So Kathleen runs out to the supermarket the other day to pick up two items. Two items.
She goes to the express lane which says “12 Items Or Less.”
Quick quiz: What’s an item?
For some folks, this is apparently a tricky question. I once brought three six packs of soda (we were having a party) to the Express line, and a woman behind me had a meltdown, accusing me of trying to sneak in eighteen items. “No, it’s three items,” I said. “Three sixpacks, each of which gets rung up once.” The woman snarled at me and threatened to call the manager and even the cashier’s assuring her that I was correct and it was only three items barely assuaged her.
So who does Kathleen get stuck behind?
A woman buying thirty *individual* cans of cat food. Plus a bunch of bananas. And a bag of apples. And a bag of oranges. And a bag of grapes. And a bag of peaches. And laundry detergent, and dishwasher detergent.
To a sane person, this is thirty seven items, three times the limit. To this woman? She very loudly announced to the annoyed cashier that this was three items. Cat food is an “item.” Fruits are an “item.” Cleaning liquids is an “item.” She couldn’t distinguish between units and categories.
The cashier rang her up.
Incredible.
PAD
• 
As someone who used to work in supermarkets during high school & college, I can say don’t blame the cashier.
If the cashier says anything to the idiot who can’t count to 12 (or 10, 15 or whatever the limit), and the customer starts bìŧçhìņg, the manager will always tell the cashier to ring the customer up. The managers almost never back up the cashier when they try to enforce the express line limit.
Also, If you go to Waldbaums, notice that the express line signs now say “about 15 items” instead of “only 15 items”
Ah, the bane of everyone’s food-shopping experience, those dámņ people who need a legal scholar to define the rules of the Express Lane.
I remember seeing a family or two on a regular basis at the supermarket. What they would do is, get a cart full of groceries, and the father would give money to his wife and to his son (who couldn’t have been older than 7 or 8), and trying to tell the cashier that it was three different orders each being paid by a different person. Why this idiot had to act as if he didn’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else, I don’t know, but I remember at least once witnessing the cashier telling him that she wasn’t buying it, and told him to use a regular lane.
I’ve become the bane of my local Shop-Rite because of the number of times I’ve complained to the cashiers about this. To add insult to injury, the fancy computer screens attached to the register now keep a running total of items, so there’s really no doubt of how many items the customer has. Apparently store policy is that even though the signs are clearly posted, the cashiers are not allowed to turn a customer away with too many items because, well, the customer is always right. That means it’s the person behind them who has to tell them to move their stuff, which invariably starts an argument. The store’s way of addressing the problem? Last year, when custimers began to complain that the ‘Ten items of less’ or ‘Fifteen items or less’ signs weren’t being obeyed, they inserted the word ‘about’ in front of them! Gosh, 25 is sort of like 10. I’ve complained to cashiers, I’ve complained to the store managers, all to no avail. Generally speaking, the only tangible way to express your displeasure is to leave your groceries on the conveyor belt and walk out, which means they’ve got to find a clerk to put them all away. They tend to get the message after that.
I know a lot of posters are probably going to register their opinion along the lines of ‘Get a life!’ but I usually shop for the day, picking up what I need, on my way home from the gym, or as a break from the computer. To me, it’s torture to get stuck behind a bunch of soccer moms who can’t count to ten- well, they can, but they simply don’t want to.
I think the key is not that the woman *couldn’t* distinguish between “items” and “categories,” but that she *wouldn’t*. In other words, she was playing dumb so as not to have to wait in line. Still pathetic and wrong, of course.
I think we can all agree these people are idiots. But when you start arguing with them, you increase the amount of time spent in the line, further negating any benefit to you in being there. Where’s the gain in arguing the point? I simply mark it off as being unfortunate I cannot strike them down with the Holy Singapore Cane of Dumbassedness.
If the cashier says anything to the idiot who can’t count to 12 (or 10, 15 or whatever the limit), and the customer starts bìŧçhìņg, the manager will always tell the cashier to ring the customer up. The managers almost never back up the cashier when they try to enforce the express line limit.
