Patience Doesn’t Register With Some People

I work in a smallish-sized store. On a typical day, we only have two employees — usually management and a cashier — working at any given time. This means one employee is on the register while the other walks the sales floor and stocks. On a normal day, this is more than enough, but occasionally, we get a rush of people in the store and we open up a second register, if the second employee isn’t in the middle of helping a customer on the floor, but they always jump onto a register as soon as they are available.

Our customers are usually understanding and patient when these rushes happen. However, in the last week, I had two separate occasions where full-grown adults threw the biggest fits because there wasn’t a second register currently available.

This happened during our shift change. These are the worst since things are chaotic already. To make things worse, it was the end of a new employee’s first shift. I had just clocked out and was gathering my things and double-checking the schedule for my next shift and who I would be working with.

The manager that had just come in twenty minutes prior switched the other two employees out. During this time, there was only one person in line and maybe five groups of people in the store total, so it was the ideal time to switch them. She took the new person to the office to count their till and help them with clocking out.

While I was heading out, the phone went off. The on-duty manager was still busy, so I went ahead and answered it. It happened to be another store asking questions, so I decided to sit down and answer a few of them before I left. During this time — about two minutes — out on the floor, everyone in the store decided they were going to leave.

I finished talking to the other store and walked out. Instantly, I was approached by a man asking about what sounded like, “I lookin’ for a job.” This isn’t uncommon, so I pointed to the poster next to the register that gives the website to apply and explained that we were looking for new employees. And then the conversation went like this:

Man: “Yo, I only got a couple of things. You mind opening up another line?”

Me: “Sorry, but I actually am off the clock and leaving. However, they are almost done in the office and will be able to open it up in a minute.”

Man: “Why can’t you just open up the second line?”

Me: “I don’t have a drawer. I am off the clock.”

Man: “Why isn’t there another d*** checker?”

Me: “Sorry, they are in the middle of a shift change and having some technical issues.” 

[New Person] was indeed having a hard time figuring things out.

Me: “They are almost done and will be out in a minute.”

Man: “If you weren’t in that g**d** office yapping your mouths off, y’all’d be done. This is s***ty-a** customer service.”

This really pissed me off because the “yapping” he was hearing was me talking to another store about work-related questions and the manager guiding the new girl through the end-of-shift process. By no means were we “yapping.”

And then, as to make me even more irritated, some middle-aged-teen (really hard to tell) girl jumped in.

Girl: “Why do you have a shift change in the middle of the day, anyway? It’d be smarter if you didn’t change shifts.”

I was done.

Me: “I don’t make the schedule; I just follow it. Someone will be out in a minute. You can either wait here at this closed register or you can wait in line. Sorry, but I am off the clock.”

I walked into the office to let them know about the tension on the floor and walked back out.

The man must have also walked out because he left his small handful of stuff on the counter. The funny thing is, the woman that was originally behind him in line was up at the open register checking out. If he had waited three minutes, he could have left with what he wanted.