Just in time

We close at 9pm. Every single weeknight, every single one of our stores. The hours are posted on our doors, in the flyer, in the newspaper, on google. It is also common knowledge. However despite all this and against all odds a huge amount of customers believe that we are open 24 hours a day. I love when customers stroll through my line at 9:10 and say to me, "I made it just in time!" Uh, no you didn't. We closed 10 minutes ago. You are rude and inconsiderate. And then they have the gall to make demands. "Can I have paper in plastic?" No, you can have plastic and you can like it. So 9:15 rolls around and we still have 6 registers open. Are you kidding me? This happens almost every single night. 

Tonight, however, I witnessed a new low.   It is 9:20 and we have finally closed all but one registers when my manager starts walking towards the door. I look and see a man knocking on our locked door. Erin opens the door and the man runs in saying, "I'm so sorry, I'll be really quick! I need pasta!" There are so many things wrong with this. First, if you were really sorry you would not be here right now. Second, I don't care how quick you think you are I was ready to go home 20 minutes ago. And third, Walmart is RIGHT NEXT DOOR. I honestly cannot believe people are this selfish. I don't live to serve you. I barely tolerate you until 9:00 and at that exact time i cease to care. 

I would never try to get into a store after they were closed. Who does that?! I think we should just have a giant power switch that turns everything of at exactly 9:00. "Oh, too bad you did not make it in time you can go home now." Unfortunately it goes more like this, "Thank you very much, have a great night!"

I'll have your job for this

I was on 17 today, obviously. The register lived up to its reputation of being a harbinger of doom. Before I go any further with this story it is important to describe the setup of the register. I stand facing my register. To my right are all the packs of cigarettes, behind me are the cartons and to my left are the miscellaneous cartons that do not fit on the shelf behind me. A very grumpy old man with hair on the sides of his head, but not the top came through my line and asked for a pack of Marlboro Menthol Golds. I turned right and scoured the shelves. I couldn't find it and I do not blame myself because I don't smoke, it's a lot to keep track of and I generally assume people are capable of pointing to what they want. He sighed loudly and rolled his head sideways.
"It's right there; you don't have it," he said pointing to an empty row of cigarettes.
"Oh, okay. I have to ask a manager before opening a new carton," I said. I put my light on and waited for someone to come over. A second later Cam was there.
"Can I open a new carton of Marlboro Menthol Golds? We are all out," I said.
"Yeah," he said.
To save us all the trouble of waiting for me to find the carton I asked Cam, "Can you get that for me please?" Meanwhile the old man was glaring at me. Cam started looking through the miscellaneous cartons and eventually emerged from the boxes saying, "I'm sorry sir I think we are all out."
"Well that's just great," the man said in a tone that suggested he did not think this was great at all. It was right as he said this that Cam turned his head to the right and noticed there was a carton of Marlboro Menthol Golds out on the shelf already.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see those," Cam said and started opening the carton.
"I'll have your job for this," the man said, looking right at Cam. Even though he said it in a serious tone I knew he was joking because, well, nothing happened.
"I'm going to make sure you're fired," the man continued. I stopped and looked up at him. Apparently he was not joking. His head was actually shaking in rage. Cam and I looked at each other and continued smiling because this was all just so ridiculous.
"I'm an old friend of the manager and I am going to tell him what you did. You can't work here after this; you're incompetent. There's no way. You are going to be fired, I'll make sure of it."
As he went on with his rant I stood there stunned with a grin frozen on my face. I felt awful as I saw Cam's face turning red and he said, "It was a mistake sir."
The man would not hear it. He repeated, "You are going to be fired." He stared right at Cam and raised his eyebrows as if for a response.
"I'm sorry sir," Cam said.
"No you're not. You don't smile and laugh when you're sorry," he yelled. At that moment I was glad he wasn't looking at that grin still stuck on my face. Cam handed me the cigarettes. As he walked away the man called after him, "You're done here. You can be sure of that." He handed me a twenty without a word and I gave him his receipt and change.
"Thank you, have a great day," I said avoiding eye contact.
"Thanks you too," he said and left.

The Pumpkin Dispute

Last night at work this foreign couple came through my line. The woman was waiting at the end of the register with the carriage and the guy was watching me scan the last item through. It was a good sized pumpkin. I looked at the code on the sticker, typed it in, put the pumpkin on the scale to weight it and then sent it down the belt. "You're total is $67.98," I said. The man handed me his credit card which I swiped and handed back. He then leaned over and peered closely at the screen then stepped back incredulously. Oh great, a price challenger. "No weigh 8 pound," he said matter-of-factly, looking at me to see what I was going to do about it. "Uh, what?" "Pumpkin not weight 8 pound. Not possible." He pointed at the screen where it showed that the pumpkin weighed 8.34 lbs. He grabbed the pumpkin and put it on the scale. "Weigh again." "I can't weight it again," I said and tried to explain to him that the order already went through. I called my manager Erin over. I had no idea how to explain what was going on, but luckily the crazy started his complaint over. "No way is pumpkin 8 pounds," he said, "man under sign tell me 6 pounds." He started digging through his bagged groceries and took out to boxes of pie crusts. "Weigh these. See if equal 6 pounds like says." Erin said, "If you want to reweigh the pumpkin I can take you down to the courtesy booth and they'll get you your money back." The crazy looked extremely upset and started shaking his head in distress. He sighed in frustration. "No, no, no. We talking about 50 cents here, money no matter. Your scale is wrong! Need to be calibrated!" He pointed to the line developing behind him and said, "Need calibrate because all those orders going to be wrong." How noble of him. "Right I see what you're saying," Erin said. She put the boxes of pie crusts on the scale and it weighed in as 6.19. "Obviously it can't be exact," Erin said. Ha. Now he looked like an idiot. He threw his hands up. "Okay! Just want to be sure. That's fine." Erin said, "We appreciate that," waste of time. The bagger reloaded the bags and the 8 pound pumpkin back into the cart and they were gone.