Unless, of course, the customer is Christine Lavin. 🙂
If the cashier says anything to the idiot who can’t count to 12 (or 10, 15 or whatever the limit), and the customer starts bìŧçhìņg, the manager will always tell the cashier to ring the customer up. The managers almost never back up the cashier when they try to enforce the express line limit.
Unless, of course, the customer is Christine Lavin. 🙂
I work in supermarket as a cashier, and have occasionally had morons come through the express when I’m working it with far more than 10 items. I’ll gladly take someone if they’ve got 11 or 12 (hëll, they needed bread, and don’t want to wait behind a teeming cartful at the next lane). However, it pìššëš me off quite alot when it’s 15+ items that they’re trying to put through my line – especially since the cashiers on the express line rarely have a bagger.
Problem is, it’s usually quite busy when I’m working express, so I just want to get them out of my face before I hit them with a blunt object.
…sooooo, I’ll do fun little things like not tare off the weight of the plastic bag their fruit is in, and if they’re a real dìçk, maybe charge them for “organic” peaches rather than regular…by “accident”, of course. 😀
It only affects their total by a few cents to maybe half a buck or so, but it’s gratifying in a small way to me. Like swatting a naughty, insolent puppy on the nose.
I usually just comment loudly to the other people around me about it. No direct confrontation, and yet my point gets across. 🙂
What’s more annoying is when someone with 20 or 30 items decides to try one of those automated U-Scan registers for the first time, ever, rendering the poor machine useless for the next hour or so.
I’ve noticed many stores going “about 10 or 12 items” route so that they don’t have to enforce a strict rule.
While we’re on the check out pet peeves, what about those self-scan stations that are making the check out clerk obsolete? Most places I go have no limit on how many items you can scan through them. Ever try waiting in line in one of those behind a person with 50 items who can’t find the bar code on any of them?
Here’s another one of mine: There’s a store near my home, we’ll call them Mal-Wart. They used to have signs up advertizing a short line guarantee and promising that if more than three people were in line, they’d open up more lines. Well, one day I was stuck in a line that was 7-10 people deep with only 50 of the 30 lines in the store open. I asked the clerk what was the point of the short line guarantee signs if they weren’t going to following it.
They took the signs down.
Generally speaking, the only tangible way to express your displeasure is to leave your groceries on the conveyor belt and walk out, which means they’ve got to find a clerk to put them all away. They tend to get the message after that.
No, they don’t. As someone who works in a store, I can tell you managers and the like don’t give a dámņ about the cashier having to put away items you leave there. Why would they? They’re not the one’s doing the task; it’s a subordinate, who they’ll order around anyway. The only person who’ll get the “message” is the cashier… and, 9 times out of 10, the message they’ll get is “customers suck.” I know every time I do throwbacks, that’s all I think, and I like my job; most other cashiers don’t, and don’t really give a dámņ about customer service anyway. And, even if the manager wants to do something, they can’t; the “customer is always right” rule would come into play should the offender call corperate.
In truth, the best way for you to do anything is to say something to the manager while the person is putting down their 27 cans of solid white albacore, watch him back up the customer who is breaking the rules, buy your stuff, look on your recipt for the store number, and call corperate saying that a manager was inapproriately backing a person in the wrong to you at store number XYZ, and it was because of that situation that you will not return to the store again, etc., etc.
Now, depending on the store, corperate may not care. Which is why you also ask some friends to do the exact same thing. One customer doesn’t matter, but a slew saying the same thing? They’ll get the message, and the manager who was useless will get a few messages, and, while it won’t stop that behavior totally (as long as there are Express Lanes, there will be people ready to exploit them), it’ll get the manager to do what’s right.
And if the person with the tuna complains to upper-management, they’ll just apologize and say that, sadly, the “10 items or less lane” is for 10 items or less. One complaint from someone who may cause 10-20 others is something they don’t wanna deal with.
Or you could bìŧçh-šláp the idiot who wants to buy 19 bottles of Fresca on the Express Lane; less effective, but a hëll of a lot more fun.
