Inconvenienced

Category: Inconvenienced

  • All Dollars, No Sense

    One of my regulars yesterday bought a pack of cigarettes ($14 and change) with a $100 bill. Now, we have 3 drawers in our store, two of which can only barely break that, and the last one shouldn’t be able to break it at all.

    I asked that he please check with us before trying to get such a large amount in change. He did not like that. He started saying that, as a 24-hour store, there’s no reason we can’t be able to break it, that he always runs into trouble he tries stuff like that at our store, and that he’s going to call our manager, whose name he didn’t even get right. (A point I kind of wish I hadn’t corrected him on.)

    Addressing the second point first, if you know that workers in a particular establishment have issues with repeated behavior of yours, stop doing it!

    As for why it’s difficult to make such a large amount of change, yes we’re open all day and night, but every shift change we have to open and close our registers at a certain dollar amount, as well as depositing cash periodically into a safe throughout the day.

  • Connecting With the Customers

    Connecting With the Customers

    On the whole, I love my customers. My job’s not perfect, but the customers, with some exceptions, are great. One of them even became one of my best friends as we bonded over one of our favorite sci-fi franchises!

    One young lady came in with a purse bedecked with pins of (among other things) Shakespeare and his Globe theatre. Being a theatre kid with hopes of directing, I had to compliment her accessorizing. Turns out that her dream role and my dream project involve the same musical!

    I recently had a customer with a very thick Scottish brogue, so I did what I always do whenever I get a customer from the UK or Ireland: recommend a shop a couple of blocks from me that specializes in British goods! (I’m addicted to Jelly Babies.)

    To all the awesome customers out there, keep on rocking! To the not so great ones, there’s always hope.

  • Ringing Up Phoneys

    Ringing Up Phoneys

    One kind of customer you see every day as a cashier is the phoney, a person who spends the whole transaction on their cellphone or Bluetooth. It’s one thing if you’re on a business call, but if you’re just yakking with someone, please hang up or put it on hold until the transaction is over, and especially don’t pick up if the phone goes off during the transaction. The former is ignorance at best, obliviousness at worst; the latter’s just rude.

    Put the shoe on the other foot: how would you feel if an employee was answering someone else’s questions over the store phone while ringing you out, perhaps even having picked up the phone while scanning your items? I’d wager that most stores have a policy that the customer physically present takes precedence over the person calling. Employees have to give you their undivided attention, please extend them the same courtesy.

  • Taste-Testing my Patience

    Some of the hot foods we sell in my store include four-piece bags of items that can best be described as longer versions of either (depending on the bag) tater tots with some flavor of macaroni & cheese (plain or mild buffalo, again depending on the bag) or some variant of pigs in blankets. During yesterday’s shift, I noticed one such bag that was missing three pieces. Bear in mind that, after heating said tots/PIBs, we place them in the bags ourselves.

    If you’re gonna eat things in the store, please pay for them, either before or after. They’re not free samples unless someone offers them to you, especially if the bag has a barcode on it like ours do.

  • Putting People (And Things) in Their Place

    Putting People (And Things) in Their Place

    One thing I come across a lot in my job is items being strewn about: candy on the wrong racks, unwanted coffee or soda cups left on the counter after someone dropped them instead of throwing them out, peanut butter crackers where the prepackaged cookies go. My last shift I had a customer drop the tongs meant for grabbing food off of the roller grill try to hang them back up! (It doesn’t help that he hung them up in the wrong spot.)

    If you don’t remember where you got an unwanted item from, or just plain don’t want to go back, that’s fine! Just please, ask one of the employees to do it. It’s what we’re there for. Yes, it’s part of our job to put things back where they belong, but it makes it just that much easier if we don’t find them at random.

    If you drop a cup, or unwrap a straw, please throw the cup or wrapper away. If you don’t know where the garbages are, ask. (Also, please don’t just hand us your wrappers and say “throw this away for me.” It’s low-key dehumanizing.) Again, I understand that it’s part of our job to keep the store clean, but it helps just that much more when customers pitch in a little. Your mom doesn’t work there, and if she does, she probably wants you to pick up after yourself, too.

    As for the tongs, please hand them to an employee and let them know that it was on the floor so they know to wash it off. Should go without saying that if it falls on the dirty ground, it won’t be touching the food again anytime soon. Plus, we probably have more in back.