How much money we talking about if less than $50 kick them out of the store. If I had a shop I'd be worse than the soup nazi from sienfeld and probably go broke.

Your manager said it was up to *me*?! Like, he said "go on answerbag dot com and ask the user there 'bostjan64' what he thinks???" Ok, well, I think it is rude to talk on the phone whilst doing business with someone else in any case. But there could be extenuating circumstances- maybe the customer was on the phone with a doctor or lawyer or ambulance driver or some other emergent situation. I'd recommend going ahead and taking care of the customer. But if this person in particular comes back and makes a habit out of it, then I would change my tune.

I agree it would depend on the tone of the call and repeated offences. If they are chatting with a friend I'd probably ask them a lot of related questions and be so annoying they would want to quit one task or the other. If it was an important call I'd suggest they step to the side and take it and I'd be with them as soon as they finish if I had a line. Or try to work around it as efficiently as possible, ONCE. Unlike stevo its more important to me to satisfy the customers waiting in line (again if you have them.) But most importantly be kind. Even if its your punk kid brother and you want to punch him. The customers in line aren't going to know that and they WILL report you if you are rude. Maybe you can ask them in the very beginning if they need to take 'that' or call them back? That's a polite hint that you don't want to do both at once. They may just be addicted and actually can multitask. If that's the case just act like they're not on the phone and don't worry about interrupting them. But then my experience was with high volume traffic. We had rushes with short contact with the customer. If you're fitting a bride with a dress or trying to sell real estate that's another matter. With management telling you its your call that sounds a little to me like he's telling you to make a judgement call when this happens. Maybe he's testing you to see what you can do on your own. Did you go to him with this issue or did he just see it happen? Are you new to customer service? Young? If all you're doing is scanning items it doesn't seem to me that it would make much of a difference anyway.