-eD
Word to Mike’s statement…the girlfriend is a cashier and comes home filled with horror stories about nightmare customers…asshats who will push a whole cart up to the 12 items or less line and kick up a fuss if she dares question them. There’s worse…for instance, people who’ll come up to her and complain that there are no more bagels in the bakery section. So, rather than attract the attention of somebody in, say, the bakery section, they’ll go and harass somebody halfway across the store working at a register.
I have become so fed up with the hellish experience that grocery shopping has become that I now simply get the basic stuff online and have reinstated the milkman (who knew they still existed?). It’s a quick and pleasant hop to the butcher,fish market and farm for those items and I no longer want to kill people. Oh and we now frequent an amazing small market where the wife makes her own tabboleh, hummus etc.
My point is that I can’t change the fact that by and large people are selfish and clueless, but I can avoid them as much as possible.
Whoops. That should read “5 of the 30 lines were open.”
Most recent “stupid” event I saw at the supermarket was as I was loading up the car with groceries. A woman pulled into the parking lot and slammed into the side of a truck while trying to park in a space next to it. She then backed up, slid her car into the space and got out.
Never bothered to look at the damaged she caused, she just walked into the store. I followed her in and she was going about her shopping as if putting a 6-inch dent in the side of the truck next to her in the parking lot was no big deal.
I went up to the front desk and gave all the information I could to the manager, including the license plates of the two cars and where I could be reached as a witness.
Never heard anything more about it.
–Dale
I don’t necessarily start an argument with them, I just start counting out loud with each *beep* of the scanner, often making a remark about how this must be a “metric 10” (or 12, or 15).
Now, granted…there are occasions when the lanes are backed up and an Express Lane clerk will call over someone with more than the limit if their lane is empty. (I think my wife & I shocked a cashier who did this for us once…we started counting our items and were going to decline because we had too many.) But, more often than not, it’s someone who doesn’t want the rules to apply to them because they’re in a hurry.
I’ve always thought someone should market an express lane cash register. It would be programmed with the number of items that the lane is limited to, and, upon reaching that cap, payment must be processed. There would be an override feature, but cashiers would need to explain the reason for the override(s) at the end of the day.
Word to Mike’s statement…the girlfriend is a cashier and comes home filled with horror stories about nightmare customers…asshats who will push a whole cart up to the 12 items or less line and kick up a fuss if she dares question them.
“Asshats?”
Wow. That’s a new one.I thought I’d heard them all and been called most of them…
By the way, just for the record, no, I’m not upset with the cashier. If nothing else, he was caught in the “customer’s always right” dictum. But thank God I wasn’t there because I have a way shorter fuse than Kathleen. You bet I would have made a fuss. But I would have done it with style. You know: Shouted out a running tally of her items in a “Count Von Count” voice. You know: “Eighteen! Eighteen items! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one! Ah ah ah!!”
PAD
I find it very funny and gratifying these days to not be in a hurry when I go to a supermarket/wal-mart.
Why? Because everyone is soooo much in a hurry, their stress level is high, and they get antsy. I just take my time, don’t get worked up over it, and irritate the hëll out of the people behind me. (But I always follow the rules on express items).
i find not being in a hurry when everyone else is as being sort of a karmic backlash to those… asshats (I like that word).
Travis
As a cashier, I’d definately side with the cashier in this story. Most of the time, we’re busy, so we just want to get people through the line. I have turned people away before, but often it ends up being the case that I can’t, due to time constraints.
I’m in the lucky position of being at an upscale grocery store with great managers – one of whom I could even call a friend. So they’ll at least unofficially side with me.
Still, though, I think it’d be a better world if they let us have tasers to take care of pissy customers.
That sounds about right.
I had something similar to this happen to me on the way home from work a few years ago. I had an annoying cold and felt thoroughly rotten. I’d stopped by the supermarket and grabbed a piece of meat and some sour cream so that Gretchen could make stroganoff for dinner.
And found myself in line behind a middle-aged woman in the fifteen items or less lane who had about 32 items. Normally, I’d just roll my eyes. But I felt like crap and had what I refer to as my Seinfeld moment.
