I worked as a cake decorator during my undergrad. I worked in a grocery store chain, so we were all about efficiency and speed; I had like seven minutes per cake to fully assemble and decorate standard case cakes. (That didn’t happen, but I tried!) We could have fifteen minutes for custom orders. The hours we were allotted for cake decorators for one week depended on how productive we’d been in previous weeks; the system counted automatically every time we printed a label for a cake.

Once, a young guy came in and placed a custom order. I was twenty-two, so he was probably around twenty-five. My brain is telling me he looked slightly like a “chill” type; maybe he had a beard and a beanie.

Customer: “I want a sheet cake for my friend’s birthday. On it, I’d like an artistic interpretation of what each of my friends would look like as a cat based on their physical appearances and personality traits. I want each cat to have an item that reflects a hobby — like, one friend who likes to write would have a notebook… but still as a cat. Oh, and I also need you to write each cat’s name so they’ll know who is who.”

He tried to describe each one of his friends to me in terms of appearance, notable characteristics, and hobbies. He had like eight friends.

I wish I remembered how I got out of the conversation and subsequently got out of that order! I usually worked with my manager or my bakery lead, and I feel like the lead took over. We were allowed to reject orders if they were better suited to a specialty bakery. (Many were; I don’t know why people thought we could do tiered cakes or use fondant.) We could turn down orders like this that were straight-up ridiculous.

It was really funny to me, though. I remember the guy being super earnest about the cat cake.

I loved working in the bakery department of a large, upscale grocery store. My job was the customer side, performing at a fast pace while packaging baked goods to fill the shelves, attending to customers, taking custom orders, answering phones — all the tasks you’d expect.

A pleasant young man was hired, and I trained him. He absolutely loved interacting with customers and was a smiling “people person” who was liked by his coworkers — until he wasn’t. He made it a point to work as much on the customer floor as possible, either restocking or arranging product. He would engage everyone who passed by, whether they were shopping or just passing to the next department.

Many times, he’d ask what they were looking for and walk them to the product — at the other end of the store! This left the rest of us to pick up the slack with packaging of tons of product, phones, orders, etc. He schmoozed the customers and many times spent twenty minutes talking to one. Then, he’d move on to the next one. He was getting the stink-eye from his coworkers, but he really thought that was “his job” — and who gets in trouble for making customers happy?

After we complained to the bakery manager, he also wondered how he could rein someone back who got so many compliments from the customers. He was like a personal shopper for the bakery!

The front crew decided to talk up his “skills” to management to maybe get him transferred to another department. Not surprisingly, it was decided that his great customer skills would be perfect for the front end, with sooooo many great comments about how helpful he was. He became a cashier, and not just that, but he became the assistant manager — jumping over thirty cashiers with more seniority who coveted the job.

Now he had a full plate of tasks that couldn’t wait and that he had no experience with, he had unhappy resentful cashiers who didn’t make his job easier, he had to schedule breaks and lunches according to union laws, and he floundered big time.

After six weeks, he begged to be sent back to the bakery, but he’d jumped unions with the promotion and he’d timed out to be able to go back. So, he became a regular, non-star cashier in the trenches. Now he had close supervision, benchmarks for items rung per minute in place, and no time to schmooze the public. He actually worked out fine — but not as happy. He’s still a smiling face and a pleasant person with great customer service skills… but I regret nothing!

I work for a grocery store. We’re a pretty big, popular store — or at least we used to be.

We have thirteen lanes available for checkout, but only one of them is manned at any time. We have twenty-four self-checkout kiosks, but none of them are ever manned.

Typically, people use the self-checkout kiosks. Eventually, someone has a problem at a kiosk. They hit the call attendant button. There are no attendants.

It varies how long they wait, but eventually, they give up and either walk away, leaving their stuff, or they go to the one manned lane and wait in line.

The kiosks don’t automatically reset when left alone, so the call attendant light keeps blinking. Eventually, all of the kiosks end up in “call attendant” mode, and the line in front of the single manned checkout starts getting unmanageable.

It’s usually an hour or two after that point that management wanders over to the self-checkout kiosks and resets them.

Our manager always complains that no one knows how to use the kiosks and laments not being able to get rid of the single checkout person per shift. Meanwhile, shoppers have been learning that this store has extremely long wait times and simply going elsewhere.

What used to be a bustling, busy, store is now dead and empty most of the day.

Me: “Sir, you can’t park there. That’s our fire access spot.”

Customer: “Oh, it’s okay. I manage the store next door.”

Me: “I… don’t see how that changes anything. You’re not allowed to park there.”

Customer: “Managers are allowed to park in the fire access spots.”

Me: “That is absolutely not true.”

Customer: “What would you know? You’re just a cashier.”

Me: “You’re right. What would I know?”

The customer-slash-manager-next-door proceeded into the store. What would I know? I would know the number for the towing company that our business park gives to all stores on the property for moments like this. Funny how a manager of a store in the same business park wouldn’t know about that.

He did know about it about half an hour later when the tow truck arrived!

A customer comes up to me with a lottery scratch card.

Customer: “Hi. My grandma bought me some scratchcards for my birthday from here, and this one says I won $10,000. Is she pulling a prank?”

Me: *Scanning the card* “No, she isn’t! This is a winning card. Congratulations!”

Customer: “Wow… so, what happens now?”

Me: “We’re not authorized to deal with that much money, so you’d need to contact the lottery guys. Their number is on the back of the card.”

He thanks me, and normally that would be noteworthy enough. A few days later, he’s back.

Customer: “Hi. Do you remember me?”

Me: “I do, and congratulations!”

Customer: “Thanks! So, I used about $3,000 to pay my grandma’s credit card bill, but I have $7,000 left. Could I use it to pay for customers using food stamps?”

Me: “I… I’m not following.”

Customer: “My grandma and I were on EBT, uh… food stamps for a while, and it was rough. We’re a bit better off now, especially now that the credit card is paid off! I want to help others on food stamps. I was kinda hoping I could, like, camp out today and offer to pay for the groceries of your customers on food stamps.”

I was NOT expecting that, and so I have to call my manager. My manager’s response:

Manager: “Well, we can’t stop you.”

And so Mr. Scratchcard does just that! He hangs out at the small café near the checkout lanes with a coffee and a book, and whenever a customer comes by with an EBT card, he offers to pay for their groceries himself. There is confusion, smiles, tears, and hugs.

He is there all day, and at the end of the day, my manager approaches him.

Manager: “You’re going to go down in memory at this place for a very long time.”

Customer: “I still have over a thousand dollars left, though! Oh, well…”

Mr. Scratchcard was back a week later to finish up the rest.

That was almost twenty years ago now, and it remains the single kindest act I have ever seen.