Sally Customer in the store shopping, seeing you working in an area, will often find that area you are working in irresistible and will have an overwhelmingly, compulsive need to enter that space, stand in front of you, and block all efforts made by you to complete your work task.
I used to ask if I could help them, to expedite the movement from my work area, but this would often lead to either a confrontation, or lengthy conversation that I had no room for during the course of my work.
You may say, "Why not just move over to another space and work that area." I have tried this strategy and also given it up. You see, changing the area only causes many of the people to find the new work area a new curiosity, thus causing the customer to once again move into the very area you moved into to avoid the work delay. I have found myself, moving from area to area trying to keep up with my work demands only to find the same customer keeping up with the change, standing in front of me, again blocking my movements... ,and yes, it has caused a few confrontations, initiated by the customer, concerning me being in their way. A less patient person would probably cause the customer pain in some manner.
My current strategy is to stand in place, look distraught, and sigh. Waiting for permission to return to work from the intrusive customer. Despite this I remain calm, patient, and polite. When I am allowed to return to my work, I frequently have to rush to catch up on the time lost. You see, our work performance is structured and timed, and we cannot afford to loose even one minute of delay. Nightly we are given an arbitrary amount of time to complete our work task. This time is variable, and very constrained, and is held over our heads to judge our performance. (explained later)
The reason I have made the person female is that it is overwhelmingly females that do this offensive thing. Don't get me wrong, males and females do this, but generally, males are much more polite, and usually do no intrude the space for any longer than it takes to get the item they are needing. Females on the other hand, will talk with others, play on their phone, or just generally stand in the space without any intention of anything else.