I started counting the items as they went across the scanner in a progressively louder voice. The cashier noticed and was smiling. At one point, an item didn’t scan and she said, “Hold on. That one didn’t scan right,” so that I wouldn’t miscount.
Eventually, the clueless woman noticed that I was counting and turned to look at me. “Thirty two items. That’s *nothing* like 15.”
“What?”
“This is the 15 items or less lane.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, the sign’s right there.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Then you should use your eyes. It’s not that hard.”
Then she started to berate me for being rude.
“I hope I give you my cold,” I replied.
Clueless then apologized to the cashier, but “not to you, because you’re just rude.”
“I’m rude? You’re the one who’s holding everybody up by not paying attention to what you’re doing.”
Clueless left and I proceeded to the head of the line.
“I don’t want your cold,” the cashier said, smiling at me.
“I’ll try not to give it to you.”
Reminds me of a newspaper cartoon where the guy is buying one box of cornflakes and the cashier says “There’s more than 12 cornflakes in there”.
Ah, the supermarket complaints.
My favorites are the customers who haven’t finished shopping when they’re checking out. Sometimes they’ll have a lackey making runs to various parts of the store because ‘they forgot that;’ but other times, they’ll leave the register and get it themselves. This always causes a nice delay. Then, of course, they’ll just think to start writing a check…
One trick I use quite often is to go shopping at really off hours. All our grocery stores are open 24 hours, so on a Friday night I’ll go out with friends, have a good time, then go home and go grocery shopping at 2 in the morning. Sometimes you have to dodge the stockers or the cleaning machine…but you’re usually the only one at the register.
I don’t recommend that during the work week, though.
D. Eric Carpenter
Sorry, Peter, but you’re on your own on this one…unless (and only unless) the cat food cans were all different brands. If not, the cashier should have rung one up and then hit thirty into the keyboard and done them all at once. IT doesn’t take that long to bag cat food.
Should this woman have gotten into the express line? Of course not. Was it a sign of the end times that she did? Of course not. It’s a mild annoyance at worst that probably added an extra minute or two to your wife’s shopping visit and hardly worthy of space on the blog.
I was going to leave this thread alone, but I had to respond to what Den said about the self-checkout lanes.
Den: While we’re on the check out pet peeves, what about those self-scan stations that are making the check out clerk obsolete? Most places I go have no limit on how many items you can scan through them. Ever try waiting in line in one of those behind a person with 50 items who can’t find the bar code on any of them?
More often than not, the self checkout lines are a lot shorter than the other lines (at least in the stores in my area). It took me a while to figure out why.
Even though the self checkout process is pretty darn simple, using it involves computers, and there are still plenty of people out there who are terrified of any kind of interaction with a machine. Especially if their groceries include any kind of produce that has no bar code, thereby necessitating the use of the nifty little list they hang next to the screen. The more computer-timid folks probably try the self-checkout once, meet with disaster, and never bother with it again. As a result, I have NEVER had to wait for more than one person in a self-checkout lane.
Consider it a hint. Stop writing about politics in Capt. Marvel. Send him after retsil chains!
There used to be a woman who shopped in the supermarket in my old neighborhood who never had enough money with her to cover her purchases. So after her whole order was rung up she’d take some items out of the bags and ask the clerk to subtract them. Then she’d take some more out. Then she’d add some back. Then she’d change her mind about what to add and what to subtract.
It got to the point where the clerks would close their line after her to avoid violence.
Okay, I’ll admit to having gone through the express U-Scan with a few more than the posted 15 items… but only when there was at least one additional line open (there are 4 U-Scans at my neighborhood grocery store). I’m all for getting myself checked out faster, but I do try to be fair about it.
davidh
We should all carry extra home made signs to pass out for these people that read “stupid” (or mentally challenged for the politically correct among you) as outlined in the minor hit “here’s your sign.”
Just a thought….
LMFAO! That is freakin’ priceless. I, personally, would have been extremely frustrated by the whole situation. But, honestly, what can you do in a situation like that? You can’t exactly kick her out of the store or anything. Honestly, you HAVE to ring her up just to get rid of her. Great story PAD.
