There’s Norway You’re Staying Away

I worked in a hardware store about twenty years ago. We had information desks in the store, one in the kitchen/homewares department, one in hardware/seasonal, and one by the paint mixing counter.

It was basically a small desk with a desktop computer and a phone. The desks had an “information” sign above them. There was nothing indicating it was a register/check out. No scanner, receipt printer, pin pad, etc.

Almost daily, someone would come up to a desk if a member of staff was working there and dump their stuff on the counter and demand to be checked out.

Me: “Sorry, can’t check you out here. There’s no register here, so you need to go to the check-out up front.”

Customer: “But there’s a line, I want to pay here.”

Me: “Well, you can’t pay here. I don’t have a way of taking your payment. Please take your items up front to check out.”

Customer: “This is horrible customer service! I’m never shopping here again!”

And because this is a sparsely populated part of Norway that doesn’t exactly have an overabundance of hardware stores:

Me: “Right… See ya next week…”