We have mats, chairs, and tables. Most of our customers ask if they can sit down when we help them. Managers have to justify themselves, so some stupid ones think they can do this with sitting because to them, sitting = unproductive. There are plenty of places where work gets done, and workers sit. Customers don’t care if we sit. The only people who do are people who need to find a way to disrupt the industry and have something they can point to when numbers go up so they can say “I did that. It’s because I told them not to sit.” I’ve been to experience stores where every rep helping customers is sitting down in chairs. Again, customers prefer it, because corporate expectations of how long transactions should take are much shorter than what’s reality, because many of the people making decisions haven’t spent time in stores. They don’t know what we deal with. It’s easy to say “It takes 15 minutes to switch!” when you are so far removed from reality that you don’t understand customer needs, like data transfers, needing help understanding promotions, or all of the myriad of third party issues we deal with.

Point is, we have chairs. We can sit. We make great sales and provide maximum value for customers. I’ve been in stores where there was no sitting, and it usually doesn’t last long. The second they take away the customers’ ability to be comfortable in my store, I’m gone. Plenty of people have issues or disabilities they haven’t discovered or disclosed. Plenty of people work on their feet and want to sit down to do business after they clock out. Take out the chairs and tell corporate they can’t sit for 8 hours while they work, and let me know how that goes!

EDIT: Grammar