One time when I was bagging on a 10 items or less line, a woman can through with 17 items. I put it all into one – double bag. She went to lift it, put it back down & whined “It’s too heavy”. I replied “It wouldn’t be if you had was 10 items or less like you’re supposed to”. She then picked up the bag (With incredible ease for a bag that was ‘too heavy’) and stormed off to the customer service desk to complain to the manager. His reply was “Well, what were you doing on the express line?”
Only time in 7 years of working in supermarkets I saw a manager back up an employee on the express line issue.
Re: Mr Pfeffer’s comment about the cat food–Sorry, but you’re wrong. IF the cans were 30 cans of the same brand AND same “flavor”, then and only then, could they be reasonably considered “1 item”. The purpose of the scanner is for inventory control and each can of cat food has a UPC identifying the brand name and specific flavor–“tuna” flavor may sell far better than “catnip-scented lima bean”; if the cashier grabs the “lima bean” flavor, and rings it up 30 times, the inventory is going to acknowledge that, and the store will resupply based on that information. There’s also the fact that those cans may not all be the same size. They may look the same from a distance, but a 6oz can is definitely not the same as a 3oz can.
The same thing applies to baby food and flavored drink powders (such as Kool-Aid). The companies making these products want to know which particular flavors are selling and which aren’t (also, for the chain stores, corporate wants to know what may sell better in particular regions).
Even produce has to be rung up based on particular variety; if a store’s overstocked on Fuji apples, it doesn’t help if the cashier rings up all apples under the Red Delicious code.
It should be noted, also, that if the customer takes time to separate the items (the lime gelatin from the strawberry, the 12-pack Cokes from the 12-pack Sprites, the green beans from apple baby food), most cashiers–and, sometimes, the other customers–will overlook the excessive items.
But there’s never an excuse for someone with a shopping cartful of groceries trying to check out in any sort of express lane–okay, if the cart has 15 or 20 bottles of soda, especially the 2- or 3-liter varieties, but when you see the family with 2 or 3 carts trying to go through the express lane, then it’s time to call it quits unless you’re planning to run for saint.
“It’s a mild annoyance at worst that probably added an extra minute or two to your wife’s shopping visit and hardly worthy of space on the blog.”
The problem is, it isn’t just “a mild annoyance”, it’s ANOTHER “mild annoyance” on top of all the OTHER “mild annoyances” and enough of them tend to reinforce each other until they are, collectively, no longer just “a mild annoyance”.
“And ANOTHER thing …” – Hulk
Don’t get me started on the cell phone bozos who think supermarket aisles and checkout counters are their private telephone booths. Apparently the concept of planning trips to the supermarket ahead of time is now ‘passe’ and we do it on the fly with orders and mid-course corrections from mission control back home. Feh.
And, why is it that, if ‘cards’ (debit/credit) are so ‘convenient’, the ‘cash only’ line seems to move so much faster?
And, why is it that, if ‘cards’ (debit/credit) are so ‘convenient’, the ‘cash only’ line seems to move so much faster?
Probably because the “cash only” line – when it exists – is the one line that is predominantly used only by those with a small number of items, as most people don’t carry enough cash for a cart full of groceries on them. SO, the only true “express lane” anymore is the “cash only” lane.
None of which stopped my single carton of ice cream from beginning to melt when the person ahead of me takes a cart full of groceries through the express lane.
Don’t blame the Cashier. My mother always said – “These people don’t get paid enough to take abuse from customers”
If the cashier had asked her to leave, she would have of course gone crazy. It’s not easy dealing with jerks – and they probably rung her up becuase she would no doubt cause more problems than it would solve.
>Incredible.
>PAD
Would that be: Incredible Bulk smashed? And should we Banner from the aisle in question?
John
– sorry, very slow day.
