A Rant Against Cashiers
I used to be a cashier. In fact, I have spent many a year behind a register (Target, Sam Goody, Musicland, Blockbuster, Perkins, and my college coffee house). It's not a difficult job, and you don't even have to know math. The most important part of the job, I would say, is remaining polite, if not nice, if not friendly, even when you're tired or the customer is a crabass.
I was at Trader Joe's last night, buying some food to bring to my boyfriend's for our nice little Valentine's dinner. I love TJ's because things are randomly inexpensive and always really good, and I have to admit that while their glassy-eyed-cult-member employees who are so entirely excited to answer your questions and be aggressively friendly are a little scary, they are much more preferable to employees who clearly don't give a shit if you can find what you need.
What irked me, though, was the cashier. He was clearly one of those Purpose People, with his mountain man beard and hiking boots and casual-but-intense earth-man persona. As he rang me up he said, "Got any big plans for tonight?" I said, "Oh, yeah, I'm just going to my boyfriend's. We're going to cook up the food that I'm, um, buying right now." I paused and then asked, to be polite, "How about you?"
"Oh, NO," he replied. "We're those grouchy anti-Valentine's-Day people." I didn't ask him what he meant precisely, or who the collective "WE" is, but his tone said it all - "We don't participate in your business-driven sentimental faux holidays when there are so many more pressing issues in the world to concentrate on rather than cooking a nice dinner and giving one another tokens of what you believe to be love but deep-down know that love is a cultural construct that the greeting card industry wants you to believe in so that you can divert funds away from the working man and into the coffers of soulless corporations. I rode my bike to work today even though there is a foot of snow and ice everywhere, to prove some sort of point, and I kid myself into believing that bagging organic groceries for $8.50 an hour is somehow fighting The Man despite my $120,000 liberal arts education in film studies and gender politics."
Leave me alone, hippie, and let me buy my boyfriend some crab cakes without your vegan judgements and cliched ideas about how people are apathetic if they're not waving a flag.
I went to Walgreen's last week to pick up my antibiotics prescription and was mildly shocked that it was ready for me at the time that they said it would be. My cashier was an old man, clearly a retiree's new part-time job so he doesn't have to eat cat food. Everything was totally fine and unremarkable until I swiped my debit card, entered $60 in cash back, and hit OKAY. His register opened and he gave me a narrow-eyed snear and said "You shouldn't have done that." I stared at him, not getting it. "You should have ASKED." Apparently I was still confused, because all I had done was a totally normal transaction, and he said, in this really shitty tone of voice, "I don't have enough money to give you for your cash back." Now, I don't consider myself a rude person, but I am not a pushover, either. What, did he want me to apologize? Who the fuck ASKS the cashier if they can get cash back if the debit machine prompts you to enter how much you want? I said, "Usually, cash registers have money in them" in the perfect tone of sarcasm, bitch, and obviousness. I'm there to pick up a prescription for an infection, you old douchebag - I'm not going to be in a good mood to start with, and the last thing I need is an oldass motherfucker scolding me. Particularly when I'm a customer, and I didn't do anything wrong. He backtracked a bit, sensing how pissed off I was, and said, lamely, "I just said that because now you'll have to wait while I get change. I don't want to inconvenience you and make you wait." Whatever. Look, do us all a favor and go somewhere else, like WalMart or a thrift store or something, where old crotchety bastards are the norm. I know you're old as fuck and you want to still have a job as much as I want to be on antibiotics, but maybe you should have gotten a job at McDonald's, where no one gives a shit if you're mean because everyone at McD's is mean, and I bet they'll even give you free coffee on your breaks.
And don't even get me started on the cuntfaced Victoria's Secret cashier I encountered in January. I SAID, I don't give out my phone number to stores, BITCH. No need to be so fucking rude.
I was at Trader Joe's last night, buying some food to bring to my boyfriend's for our nice little Valentine's dinner. I love TJ's because things are randomly inexpensive and always really good, and I have to admit that while their glassy-eyed-cult-member employees who are so entirely excited to answer your questions and be aggressively friendly are a little scary, they are much more preferable to employees who clearly don't give a shit if you can find what you need.
What irked me, though, was the cashier. He was clearly one of those Purpose People, with his mountain man beard and hiking boots and casual-but-intense earth-man persona. As he rang me up he said, "Got any big plans for tonight?" I said, "Oh, yeah, I'm just going to my boyfriend's. We're going to cook up the food that I'm, um, buying right now." I paused and then asked, to be polite, "How about you?"
"Oh, NO," he replied. "We're those grouchy anti-Valentine's-Day people." I didn't ask him what he meant precisely, or who the collective "WE" is, but his tone said it all - "We don't participate in your business-driven sentimental faux holidays when there are so many more pressing issues in the world to concentrate on rather than cooking a nice dinner and giving one another tokens of what you believe to be love but deep-down know that love is a cultural construct that the greeting card industry wants you to believe in so that you can divert funds away from the working man and into the coffers of soulless corporations. I rode my bike to work today even though there is a foot of snow and ice everywhere, to prove some sort of point, and I kid myself into believing that bagging organic groceries for $8.50 an hour is somehow fighting The Man despite my $120,000 liberal arts education in film studies and gender politics."
Leave me alone, hippie, and let me buy my boyfriend some crab cakes without your vegan judgements and cliched ideas about how people are apathetic if they're not waving a flag.
I went to Walgreen's last week to pick up my antibiotics prescription and was mildly shocked that it was ready for me at the time that they said it would be. My cashier was an old man, clearly a retiree's new part-time job so he doesn't have to eat cat food. Everything was totally fine and unremarkable until I swiped my debit card, entered $60 in cash back, and hit OKAY. His register opened and he gave me a narrow-eyed snear and said "You shouldn't have done that." I stared at him, not getting it. "You should have ASKED." Apparently I was still confused, because all I had done was a totally normal transaction, and he said, in this really shitty tone of voice, "I don't have enough money to give you for your cash back." Now, I don't consider myself a rude person, but I am not a pushover, either. What, did he want me to apologize? Who the fuck ASKS the cashier if they can get cash back if the debit machine prompts you to enter how much you want? I said, "Usually, cash registers have money in them" in the perfect tone of sarcasm, bitch, and obviousness. I'm there to pick up a prescription for an infection, you old douchebag - I'm not going to be in a good mood to start with, and the last thing I need is an oldass motherfucker scolding me. Particularly when I'm a customer, and I didn't do anything wrong. He backtracked a bit, sensing how pissed off I was, and said, lamely, "I just said that because now you'll have to wait while I get change. I don't want to inconvenience you and make you wait." Whatever. Look, do us all a favor and go somewhere else, like WalMart or a thrift store or something, where old crotchety bastards are the norm. I know you're old as fuck and you want to still have a job as much as I want to be on antibiotics, but maybe you should have gotten a job at McDonald's, where no one gives a shit if you're mean because everyone at McD's is mean, and I bet they'll even give you free coffee on your breaks.
And don't even get me started on the cuntfaced Victoria's Secret cashier I encountered in January. I SAID, I don't give out my phone number to stores, BITCH. No need to be so fucking rude.
posted by Miss Misc @ 9:29 AM
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