They Build Houses, While Retail Builds Character

I turned sixteen right as I started working part-time. At the aproned home improvement store that employed me, there were four main assignments for cashiers: Self-Checkout, Garden, the inside normal register, and the Pro Desk register.

As a trainee, I was to stay only at the self-checkout or the normal inside register as I learned to do my job. While this taught me the ropes, it left me inexperienced in the less-than-ideal assignment: Pro Desk.

As the name implies, the Pro Desk is where professionals (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc.) come to do business and check out. It was constantly slammed, and customers often purchased thousands of dollars of merchandise in multiple carts per transaction. If you were a cashier at this register, customers often expected you to have comprehensive professional knowledge in each and every construction-related discipline, and ring everything up faster than the Flash. It was especially busy in the early morning, when many contractors would get their supplies to use at their jobs later in the day. 

And of course, when it came time for me to have my first solo assignment, barely-sixteen year old part-timer me was assigned an eight-and-a-half-hour Saturday morning shift at the Pro Desk register.

The shift is a panicked blur in my memory. At one point, I had to stop checking out customers in order to do a cash strip, and in the time it took me to count and send up the $3,000 in spare bills I had accumulated, my line grew from two to over ten customers, each with at least a single full cart. 

Right at the end of this rush, the final customer had four full carts, which totaled over $1,500 in plumbing materials. He muttered under his breath about how long I took the whole time and insisted I move faster.

I rushed through until I was stopped by a single PVC plumbing part, which didn’t scan properly. I tried typing in the code by hand, scanning it from different angles, but no dice. I asked him if he knew what the part was called, and he simply began cussing me out for not knowing it already, and then admitted he didn’t know the name of it either. I paged my manager as I began to frantically search our website to see if I could find it online.

Customer: “Are you f****** kidding me? They put a r*****ed kid on the register just in time for me to come through. Figures.”

He continues in this manner. Finally, after minutes of spouting verbal abuse at me, the now-crying cashier…

Customer: “I can’t believe this s***ty service! Over at [Competitor], they’d never—”

The customer froze. Then, he rifled in his pockets before pulling out a crumpled receipt from [Competitor].

Customer: “Oh, I bought that part at [Competitor]. Forgot I brought it in to make sure it’d fit.” *Laughs.*

He then finished checking out in silence as I continued to cry quietly, then left.

What a warm welcome to retail that was. I still remember it close to ten years later, so clearly it left a positive impression.