**By the way, just for the record, no, I’m not upset with the cashier. If nothing else, he was caught in the “customer’s always right” dictum. But thank God I wasn’t there because I have a way shorter fuse than Kathleen. You bet I would have made a fuss. But I would have done it with style. You know: Shouted out a running tally of her items in a “Count Von Count” voice. You know: “Eighteen! Eighteen items! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one! Ah ah ah!!”
PAD**
I’ve actually done this before when shopping with my mother. The cashier and my mother got a kick out of it.
The cashiers don’t always cave. I got caught behind a bozo such as PAD describes a few months ago, and the cashier (a middle-aged Asian woman who had a rep for taking no guff) booted her out of line. Those of us who were following the rules all thanked her.
Dav2.718
This is, of course, the #1 problem when dealing with customers. And the cashiers do get not only the most of people’s stupidity, but the worst of it as well, because they can’t leave the register.
Those of us who do/did stock the shelves get our share as well. The most annoying thing we get is:
“Do you have (fill in the blank)?”
“Sorry, we’re sold out of it”
“Could you check to see if you have any more in the back?”
There’s also the ones who cause more amusement than annoyance because the questions are so bizzare. I once had a guy come up to me with a bottle of cooking wine & ask if it had any marijuana in it.
As an assistant manager once said, “I’d write a book about all of this, but nobody would ever believe it.”
Hmmm. The thing that I find most shocking is that you made your wife go to the store the day after her 40th birthday (BTW, Happy Birthday Kathleen! My 40th is just 10 months away). I certainly didn’t make my son go to shopping on the day after his birthday (9/6), and it was only his first b-day.
dAN
Even though the self checkout process is pretty darn simple, using it involves computers, and there are still plenty of people out there who are terrified of any kind of interaction with a machine. Especially if their groceries include any kind of produce that has no bar code, thereby necessitating the use of the nifty little list they hang next to the screen. The more computer-timid folks probably try the self-checkout once, meet with disaster, and never bother with it again.
My opinion? Those people should find a nice Amish community and go live there, leaving the rest of us who are capable of living in the 21st century alone.
Even though the self checkout process is pretty darn simple, using it involves computers
I can’t stand the self checkouts. I worked as a checker during my college days, and I was pretty quick when it came to scanning. And the self checkouts are so dámņ slow. I get very frustrated scanning, waiting, waiting, then scanning.
Mick: Even though the self checkout process is pretty darn simple, using it involves computers, and there are still plenty of people out there who are terrified of any kind of interaction with a machine. Especially if their groceries include any kind of produce that has no bar code, thereby necessitating the use of the nifty little list they hang next to the screen. The more computer-timid folks probably try the self-checkout once, meet with disaster, and never bother with it again.
Den: My opinion? Those people should find a nice Amish community and go live there, leaving the rest of us who are capable of living in the 21st century alone.
I don’t know. I know where you’re coming from. I’ve tortured myself through enough “teaching older relatives how to do something other than play Shanghai on their PC,” so I know it can be annoying dealing with the computer-illiterate.
Still, it’s preferable to guys who will say things like, “Dude, you’ve got Windows Ninety-FIVE?!?!?! You are totally stone age man…” I’ll take genuine confusion over self-serving techno-mášŧûrbáŧìøņ any day.
As for the moron in the express lane with more than the approved number of items, let me just say, thank goodness she was buying cat food. I mean if she had been buying milk or cereal or anything it might mean that she had kids and we don’t really want morons like that breeding do we? You just have to look a little harder for the silver lining PAD :o)
As for those annoying self check out stands, I hate them. Not because I am brainless, or lack computer using ability…but because when the stupid bar code on the stupid product rings up the wrong stupid price…who do I complain to to make it change? There is supposed to be a person standing there in case anyone needs help with any of the self check machines, but they are never there. They are over bagging groceries on register 5 or chatting with the stock boy over at the green beans. And you know(!) those prices ring up wrong all the time. If you don’t watch it they are going to cheat us all out of billions of dollars! (ok sarcasm but a hint of truth) Please don’t assume that just because someone with 4 items opts to stand in line rather than use the self check out that they have a phobia about machines or whatever. When every penny counts, you have to count every penny 🙂
Oh, by the way, my mom imparted to me a miniscule bit of wisdom the other day that I think sums up this whole situation nicely. she said “People are stupid.”