Paranoid Customers

People are SO overly and unnecessarily paranoid during the checking out process. This customer last night told me he wanted to pay with his debit card the exact amount. I tapped the buttons and watched as he wrapped both his arms around the pin pad machine and bent his head over to enter in his pin number as quickly as possible. Ooookayyyy. I tried to keep my face straight. The other extreme was one time this older couple came through my line and he decided to pay with debit exact. His wife had to show him how to slide the card and then he couldn't remember the pin number. ""I wrote it down somewhere..." He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. On the paper was written "Pin #" followed by the numbers. He waved it around and flattened it out on the counter where anyone could have seen it. "6, 8..." he said outloud as he hit the numbers on the keypad. "Don't say it outloud!" his wife said. I caught her eye and we laughed. The paranoid debit card user reminded me of all the other ridiculous people. Quite a few people go to slide their card and I have to ask, "Is that debit or credit?" They answer, "Credit," and slide again as if I had asked the question out of mere curiousity. Uh, no. "I have to slide credit here," I say. Did you really not notice that nothing is happening on the pin pad? They look at me like I'm crazy to even suggest the idea that they hand me their card. "I'll do debit instead," they say. Because clearly I'm going to take the card and copy everything down so I can steal your identity. I'm definitely not 12 inches away from you, right in front of your face in a public place with tons of people watching me. So stupid. And the old people who take half an hour to write a check instead of sliding a card because for some reason they think all their money is going to be stolen. Some old woman will wait until the very end of the order and then look around in her huge pocket book for EVER to find her checkbook. She opens it slowly and fills out the check, asking me for the amount when it's right on the screen in front of her. She carefully rips out the check and writes down the number and amount before handing it to me. "Do you have aMarket Basket card..........." I ask. "Oh, yes!" Now, she has to find the card and she's so old it takes her about 30 seconds to get it out of the slot in her wallet and hand it to me. "Can you confirm here please........" I point to the pin pad. She squints at the screen and says, "Is that the green button?" "Just hit the button next to where it says 'confirm'." "Where is that?" UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. JUST USE A DEBIT CARD. After I finally get to put the check through the printer and show her the amount, I hand her the receipt along with a good chunk of my sanity.

Carriage Hound

There's this one employee who works here named Timmy and he has very red hair and he's the nicest kid. He was bagging on register 14. Gregory came in from outside and went up to the assistant manager that night, Aiden to see what he was supposed to be doing. She said to him, "Send carrot top outside."
He heard, "Send carriage hound outside."
"Who's carriage hound?" he asked seriously.
"No! carrot top!" Aiden said laughing. Gregory went to pass on the vest and switch places with Timmy.
Later that night Gregory told me what happened and i thought it was the funniest thing ever. We kept laughing about it. Every time Gregory would come in to put away the carriages he had gotten Gregory would call him carriage hound. Timmy would smile in puzzlement and we would just crack up. After the first time he stopped asking why we were calling him carriage hound. He probably thought we were complimenting his carriage-getting skills.
Since we were on register one, we could see all the customers coming in and this one red headed kid came in. I looked at Gregory and we both laughed.

You don't belong here

A couple nights ago I was on express, but it was register 16 which isn't as bad because usually it's only temporary and sometimes there's a bagger. This particular night I had a bagger, Gregory. This man came through my line and said something, but I couldn't hear so I asked him to repeat himself.
"That kid has really blond hair." I turned around to see where he was looking. There was this new hire working a couple registers down who had very blond hair, almost white.
"Oh," I said. He said something else, but I missed it again so I just nodded and handed him his receipt. When he walked away I asked Gregory, "What did he say?"
"He said, 'He doesn't belong here."
"What!" I said, "That's so sad!"
"And really weird," Gregory added, "Who says that?"
We laughed about this for the rest of the night. Every time one of us saw the other we would say, "You don't belong here," with a really serious look.

People who think everyone cares

A lot of customers are really rude, but there are actually some customers that are a little too friendly.
I was working on the register of doom and isolation when this guy came through my line and he chatted a little bit about his family while I was bagging his groceries. After he paid and I handed him the receipt I thought he would head to the door and leave like everyone else normally did, but he got out of the line and stood by the end of my register. He took his ipod out of his pocket and said, "I have some pictures on here."
"Okay..." I said. I turned my attention back to the line, but now people were unsure of whether they were waiting for that man or not.
"Oh, you can help him," the man said as he noticed me just standing there, "I'm just waiting for this to load."
After a few more customers my line died down and he came over holding up his ipod.
"This is my grandson Bently, he's 6 years old. He's so funny he wears his underwear on his head like this and I call him Captain Underpants..."
"He's cute," I said and faked a laugh.
"...And this is our dog Spot who we got off Craigslist for $50. It's sad to think about what would ahve ahppened to him if we hadn't taken him..." He went on forever and showed me picture after picture. Finally someone came to my line and he left. It was the first time I'd ever prayed for a customer.