Not A Basket-case
Customer: “Can I use this counter as a shopping cart?”
I work as a cashier at a small store. That counter was one of only two we had, and we’re not supposed to leave items on the counter. I knew this. So did my coworker, but she spoke to the customer, and he said something I couldn’t make out that convinced her to let him. It was only a few items, after all. Or so it was at the time, but he came back with more.
Customer: “Could you price-check these?”
Me: “Okay.”
I scanned a few cups of fruit — more specifically, five or six, more than he could easily fit in his arms.
Me: “They’re two for three.”
Customer: “What about these ones?”
The packaging was almost identical. I know that items like these are generally part of the same deal, so I price-checked them and told him as much.
Customer: “What about these ones?”
Me: “Sir, they’re part of the same deal.”
Customer: “But it’s a separate item—”
He dropped one.
Me: “Are you sure you don’t want a basket?”
He didn’t call me out on this, but I realized shortly after we were done price-checking these items that he probably had some sort of mental illness and that was why he didn’t use a cart. I apologized to him when he returned to the register. Sure enough, he was a germophobe.
Then, he returned to the register again. And again.
The customer was gracious and let other customers scan out their items first, even as he continued to ask me to price-check every item. He continued piling items onto the second register until it was unusable as a backup.
At one point, he tried to help another customer.
Customer: “You know, you can get 36% in rewards here.”
You need to use the app to receive that kind of deal, as I had to tell customers many times, and which he told the same customer when she got significantly less than that. After that chat, he spoke to me about the deal.
Customer: “It’s the best deal in twenty-two years. You’d see that kind of deal at Home Depot, but not at Wal-Mart.”
For what it’s worth, this was Walgreen’s. Clearly, he was a bit side-tracked, although he was right that it was 36%. I don’t know how he knew that it had been twenty-two years, either, but he later admitted that was the reason he was buying out “half the store”. Which was hyperbole, but not by much.
When it came to ringing him out, he insisted on having me price-check each item again. Individually. And then, he used a calculator on his phone to confirm that it was the “right” price.
My boss had to come over to back me up now that the counter was clear so that other customers could get in line. He understandably tried to speed things along.
Boss: “Sir, that would take, like, thirty-seven minutes. You can wait until after he’s done scanning all the items.”
Customer: “But I need to know they’re the right price.”
Boss: “Well, then the cashier only needs to scan one of the same items and then change the quantity.”
This was true. It was something I had done many times. Fortunately, he agreed to let me. Once we were finished, the customer complained about my boss.
Customer: “Doesn’t he know that it would take longer if we didn’t price-check each item? In that case, we’d have to refund the whole thing if it turned out wrong. Rushing won’t make things go faster…”
I was sympathetic to this, as I’ve seen customers freeze up the whole system because they insisted on trying to use their credit card before our system could catch up. I nodded my head and pretended he was making sense.
A couple of hours after he left, I realized that we had a free return policy. If one item was the wrong price, then he could return it without taking more than a minute or two by showing us the receipt. He did nothing but waste time and space.
