Pa. liquor board will teach workers to be bubbly

Comcast.com ^ | March 8, 2009

[Military family member]

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania liquor store clerks need to be more bubbly when they're selling Champagne.

The state's Liquor Control Board is spending more than $173,000 to try to make workers friendlier and more well-mannered at the nearly 650 stores it operates. The board says it wants to make sure clerks are saying "hello," "thank you" and "come again" to customers shopping for wine and spirits.

It has hired Pittsburgh-based consulting firm Solutions 21 to help coach store managers so they can instruct their clerks on issues such as how to greet customers and where to stand. Training begins this month.

Harrisburg good-government activist Eric Epstein calls the idea "a demented interpretation of happy hour." He says it's "a sad state of affairs when you have to train people to be kind and courteous."

[Military family member]

$173,000 to teach adults how to say please and thank you.

This is what you get when government runs businesses.

Now this is truly the change America needed.

[mylife]

Wow! things must be great in PA if this is all they have to worry about.

[TnGOP]

It’s the liquor board. Maybe they just need some spirits to improve their spirits......

[bmwcyle]

State store employees always look like they smoke and drink to great quantities above the average citizen.

[2001convSVT]

How about the state get out of selling booze and just tax it (regulate it, whatever), let private business do the selling and the customer can go to the store of their choice.

[Red_Devil 232]

This is what you get when government runs businesses.

And when government controls educating children from K-12. When they enter the work force they don't know how to act!

[3catsanadog]

And in other news, PA lawmakers plan to increase the tax on alcoholic beverages . . . . (so they can contract more feel-good consulting firms to teach the employees about diversity and tolerance).

/sarcasm

[Tijeras_Slim]

State Store employees in PA make IRS auditors look like Mother Teresa, SS Camp Guards like Salvation Army bell ringers, and MVD employees like the most sophisticated English butler.

And that’s on a good day

[PennsylvaniaMom]

In a cage match of an LCB employee going up against a PENNDOT Driver’s License Center worker, my coin would be on the PENNDOTer. Everyday.

I don’t find the State Store emplyees grumpy...heck, its hard to find one at all...