Expressing Herself At The Express Lane

(I’m at a natural grocery store chain which specializes in all-natural foods and vitamins and such. I get water here once a week, because it’s the only one in town that offers .25 a gallon for refills. I’m in line behind a woman who jumped from a regular lane to the quick — under ten items — lane with considerably more than ten items just as I was approaching there with my six gallons of refill. The quick lanes at this particular store are two side-by-side registers with just enough counter space between them for a handful of items to be loaded up for checkout.)

Me: “You have a lot more than ten items there.”

(The woman hesitates about a half-a-heartbeat before continuing to unload her items onto the counter, completely ignoring me. She overflows the available space and has to wait while the checker clears room before she can finish unloading. I’m not in too much of a hurry, so I let it pass. The checker is pleasant, and starts checking her mound of stuff out, bagging quickly to get her order done.)

Customer: “Those are only supposed to be [price] per pound.”

(The checker takes the potatoes and checks them. The store doesn’t use tags on produce very often, usually only on the organics. She verifies that she entered the code for the correct potato type and not a similar one.)

Customer: “No, that’s still wrong.”

(The checker calls over someone to do a price check, sets them aside, and continues checking the woman out while she eyeballs the screen to make sure everything else rings up “right.” The other employee comes back and verifies the brand, and tells her the price per pound; more than the woman claimed.)

Checker: “So, this appears to be right. Do you still want them?”

(The woman nods. The checkout completes, and the woman pays.)

Customer: “I’m going to tell your manager you were rude to me.” *flounces off*

Me: *rolling my basket past* “Six gallons of water refill.”

Checker: “[Price].”

Me: *pays cash* “And I’m going to go tell your manager exactly how rude that woman was to you, and how nice you were in the whole time.”

(I walk down the line of registers to the far end where the woman is waiting as the store manager completes a refund and patiently wait behind the woman. We eye each other for a time, and after a few moments, she grabs her basket and starts to walk off. She gets a few steps away before turning on me.)

Customer: *to me* “You’re a mean man, you know that?”

Me: *as blandly as I can manage* “I guess so.”

(The woman travels all the way down to the quick check-out and stops to say something to the checker again, and heads out the door. While I wait a few more minutes for the manager to finish, the man in line behind me comes down and says she berated the checker for being rude.)

Other Customer: “She was nothing but nice to her.”

Me: “I know, and apparently, I’m mean for sticking up for the checker. I’m going to make sure her manager knows, too.”

(He smiled and headed out. I let the store manager know what happened, just in case the woman called later. She appreciated that I had done so.)