For some reason, the customer service counter here is glassed in with little slots to pass things through, like what you'd see at a ticket booth or something. This is one of those things you only see in the sketchier parts of town, though neither of the other two Rainier Valley Safeways (one of which is in a significantly sketchier spot than this store) have anything like this. That's certainly not a reassuring sign, but I've spent quite a bit of time in this part of Seattle (mostly for work) and I've never had any problems...
It was pretty common back in the day for supermarket customer service booths, including at Safeways, to be glassed-in in some fashion. I think this was because a lot of the store's cash handling for the registers was done at the customer service booth and also because people were paying their bills and cashing checks at the booth so they probably needed to keep a lot of cash on hand. You might think this video I'm posting of a Dallas Safeway customer service booth from 1980 is a bad example since it is marked as being a robbery news story, but I can tell you that Safeway was in a nice part of Dallas! Link: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1247262/m1/
ReplyDeleteAnyway, perhaps they didn't feel like taking the glass down during a remodel or maybe this is a high crime area. Also, maybe there are a larger than normal amount of people doing cash transactions (bill pay, money orders, etc.) at the customer service booth at this location so perhaps they felt it was justified to keep the glass up.
I've heard from a supermarket employee here in Texas that stores in his chain (not Kroger or Randall's/Albertsons) are starting to eliminate customer service booths entirely in higher-income areas since the amount of online bill-pay and wire requests are so low at those stores. I suppose returns are done at the registers. I'm not sure about auto tag renewals, I'm guessing requests for those are just as high at higher-income stores as they are at lower-income stores.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about that! I'm so used to customer service counters being open, with a separate enclosed room nearby for cash handling. It's a little unusual for a store of this age and size to even have a dedicated customer service counter, so maybe you're right that it has an unusual volume of customer service counter transactions!
DeleteI haven't seen Safeway physically remove customer service counters at any of their stores around here, but I know you've seen my complaints about them not bothering to staff them regularly at some stores...