How many times you walk into a retail store and a sales person immediately asks you “How may I help you?”.  Many stores mandate this from their sales folks – but I say stop this nonsense. Quite often sales people follow you around the store (e.g., most furniture sales people do this) and keep asking you “Are you doing ok?”

A sales person needs to be available when needed and stay behind the scenes when not needed. In short they should be like a ‘friend when needed” – not an ‘annoying uninvited guest’. It takes great training and alertness to make up such a sale person and this is what retail stores strive to achieve..