Have a wonderful tomorrow!
-Amanda
In the spirit of the item, a very old joke from Cambridge, MA, home of two rather different worldclass institutions of higher learning.
A college-aged person with a cart containing obviously many more than 10 items goes to a cashier lane which has a large, clear “10 items or less” sign.
The cashier says to the person, “So, are you from MIT and can’t read, or from Harvard and can’t count?”
Thank you, I’ll be here all week, try the scrod.
Personally, I find the self-checkout trend to be insulting to everyone. I understand that you can check yourself out faster using them, but lets see why that is…
Retail stores have cut staff as far back is it will go without losing sales. Customer service is gone, so are (in many cases) clean aisles, attractive displays, baggers at every register or people on the floor to offer assistance. This reduction in staff has also made lines at checkout registers worse than ever, and the absolute lack of any power for these poor checkout folks makes even easy “unusual” tasks take forever. “I need a void on 12!” Stores have intentionally hired too few folks to do the job, and are pushing the work onto the customer — at no cost to them. If you check yourself out, and it takes 5 minutes, you just saved the company about $2 in salary that they didn’t have to pay. Multiply that times hundreds of folks a day.
Did the cost of food go down when I wasn’t looking to make up for this? Does the $10 you “earn” for the store each month arrive in your mailbox? Are you somehow adding to the community or helping others by taking $10 out of the hands of the employees and putting it back into the store’s coffers? Can you now enter the store at any time to do your shopping (like the ATM model) since no employees need be involved? What, exactly, did your $10 gain you? Positive reward for the store for not employing the appropriate amount of people? Terrific.
“But it’s faster this way!” Sure it is, that’s because the stores have abused the customers so long that we’re now ready to accept anything. They’re peeing on our sandwiches and calling it mustard.
And I find it offensive.
That’s why I want to win over $100 million in the lottery, so I can set aside several million to start a grocery store with the motto “The intelligent customer is usually right”
A sign would be posted on the express lanes stating there is a $1/item surcharge for each item over 12, and the register for the lane would be programmed to ring it up that way as well.
Have the stockers equipped with loud, portable “cleaning equipment” (think loud dustbusters) follow the idiots on pointless, non-shopping related cell-phone calls around, making impossible to hear their cell phones, unless we can get portable jammers made legal, then they’ll be all over the store, with only a small section of the store set aside for cellphone use.
For innocent mistakes, my workers would be trained to be pleasant and explain the problem, but for the idiots, they’d blast them with both barrels of the sarcasm/”you’re-so-stupid/arrogant” shotgun.
Sure, probably go belly up within months as the morons who get blasted would stop shopping there and tell their ignorant friends not to shop there either, but it’d be fun while it lasted.
By the way, just for the record, no, I’m not upset with the cashier. If nothing else, he was caught in the “customer’s always right” dictum. But thank God I wasn’t there because I have a way shorter fuse than Kathleen. You bet I would have made a fuss. But I would have done it with style. You know: Shouted out a running tally of her items in a “Count Von Count” voice. You know: “Eighteen! Eighteen items! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one! Ah ah ah!!”
PAD
I know it’s off the record, but doesn’t it seem funny that a lot of parents were upset when the South African version of Sesame Street was going to have an HIV-positive character, yet I’ve yet to hear a single complaint about the fact that the Muppet in charge of teaching kids arithmetic for the past 30-or-so years is one of the freakin’ Undead, based on one of the most evil characters in legend and literature?
Just a thought. Hope I didn’t add one too many to parent groups looking for a new institution to nit-pick …
A few weeks ago I was in the express lane and the people ahead of me had an entire cart FULL of stuff; it came out to over $85 dollars!!!
Yeah yeah yeah, this is all well and good, but this is peterdavid.net, so…how is Bush to blame for this??
Yeah yeah yeah, this is all well and good, but this is peterdavid.net, so…how is Bush to blame for this??
Stupidity is contagious?
PAD