Hi, everyone

Could you please tell me which words/expressions you would use for each of the following situations?

1) Let’s say you and your husband/wife work from home, selling stuff (books or beauty products or anything) and you got a customer coming over (or should I say “coming ALONG/IN/OUT”? which preposition?), but you will have to run out to take care of something that just came up, and you need your husband/wife to take care of that customer for you. What words/expressions could you use to ask your husband/wife for that? “Would you mind ..... (taking care of/greeting/welcoming) this customer for me?”

2) What if you work at a beauty salon, or a bank, or anything and, as in the example above, something came up and you have to head out to deal with it, how could you ask your co-worker to help you take care of a customer?” (any expressions other than “cover for me” haha)

“Would you mind .... this customer for me?”

Thank you very much!!

Question

Hi, everyone

Could you please tell me which words/expressions you would use for each of the following situations?

1) Let’s say you and your husband/wife work from home, selling stuff (books or beauty products or anything) and you got a customer coming over (or should I say “coming ALONG/IN/OUT”? which preposition?), but you will have to run out to take care of something that just came up, and you need your husband/wife to take care of that customer for you. What words/expressions could you use to ask your husband/wife for that? “Would you mind ..... (taking care of/greeting/welcoming) this customer for me?”

2) What if you work at a beauty salon, or a bank, or anything and, as in the example above, something came up and you have to head out to deal with it, how could you ask your co-worker to help you take care of a customer?” (any expressions other than “cover for me” haha)

“Would you mind .... this customer for me?”

Thank you very much!!

Answer

Hey!

1) This customer would be coming IN, or for a more complete phrase, this customer would be coming into the store

Some phrases you could use:
• Would you mind taking over for me for a bit?
• Can you help this customer real quick?
• Can you take over for me real quick?

All of these phrases are informal and not the most grammatical, but they’re common!

2) Any of the phrases above could work, but here are aims phrases you could use:
• Can you cover for me?
• Would you mind helping this customer?

Furthermore, if you want to express that you have to leave, you could use these phrases before or after the question:
• I have to leave.
• I have to go.
• I have to head out. 
• I have something to do.

A complete thing you could say to a co-worker:
• I have to go. Can you cover for me?

Hope this helped!

Answer

I’d say “would you mind taking care of this customer for me?”

If you say “greeting” or “welcoming” its not wrong but it sounds like that’s all you want them to do.  It’s like saying please greet/welcome the customer for me, I’ll be back in a minute to serve them.

The first question:

customer coming in - customer is entering the room or building

customer coming over - customer is coming towards you (e.g. they may have been standing around and then walk over to your desk, or they may have just come in but you have just noticed them as they are walking over to you)

customer coming along - English prepositions are horrible, aren’t they?!  You can say this too, sounds the same as customer coming over.

customer coming out - implies they are leaving a room or building so I don’t think you’d use unless you worked outside

Hope that helps 😁