A customer walks into a Beacon Hill shop.

Stay with me. This is not a man-in-a-bar story.

She knows what she wants to buy. The woman behind the counter doesn’t look up. She keeps doing what she’s doing. The customer waits a bit. Should she clear her throat? Say hello? State that she wants to buy such and such? Sometimes she might do that.

But this time she waits to be acknowledged. It doesn’t happen. She leaves the shop, which is $60 poorer than it would have been, and which won’t be mentioned—at least at this time. This happened a few months ago. It is sooooo Boston.

But even old cities with ground-in habits have to change. In this time of economic crash and burn, is there any shopkeeper or shop assistant on Beacon Hill who can afford to ignore customers?

You don’t have to overdo it. It’s just a nod of welcome or a simple, “May I help you?”

Behaving in such a way as to welcome customers instead of turning them off requires a bit of effort, but isn’t that what keeping a shop or a restaurant is all about?

Shopkeepers at all times, but especially in these times, need to reduce the barriers between themselves and potential customers. If you have a doorbell, get rid of it. It doesn’t make you seem exclusive. It makes you seem foolish and fearful.

If you don’t take credit cards, change your practices. Someone who really wants those 20 airline miles will patronize another establishment.

Don’t start carrying merchandise another shop already carries. You’ll reduce the potential for profits in both of your shops. Some customers, loyal to the other shop, will just not come into your shop again.

In winter, shovel your sidewalk immediately after a snowstorm and keep it clear. Potential customers will cross the street to avoid your shop if they have to negotiate ice and snow.

Wash your windows and clean up around your front door. Boston is a dirty city in many places, but that’s no excuse for the area in front of a shop to be littered and gritty. The Sevens, with its sweeping and hosing down, is one of the best keepers of its sidewalk, and it would be smelly if it didn’t wash away the beer. But it’s ironic that an old-style Boston bar, a place in which you might expect to find a bit of grit, is the place on Charles Street that keeps its sidewalk the cleanest.

Make your windows appealing. Imaginative shop windows are fun for passers-by and help them remember your shop when they want what you have. One of the worst window displays is at CVS at Charles Circle. How nice it would be to look into the store to see activity and the merchandise instead of having to look at banal corporate posters.

What CVS does terribly, its neighbor does beautifully. I bet lots of Beacon Hill residents go into Top Shelf to buy a soft drink or a bouquet or two just because the flowering plants the shop keepers display in their tree pits and under their front windows make Charles Circle a happier place. The display is even visible from the Charles/MGH T station. Fresco on Cambridge Street does the same thing, crowding its sidewalk with plants. Keep it up, and we’ll keep coming.

Some shopkeepers complain that every time they have planted a window box or set out a potted plant someone steals it, so they have quit doing it.

They are right. People steal. Get over it. Do like experienced residents do. Buy enough plants at the outset so that you have some spares to fill in after the thugs come by.

Shop owners want to thrive. We residents want them to thrive and stay, so that we can satisfy all our wants and needs without having to get in our cars. Shop owners can do a lot more to make sure that we are welcomed and have the inclination to spend any money we have left in this economic downturn.