(I work at a women’s fashion retailer. I am wearing a purple lace top that is loose around my stomach. This exchange happens one day with an older lady.)
Customer: “When are you due?”
Me: “I’m not pregnant.”
Customer: “Then why is your stomach sticking out?”
Me: *looking down* “I just ate. Your total is $12.98.”
(She didn’t even apologize, and she had the nerve to look offended that I wasn’t pregnant.)
(I work in a small grocery store that has a delivery system where customers order with email, via phone or through the online store. You can use either cash or credit card as a payment method. In credit card cases, the driver has a mobile payment terminal with him, and the payment is made at the customer’s front door. No numbers are required in the online shop. In cash cases, we pay the delivery with written checks which we’ve given the nickname, “Monopoly money,” and once the actual money is received from the customer, the Monopoly money in the counter is traded into the actual money. A cashier who is working on the school holiday gets one of these cash deliveries.)
Me: *hands the Monopoly money* “We are using these as a payment in deliveries. Treat this note as a normal [amount] bill.”
(Then I start packing. A minute later the cashier asks:)
Cashier: “What is the purpose of this note?”
Me: “We are using these as notifications that this account has received a delivery of this sum.”
Cashier: “Okay, then I will toss it in the trash.” *throws the monopoly money to the bin*
Me: *all the veins in my head explode* “NO! YOU’RE DEFINITELY NOT TOSSING IT TO THE TRASH!”
(My manager overheard this and repeated what I said to the cashier. Ever since then, she handled them like normal money. If you just listened to me for even ONE second…)
(It is the rush before New Year. I have just started my shift, sitting on a crate behind the bustling registers. I begin to fold some PJs back into their packages that have been pulled apart over Christmas. A customer comes out of the queue for the registers, items in hand, and speaks directly to me with a stern look.)
Customer: “EXCUSE ME!”
Me: *brightly looking up from my folding* “Yes? How can I help you? Do you have a question?”
Customer: “You can help me by putting this through; I want to buy this!” *shoving her items towards me*
(I take a moment to look at the queue and back at this lady. I have two coworkers running our two registers at full pace, and I know full well that every other register in the store is much the same.)
Me: “Ah, unfortunately, as you can see, there are only two registers here. I have no way of ringing that up for you, unfortunately. You shall have to wait in line for my lovely coworkers to serve you.”
(Shocked and dismayed her cunning plan had failed, she huffed and returned to the back of the queue. I sat back down to fold, a little dumbfounded, as I obviously didn’t have a register, and this was well before the times when we could ring through customers on a tablet. Did she think we had a secret register out the back or one I could pull out of my a**, but chose not to so that those queues could go on forever?)
Related:
Lack Of Register Does Not Register, Part 10
Lack Of Register Does Not Register, Part 9
Lack Of Register Does Not Register, Part 8
(Part of our pre-closing duties is to clean the bathrooms. While it’s not hard, one of the cashiers always takes longer than normal to do it and never actually does it right. One day, my manager pulls me aside.)
Manager: “Hey, [My Name], can I ask you to do the bathrooms?”
Me: “Didn’t [Cashier] say she’d do them?”
Manager: “Yeah, but I found out she spends half the time on her phone. And I’m tired of having to go back through to do what she doesn’t.”
Me: “Yeah, fair.”
(We got a lot fewer complaints after she stopped doing the bathrooms.)
(It is New Year’s Eve. A teenage boy comes up to the register with a few packs of vodka mudshakes.)
Teen: “Just these, thanks.”
Me: “Have you got your ID?”
Teen: “Oh, yeah, it’s just in my car.”
Me: “Sure. I’ll keep these up here while you go and get it.”
Teen: “I don’t want to trouble you.”
Me: “It’s no trouble at all.”
(He wanders around near the entrance for a bit, where I see him talk to a bunch of other teenage boys. He then comes back in.)
Teen: “It looks like someone’s broken into my car and stolen everything, including my ID.”
Me: “Oh, my goodness! You should call the police.”
Teen: “Yeah, I’ll drive straight down to the station from here. So, how much for these?”
Me: “I still need to see your ID.”
Teen: “But someone stole it.”
Me: “I know, and you should call the police right now.”
Teen: “I’m thirty, you know.”
Me: “And as soon as you prove that, you can buy your… mudshakes.”
Teen: “Mudshakes. Right.”
(He leaves the store and goes back to talking with his group of friends. A second teenage boy then walks into the store and stands in one of the wine aisles, pulling faces and scratching his head. He grabs a few random bottles, and then approaches.)
Teen #2: “I would like to purchase these fine wines for my sophisticated dinner party with my work friends tonight.”
Me: “ID, please.”
(He hands over his learner’s permit, revealing that he is 17.)
Teen #2: “They got my year of birth wrong; I’m really 23.”
Me: “I strongly doubt that.”
Teen #2: “Can I at least buy the mudshakes? They’re basically just chocolate milkshakes.”
Me: “No.”
