A guide to good manners at the retail counter this holiday season

As shoppers flood stores across the country during the year’s biggest shopping season, retail workers are bracing for what many describe as the most demanding — and often demoralizing — stretch of the job.

“It magnifies everything,” said Nick Leighton, host of the podcast “Were You Raised by Wolves?,” which he co-hosts with comedian Leah Bonnema. Together, they dissect etiquette and the subtleties of social behavior.

“People are stressed, they’re busy, they’re frazzled,” he said. “When that happens, we tend to forget other people exist.”

Whether it’s gridlocked parking lots or shelves picked clean, the holiday retail environment can become a pressure cooker where manners evaporate quickly.

November and December have long driven retail sales, prompting companies to hire large numbers of seasonal workers to manage the surge. These workers often absorb the brunt of shoppers’ frustration. Some customers treat employees as extensions of a corporation rather than as people.

This year, there might be even fewer employees to handle crowds of holiday shoppers. Companies say they could cut back on seasonal workers because of economic uncertainty, while at the same time, shoppers are expected to spend more than they did last year.

“Yelling at a worker isn’t doing anything,” Leighton noted. “Everyone else is busy, too.... Your shopping isn’t more important than the next person’s.”

Here are some expert suggestions on how customers can be kinder, more polite and more empathetic toward the people helping to execute all those holiday lists.

People who behave courteously generally do so everywhere, while those who are rude in stores often have similar issues in their personal lives, etiquette consultants say.

“We do not pay retail workers to be a therapist, a social worker or a punching bag. It’s not appropriate, and it’s not fair," said Jodi R.R. Smith, president of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting in Massachusetts. Long before she advised companies on etiquette, Smith worked several holiday seasons at a Hallmark store.

Smith advises shoppers to plan ahead — knowing who is on their list, which stores they need to visit and when they will go. “Set yourself up for success,” she said. “Bring water or a snack. Do not go hungry.”

Timing matters as well. “Ask yourself, ‘When is the best time to go?’” she said. “Weekends are busier, lines are longer and parking is tighter. If possible, go on a Wednesday morning when the store opens.”

Smith suggests making friendly eye contact with workers, offering a greeting and using humor to diffuse tense moments. If someone in line becomes irritable, she said, a gentle joke about needing a nap can reset the mood.

“We don’t have control over others’ behavior, but we certainly do over ours,” she said.

Shoppers can help reduce frustration by asking questions — and recognizing that workers may not have all the answers, said Elizabeth Medeiros, 59, who spent more than 35 years in retail in New York and the Boston area.

Some companies are acting preemptively. Delta Airlines is encouraging kindness between customers and employees with a “Centennial Cheer” program. It says it will recognize “100,000 acts of kindness” with Holiday Medallion cards, which can be redeemed for gifts.

Customers often assume store employees can control everything from inventory and discounts to restocking speed and even the behavior of other shoppers, she said.

They can’t.

“Customers are focused, especially during the holidays,” said Medeiros, a former district sales manager and longtime store manager. “They’re checking off lists and looking for deals, and anything that interferes with that throws them off.”

Holiday work is already tough for staff under the best of circumstances, she noted. “Everyone is often stretched thin. Breaks get skipped, shifts get extended unexpectedly and six-day workweeks become common.”

As Smith puts it: “Clerks are not the CEO. Don’t expect someone making hourly wages in December to change a store policy you don’t like.”

Adam Lukoskie, executive director of the National Retail Federation Foundation, emphasized that most customer interactions remain positive.

“In the news you might see a couple of incidents, but most experiences are OK,” he said. “We work hard to provide a high-quality environment.”

The industry has invested in new training programs to prepare workers for tense encounters, Lukoskie said.

The foundation’s RISE Up skills-training courses now reach more than 80,000 people annually. “It gives associates the tools to provide customer service and to understand that an angry customer is usually mad at the problem, not at them,” he said.

Above all, he said, shoppers should reframe how they view the person behind the counter.

“Act as if the person helping you is your daughter or son, or your mother or father. Not just someone there to do a task for you.”

FILE - Shoppers browse through stores at Mall of America for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Bloomington, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher, File)

Shoppers browse through Kohl's department store for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Woodstock, Ga. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

Jenny Poole pushes a shopping cart at Kohl's on Black Friday, Jenny has shopped at this Kohls on Black Friday every year for the last 10 years, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Woodstock, Ga. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

Shoppers browse through stores at Mall of America for Black Friday deals, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025, in Bloomington, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Black Friday Shoppers enter Macy's flagship store at opening time in New York on Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market remains largely quiet on Wednesday as Wall Street waits to hear what the Federal Reserve will say in the afternoon about where interest rates may be heading.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% but remains near its all-time high, which was set in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 118 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% lower.

Among the market’s big movers was GE Vernova, which flew 9.2% higher after the energy company raised its forecast for revenue by 2028, doubled its dividend and increased its program to buy back its own stock. Palantir Technologies added 1.7% after saying the U.S. Navy will use its artificial-intelligence technology as part of a $448 million program.

On the losing end of Wall Street was GameStop, which fell 6.1% after reporting weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The video-game retailers' profit toppped forecasts, though.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store slipped 0.3% after swinging between gains and losses. The restaurant chain caught up in a furor around its logo design reported better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected but also cut its forecast for revenue this fiscal year, as well as for an underlying measure of earnings.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit as the countdown ticks toward the Fed’s announcement at 2 p.m. Eastern time. The widespread expectation is that it will cut its main interest rate for a third time this year in hopes of bolstering the job market.

That expectation is so strong that U.S. stock prices have already run to the edge of their records because of it. The more important question for Wall Street will be what Fed officials will say about where they see interest rates potentially heading in 2026.

Wall Street has been bracing for Fed officials to imply fewer cuts to rates in 2026 than this year, and potentially fewer than the two that many traders are expecting now, even after they downgraded their forecasts.

While lower interest rates can boost the economy and send prices for investments higher, they can also worsen inflation.

With inflation remaining stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target, Fed officials are notably split about whether high inflation or the slowing job market is the bigger threat to the economy.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.17% from 4.18% late Tuesday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, dipped to 3.60% from 3.61%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements across Europe and Asia.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

Trader Michael Capolino works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, right, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)