So, there is this guy "Ellert" who works as a cashier in a supermarket. It is a moderately large store he is working in so there are 10 registers and people tend to grab the next one that is empty, however due to the immense traffic of customers in and out of the store the registers are pretty much always in use and only very rarely is there even a 10 second time frame where a worker gets any breaks from working aside from lunch breaks, and when that happens it only happens like once or twice in the day.

Ellert likes to do his best and he greets every customer with a smile and a courteous "good day" or "good evening" depending on the time of the day and he always asks first hand if the customer wants some groceries bags or not. Sometimes the customers like to greet him back and respond to his question and sometimes they ignore him and just snatch bags off the next register not really paying Ellert any heed until it's payment time. Different people with different personalities Ellert concludes and gets on with his work.

Ellert never sits down at the register when he's working, it's no lie that you work faster and better when you're standing up at a counter as you reduce elbow movements and Ellert works fairly swiftly while treating the products with care stacking them side by side as not to waste any space rather than just throwing them to the side after running the bar-code of each product through the scanner. This means that not only does he present himself better as he stands face to face with his customers but he also works more efficiently both in terms of working faster and in terms of making it easier for the customer to properly order his or her products into the groceries bags meaning customers need less time to finish putting into their bags before Ellert needs to place the next batch of products on the back end of the counter.

Statistics show Ellert serves the most customers day after day, serving a good 30-40% more than most of the other workers serve. This does not mean Ellert's line of customers clears up faster, no, customers just go to the next register that looks like it has a short line to it, so distribution of customers is fairly constant throughout the entire day at any given point of time.

This is something the other workers know.

The other workers also know that every worker leaves around the same time, and that payments are given out not based on how much effort and energy is expended during work but how long they work, meaning slower is even better at the end of the day in terms of payments when the amount of customers turns from being "infinite" into being "whoever is left in the store", so speed is not always a good thing. The other workers also realize how meaningless it is for them to put extra effort into working so they don't mind sitting silently slowly scanning each item while only really smiling when they notice how silly Ellert is being by standing up while working and interacting with the customers when there really is no gain in it. Really, one could even say it's quite stupid.

But if it's stupid or not can be a matter of personal opinion and some believe there to be some sort of a "personal gain" in doing more than you need to do even when there are no benefits to doing it. So looking at the poll above, do you think Ellert is being stupid or not ? And do you do more work than you need to ? If so what examples can you give ? And if you were a customer in the store would the extra effort Ellert makes matter to you at all or are gestures of hospitality and a faster service just trivial things you hardly notice or care for ?

What are your opinions of the matter ?