunt in conversations for a “celebration story”.

This sounds incredibly annoying…

Each employee was expected to “celebrate” with a customer three times a day.

To “celebrate” with a customer meant you’d snag some little bit of happiness they reported and say something like “<happiness item> sounds wonderful. Would you like to celebrate that with us today?”.

Then when the customer is trying to figure out what you’re talking about and wondering if the bank is a cult you’d push a red plastic coin into their hand and while walking them to the obelisk brightly say:

“it’s really fun, just put the coin in the obelisk, I”ll ring a bell and announce your <happiness item>”. Sometimes you’d have to explain that there was no prize or chance of prize involved.

And this is kind of creepy!

Then standing at the obelisk, coin in hand, teller staring at them with a fake smile the customer realizes it’s easier, faster and less awkward for them submit to this stupidity than it would be to resist.

Defeated, they drop the plastic coin in the plastic obelisk, the teller chimes a bell, the announcement is made and finally the customer says something grateful like “that is it?”.

I quickly discovered that questions like “Are you having a good <day of week>?” could easily bait a response like “it’s a good Tuesday” that could be used as a <happiness item> worthy of mocking the celebration process.

The customer would drop in the token, I’d ring the bell and announce “<customer> is having a good <day of week>” and all my coworkers would have to applaud.

My branch manager eventually quit nagging me to “celebrate” with customers three times a day.

Personally I think the customers preferred the mocking “celebration” for not insulting their intelligence so much.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person had a lot to say.

Another person weighed in.

This individual spoke up.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who is shocked to learn how little he has to do to keep his cushy remote job.

And another individual chimed in.

Boy, that made me uncomfortable!

Call me crazy, but I think most people want to get in and out of businesses as fast as possible.

Or maybe that’s just me…

This sounds like a pretty miserable place to work, honestly…