I am shopping at a large grocery store during the health crisis. Some cashiers want you to bag your own groceries, some don’t. Since there is no clear policy, I try to just watch what the cashier does and follow along.

This cashier has an issue with the register she is on and has to bring me over to another lane, so I can tell she is irritated from the start. She scans my items but collects them behind the plexiglass barrier so I can’t reach them to bag. I keep my reusable bags all inside one for easy carrying. As she bags, the other bags tend to expand out onto the counter and I can tell she is flustered by this.

Almost at the end of the transaction, the cashier mumbles under her mask to me. All I can catch is the word “two.”

Me: “Oh, yes. you’re right. I do have too many bags there. I could bring in just two next time to make it easier.”

Cashier: “No! I said you could help by bagging, too!”

Me: “Oh, okay.”

By that time, she had finished bagging so there was nothing I could do. What did she expect me to do? Reach around the plexiglass to get the items and put them in the bags she had tucked away beside her, all while somehow keeping the proper distance between us? I realize she was irritated from the beginning, but she could have said something if she wanted me to bag my own stuff!

I work for a grocery store in the pickup department. Sometimes, we’re out of a product a customer wants, and when that happens we try to substitute a similar item. The customer can then accept or reject those substitutions.

We are out of non-organic cherries so I substitute organic cherries. The customer rejects this substitution. Okay, maybe the customer doesn’t know that we price match; that happens sometimes. Nope.

The customer calls in with an unrelated question and I bring up the cherries.

Me: “I saw that you rejected the substitution of organic cherries. I just wanted to let you know that we price match, so you would be getting the same thing for the lower price. Would you like the cherries?”

Customer: “No, I like meat.”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Customer: “Organic means vegetarian. I’m not a vegetarian. I like meat.”

I tried to explain but the customer still didn’t seem like she understood, and she rejected the cherries in the end.

I’m cashiering during the lunch rush, and the display of my debit card reader has blanked. The machine itself is still working fine; it just doesn’t give prompts, so I just go on with it, as the only way to fix the issue would be to restart the whole register, which would take too long right now.

I tell everybody who wants to pay by card to just do it normally, and I give the prompts as necessary from what I see on my screen.

Customer: “I want to pay with my debit card.”

Me: “All right, here you go. The display is blank right now, but don’t worry; the machine works.”

She inserts her card, sees a blank display, removes the card abruptly, and thereby cancels the transaction.

Customer: “Your reader isn’t working.”

I turn the reader around to press the reset button, which takes some time to do its job.

Me: “It is working. The display is just blank right now, but you can pay normally. Just leave your card in and do what I say.”

I turn the reader back to the customer.

Me: “Here, just try again.”

She inserts her card again, sees that the display is still blank, and yanks the card out again.

Customer “Your machine is broken.”

I redo the reset process while the line behind her builds.

Me: “That’s just the display screen. I promise you the machine works. Please just listen to me and do what I say.”

She tentatively inserts her card again, frowns at the still blank display, and reaches toward the card again.

Me: “NO! Please leave it in and enter your PIN.”

She hesitantly enters her PIN.

Me: “And still leave it in, please.” 

The card reader works, and the register produces a receipt.

Me: “And here you go. Thanks for shopping with us and have a nice day.”

The customer left, frowning and shaking her head. People, we KNOW what we’re doing. Please believe us for once.

Related:
PIN-Headed, Part 17
PIN-Headed, Part 16
PIN-Headed, Part 15
PIN-Headed, Part 14
PIN-Headed, Part 13

I am sixteen working my first job. A lady in her forties comes through my checkout with a young boy.

Customer: “Can I get everything in bags?”

She has about ten items on the belt, enough that it will fit in one bag. Not hearing she wanted them separate, I pack everything into one bag. It isn’t until she is paying that she notices and begins her outburst.

Customer: “Is everything in the one bag?!”

Me: “Yes, although if you would like me to pack it into two bags, I can easily do so.”

Customer: *Grunts angrily* “I asked for two bags!”

Me: “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Let me fix that.”

Customer: “No. Don’t worry about it.”

She pays while lecturing me.

Customer: “I’m old. You should think more of your older customers.”

She continues accusing me of wanting her to suffer and saying that I am basically horrible at my job. 

Meanwhile, the kid with her listens to her rant and just looks at me; he looks horrified. I get that some people might have an injury or medical condition and not be able to carry much weight, but she is being truly horrible.

Somehow, I talk back. I am normally very anxious and shy.

Me: “I am sorry, madam, but I was running on autopilot.”

An old couple walks up to my checkout. They pick up a thirty-pack of soft drinks, which is easily double the weight of the lady’s bag, and put it onto the belt.

The lady goes quiet after seeing that and leaves, dragging the kid behind her.

Old Man: “Are you okay, love?”

It takes me a second after the lady leaves to realize I am shaking but I continue serving them.

Me: “Yes, I’m fine. Just so you are aware, your soft drinks can stay in the trolley.”

Old Woman: “We know; we just wanted to make that lady quiet. I feel bad for that poor child.”

My supervisor later told me that the lady complained and said I ignored her and was rude, etc., but the other couple had also returned at some point when I was on break and revealed what had happened.

Related:
Has Some Serious Bag Baggage, Part 7
Has Some Serious Bag Baggage, Part 6
Has Some Serious Bag Baggage, Part 5
Has Some Serious Bag Baggage, Part 4
Has Some Serious Bag Baggage, Part 3

A coworker is straightening some shelves and has a shopping cart with her, in which she puts empty secondary packaging, expired merchandise, and the like. She also has her half-empty water bottle in there, which is definitely in a design that we don’t carry.

She leaves her cart to help a customer and she returns to her cart to find her bottle and almost all of the merchandise missing. A woman had been browsing next to the cart when she had left just a few moments before, so she starts to look for said woman. She finds the woman as she is stuffing the water bottle and a TV dinner — of which she has ripped off the packaging — into her shopping bag.

When confronted, the woman becomes very defensive.

Woman: “I wanted to buy this stuff! They were marked down, of course. Why else would they be in that cart?”

Coworker: “They were not marked down. In fact, they were never going to be; they were expired. And that water bottle wasn’t even for sale at all; it was my personal one!”

The woman still refused to admit her defeat, and the whole incident escalated to the point that security had to escort her outside.

We still shake our heads about it and wonder if she had a poor grip on reality and actually believed what she told us, or if she thought that we would fall for that tall tale she presented us, and if it had, in fact, worked somewhere else.