Something about the customers:
There are two things I want to tell every single customer.
1: I’m not your friend.
2: I’m not your enemy.
It’s true. Customers seem to assume one of those things though. I’m always either the guy who really wants to hear you talk about your cheating husband, or I’m the spawn of satan trying to swindle you out of your hard earned pennies.
It’s not that I don’t care about the hard time you’re going through, but I really don’t want to hear it. It’s nothing personal. I’m just not interested in hearing about your day or how you had a fight with your insignificant other and now need whine coolers.
Also, if you’re using Food Stamps, I don’t care; but don’t flaunt it. I’ve had so many people tell me, “I don’t pay for my groceries, I use food stamps.” Nothing pisses me off more than this. Especially if I see the same person trying to sell the remaining balance of their food stamp card out in the parking lot. Here’s a tip, don’t let me see you do that, because it’s my duty as a taxpayer to call social services on your butt. I have no problem with you having food stamps…everyone needs some help now and again. I’ve known customers who genuinely needed that help to survive, but I’ve met a lot more who didn’t really need it or recieved far too much for their needs.
I also don’t want to see you on that cell phone. It’s rude! And don’t put finger up to tell me to wait a minute when I’m trying to get the money you owe the store. If there’s a line of people waiting, unless the person on the other end of that phone is bleeding or missing a limb…they can wait until you finish your business.
General rudeness pisses me off too. Several months ago I had a customer ask me why the store was so busy, to which I replied, “because it’s the first of the month and everyone is getting their wic checks, food stamps, welfare checks, etc.” I then rang up the customer and didn’t think about the event at all. The next customer in line gave me a very dirty look when I said, “hi, how are you doing today?” I assumed she just had a stick up her butt. As soon as I finished ringing her up she went to the desk and told her that I’d been telling people it was n****r day. At which point I was called off my register so we could sort this out. I told her exactly what I said, and she said, “Yeah, you white crackers call that n*****r day.” I finally just told her that I never once called, nor thought to call it that, and any ideas she had to the contrary resulted from her own prejudices. The funny thing about it was, even though she knew I didn’t say that, my manager still had to write me up for it. Company policy basically says that if the issue is addressed and the customer is still unhappy when they leave the store the offending employee must be written up or terminated.
I’m going to summarize that for you, I was punished because someone else decided that in my mind the 1st of every month was associated with a racial slur, and due to a legalistic company policy there was no chance of me not being punished for my lack of crime.
On a lighter note, later that day 4 customers that had been in the store when the customer was making a scene at the desk called the store and told the manager exactly what happened and even said that they thought I behaved in a very professional manner.
Also, don’t try to tell me I am poorly educated. That is something that infuriates me to no end. I’ve had people flat out tell me that “it’s a good thing you don’t need brains to be a cashier.” I have worked with 2 people who recently graduated law school. Neither one could find a job, so they took what they could get. They were some of the most well educated men I’ve ever known, but circumstances demanded they get whatever job they could. I myself would have graduated from college with my bachelor’s in computer science and an associate’s in film(I know it’s a bit of an odd combination). In fact, most grocery store employees I’ve worked with either had a degree, or were still in school.
Something for employees:
Basically it boils down to this: do your smegging job. Nobody wants to be at work. I certainly don’t want to, but I show up and work dangit. I work hard, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t too. The problem is that there isn’t really a system of punishment and reward set up to encourage workers. Really punishment would work fine, but reward would be nice too. I once worked with a bagger who literally spent the first 4 hours of his shift sitting on a bench playing gameboy. I timed it for the week he did that. Finally his mother heard about it and yelled at him to work hard. Now he does work. The thing of it is, why wasn’t he fired after day 1 or 2? To be honest, I’ve never seen anyone get fired unless they directly cost the company money by stealing, OR assaulted a fellow employee.
I, for instance, was rather brutally sexually harassed for almost 6 months when I first started, to the degree that my lawyer later told me that I could have easily won a lawsuit against the company if I’d acted when it was all going on. You know what the company did about it when I complained to human resources? They took nearly 4 months to acknowledge that I’d filed the complaint. When they finally did acknowledge it they did nothing more than say, “stop that” to the people involved. They should have been fired over the incidents. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I’m a man and they were both women. I don’t know. HR certainly didn’t phase them though. A week later they tried to tell the police I planted a bomb in the building to get back at me.
Bathrooms(this shouldn’t be read by anyone, ever):
I’ve got to say, WOMEN ARE DISGUSTING! Seriously ladies, what the heck is up with your bodies? I’ll never forget all the times I’ve found menstral blood on the ceiling of the bathroom. And not just a little bit, like someone was bleeding up and got a huge glob of blood up there. I’ve found feces on the walls and ceiling before too. If you’re going to use the bathroom, please consider the person who’s got to clean it before you decide to use your own fluids and waste to scrawl racial slurs on the walls. It’s disgusting.
Coincidentally, never ever ever use a public bathroom unless you yourself have cleaned it within the past 5 minutes.
And that’s why working in the grocery business sucks.
