Phones are not welcome at Hamilton liqour store
You go in for a nice bottle of Italian red, and a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode breaks out.
Cue the theme song, because that’s pretty much exactly what’s going on at Laurenti Wines & Spirits (you know, ShopRite Liquors) on Quakerbridge Road in Hamilton.
“Please get off your phone while conducting transaction!” the cashregister affixed Sharpieon-cardboard sign reads. “Stop being rude - get off the phone!” Additionally, there are a pair of stapledon addendums, one reading “Or a $2 surcharge will apply!” and the other “You will not be served.”
Clearly, a line has been drawn.
“It started with Andy in the back there,” Art Laurenti, who has owned the shop for 49 years, told me the other day. “Customers are on their phone, they get up to the front of the line, and they point to what they want. And we’ll be like, ‘what do you want?’ and they’ll keep pointing. And we’ll continue to not know what they want. Then they’ll get mad and put their phone down and say, ‘Gimmie a pint of E&J Brandy’ and before we can ask ‘which one?’ they’re back on their phone again. Andy couldn’t take it anymore.”
Andy - last name Culver - reached his breaking point in early December.
“We had a girl lock the whole system up,” Culver said. “She was talking with her friend about her boyfriend, how he wouldn’t let her have other people in the house, and how he wouldn’t pay rent, and on and on and on, and she was pulling her card in and out and pushing buttons and she locked the whole system up and that was when I finally had enough and wrote up the sign on the back of a beer box.”
The sign was an immediate hit, and even more so when Laurenti’s daughter added the surcharge and
“you will not be served” bit.
“We’ve had a 99 percent positive reaction,” Culver said. “People wish they could do it. You don’t know how many people told me they wish they could do that at their work.”
And what happens when someone is on the phone and they see the sign?
“It’s been great,” Culver said. “People see it and say, ‘lemme call you right back.’”
I got turned on to the story by Thomas Kelly, Hamilton resident and noted artist. He posted pics of the sign on Facebook, and the response was equally positive there.
“I saw a patron get off the phone as I approached the counter, I laughed as I thought, ‘wow, this sign is working,” Kelly told me. “I snapped a photo and shared it on Facebook. Many people liked and commented in a positive way. The manners we should all have, regarding doing business with stores, may have to be relearned in this era of phone in ear and in everyone’s hand. So, stop in to ShopRite Liquors, see the sign, shop local and ‘get off the phone!’”
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Tom.
Really: Is it too much to put the phone down when interacting with another human being, especially a human being who is helping you on your way to Buzzville, USA? I dare say it is not too much.
And as for the sign and the signmakers: Bravo. It truly is a “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David-ian move, this sign, and I am 100% on board for my actual world to resemble the inner mind of the fictional Larry David as much as possible.
“My wife sometimes says I act like him” Laurenti said.
A higher compliment cannot be paid, as far as I’m concerned.