first ten customers thru' your doors the first nine might be complete Mitty's and are looking for a chat. The tenth delivers gold and signs up thus making the exercise worthwhile
Yes of course - and I agree with most of the rest of what CK says in the last post. But all small businesses are just that - small with few staff. If they are busy looking after existing paying customers then they mustn't allow prospects to disrupt the work of serving those customers: if they do we'll be seeing posts on here saying things like
"I'm going to change my school. Every time I've got a lesson booked its late because my instructor is off doing something else like chatting to prospects at the counter. I expect to be treated better than that."
So I'll say it again - politeness costs nothing and its easy to politely make folk feel welcome and wanted, but it may be the case that they need to be asked to wait or come back another time (assuming they have just turned up un-announced of course).
The bit I dont agree with, then, is
the OP was/is a potential customer and therefore 'king'
He's only a customer and "king" once he's paying for something. Before that he's a prospect and takes second place to paying customers.
Anyway that's enough free business advice from me - I get paid to help people sort out these kind of issues normally.