Have you ever read the book Why We Buy by Paco Underhill? Underhill is a retailing consultant: he tells stores how to move more product. This sounds evil, I know, but mostly Underhill talks about clever ways to keep both the customers and the bookkeepers happy. For example: a lot of stores keep their shopping baskets only next to the front door. But customers often don’t realize they need a basket until they’ve already taken two items off the shelf, and at that point they’re more likely to check out and leave than come all the way back to the front of the store for a basket. Solution: have piles of baskets in various places in the store, or tell employees to offer customers a basket when they need one.

I thought of Underhill a few minutes ago when I was shopping at my local Walgreens, which I’ve been doing a little more often ever since [Merlin Mann](http://www.youlooknicetoday.com/) recommended their deluxe mixed nuts, which includes brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, almonds, and no peanuts. When you hit the checkout at Walgreens, the cashier is required to ask if you want to try the featured product of the week, which is conveniently placed on the counter next to you. This week it’s some unappealing frozen soda product, like a cola-flavored Otter Pop. The cashiers could not sound less enthusiastic if they were recommending a home enema product. I don’t know Paco Underhill personally, and he seems like a gentle guy, but I suspect this sort of thing makes him want to punch marketing executives in the head.

It’s not like it would be impossible to have great customer service at a discount drugstore. Walgreens sells a lot of different products, and among them, I’m sure, are products that employees actually think are cool. That’s where I first saw Magic Erasers, which make my walls sparkle, and low-discharge rechargeable batteries, which make my camera happy. At my local bookstore, [Bailey-Coy Books](http://baileycoybooks.com/default.aspx), employees write recommendation cards for books they think are cool, the same sort of thing you see in wine shops. (“Shelf talker” is the term of art, I think, although that can mean a printed card from the manufacturer, too.) I would have bought the erasers and the batteries a lot sooner with a handwritten testimonial from an employee–unless the testimony was coerced, which would have been obvious (although probably funny). Probably I’m piling another responsibility on overworked employees, but hey, at least make the cards available and see what happens.

I really enjoy a good sales experience–that’s part of the appeal of going to a restaurant. Walgreens seems to want to make sure that I don’t have one.