It’s Friday night, and I have been working an eight-and-a-half-hour shift that’s going to end at 11:00 pm. It’s around 10:40 pm, and I want nothing more than to leave. I figure that the place is dead enough that I can start cleaning my register now and not have to deal with another customer before I get out.
Just as I’m finishing up, probably about 10:55 pm, a customer comes to my register with two carts full of groceries. I ring all of her items through, sending them to the other end of the belt.
Well, as you can imagine, two carts worth of groceries doesn’t fit on the belt. This woman just stands there, so when the back of the belt gets full, I stop ringing, prep some paper and plastic bags, and start bagging her stuff. So as not to cover the belt in bags, I move them to the ledge at the end.
Customer: *Flipping her s**** “You shouldn’t bag my stuff until it has all been rung through!”
Me: “Some stuff needs to be bagged so that there’s room to put the next group of stuff I’m going to scan.”
Customer: “Well, you’ve also bagged my items wrong. The bags are too heavy!”
I usually make them around 7.5 to 10 lbs each so that a normal person can grab a few and make one trip but none of the bags will rip.
Customer: “You didn’t ask me how I wanted them bagged. You can’t pack the bags until I’ve finished unloading! I’ve brought my own bags, and they’re at the bottom of my cart.”
I apologize and go back to scanning. About three hundred items later, she plops down about forty reusable canvas bags.
This woman then proceeds to stand at the end of the register and tell me what to put in every single bag. She doesn’t hand me anything, she doesn’t touch a bag, and she has to weight test every bag before it can go into her carts. I do what she wants, thinking I can be done fastest by just shutting up and dealing with it.
I finish bagging and turn to tell the woman her total. My store has a reusable bag discount where you get $0.05 off for every canvas bag you bring with you. Most customers don’t complain if you forget to ring that up as well, and if you do, they can go to customer service for a refund. I know this woman would complain, so I ring her for forty canvas bags and she gets her $2.00 off.
I tell her her total, and she pays with food stamps. After that processes, she has a balance of $0.07. So, logically, she loses her s*** AGAIN.
Customer: “You must have done something wrong! Every item I bought was stamp eligible, and I have more than enough balance on my card!”
I look over at my manager and call him over. He asks what’s going on and I explain. Obviously, my interpretation was wrong because the woman tells him:
Customer: “She is very incompetent and should be fired! She can’t bag, she can’t deal with people, and she’s rude!”
My manager looks at her.
Manager: “Have you bagged anything?”
She looks bewildered.
Manager: “If you wanted your items bagged your way, ma’am, you could easily have done it yourself. Our employees aid you in that process as a courtesy, but to expect them to do it all for you is asinine and selfish. [My Name] has been here since 2:30 and should have left forty minutes ago. Also, the computer says that you are short by seven cents. After checking, I can see that this is accurate. I can’t quite tell you where, but there are seven cents that your food stamps don’t cover. Now, you can apologize for wasting my employee’s time, pay seven cents, and leave my store, or I can calculate the overtime [My Name] has accrued and add that to your total for wasting his time.”
He then turns to me.
Manager: “Go home. You did everything right.”
The next day, I found out that this woman was there until the store closed, arguing over seven cents. She was banned from our store and (thankfully) never heard from again.
