Pennsylvania clearly needs to get out of the liquor-selling business.
Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board Spends $173G to Make Clerks FriendlierSunday, March 08, 2009
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."
He's right, but the real solution to the problem is to let private industry handle liquor sales and let bad liquor stores with shitty customer service go out of business, rather than forcing everyone to patronize the state liquor stores that will never be closed even if they need to be (because whoever heard of the state closing a monopoly cash cow?).
What's truly demented is the fact that Pennsylvanians allow this state of affairs to continue in the modern, post-Prohibition age.
