Grocery Store Etiquette

So far the last month I've worked as a cashier. Approximately 80% of people that come through my line are pretty cool. Among my favorites are obviously gay couples and lonely middle-aged men buying cat supplies and alcohol on Sundays. Pretty much anyone under the age of 25 is nice. The worst are senile old men, old boisterous (yet somehow not funny) black women, old rich women from the Kenwood neighborhood, and uptight suburban moms whose entire self esteem depends on their coupon savings.


Anyway, a lot of people do really rude shit that, in my mind, is pretty common sense. All I ask is you keep a few things in mind:

1. Some of us are fairly new.

Cashiering isn't rocket science, but realize that management has done virtually nothing to train us besides sit us in front of a computer to watch five hours of videos on corporate policies. If, naturally, we became restless and agitated, they most likely just laugh. "Ha, ha, ha. You're not even learning anything! Oh well, everyone has to do it, and it allows us to pretend we've trained you." They don't even pretend to give a shit. So,

2. Please don't expect that I know everything about the store.

Though it's technically my job to know, please don't assume just because I spend 25 hours a weekend confined between these walls that I know where every trivial thing we sell is. I spend all my shift at the front of the store, and in fact can't tell you much more than what is listed on the aisle markers. The only roaming I ever do is when I pass down an aisle on my way to the break room, yet it's inevitable that I'll be asked to help three people in this time. How I usually respond, and will probably continue to no matter how long I'm employed, is "I'm pretty new, and I'm honestly not quite sure." But since I will get reprimanded if I don't help, I add, "But I think it would be by the _____. Let's look together." See? Now I've just exposed myself as the unconfindent, corporate ass kissing douchebag I am.

3. I am at the bottom of the grocery store totem pole and am not responsible in any way for the everyday functions carried out by the higher-ups.

At the moment, my store is renovating, which basically means we're making a mess as we confuse everyone and switch everything around. In theory, this will be beneficial in the end. However, if you have a problem, DON'T BLAME THE FUCKING CASHIER. I had a man go on a slightly justified yet extremely rude rant about how upset he was, how our management is all a bunch of fucking idiots, and that this is how we lose clientele. He only quickly followed this with a, "I mean, it's not your fault personally, but Jesus. Your management is making a fucking joke out of this place. People come here, and there time is important. They just want reliability, yet here you go wasting their precious time." To which I say:

A. Then why are you and thousands of other people a week still coming? Oh yeah, because you NEED GROCERIES TO LIVE. You obviously come here for convenience- it's right down the street from your house, the deals are simply impossible to refuse, etc. If you think this place is a shithole, buddy, there's a Lund's right down the street. This isn't the year fucking 1800. There isn't a corner shoppe where your kind elderly neighbor with bifocals lifts the flour off the shelf for you so he can provide for his family. We're a corporate chain and our interests are in making money and convincing you to buy shit you don't need.

B. Thanks for the input! I'll be sure to give management your two cents, since as a mere cashier they hold my opinion to such a high standard. Expect to see things just the way you wanted by tomorrow morning!

C. I may even agree with you, but I DO work here. I'm not going to badmouth my employer and risk losing my job. Plus, have you ever considered that my managers aren't the bosses of all bosses either? They still have inane policies to follow and quotas to fill. We're all a slave to the capitalistic dogma blah blah blah. Get over yourself and accept that you can't control the whole fucking world.

4. Coupons and weekly specials WILL deceive you.

If you're concerned about them enough to use them at all, please check them CAREFULLY. Unless it's several dollars we're talking about, if something rings up "wrong" and we've determined it's because you've purchased the incorrect item, please, please have mercy on the poor cashier, who may/may not have excessive confrontation anxiety (in my case: does), and don't throw a shit fit. We will figure the goddamn prices out eventually. It's not my fault; I'm not on the advertising or pricing committees. Rather than making me sick anticipating that you're going to make an enormous deal out of nothing and in the process treat me like a sack of shit, PLEASE just go with the flow and make life easier for everyone. Besides, you're only being a further asshole and breaking the next "guideline" (read: rule Shelby wishes could be enforced):

5. Please at least make an attempt not to hold up the line.

Every time you argue a special, ask to speak to a manager, pay with 4 WIC checks, forget your wallet, or go back and get a forgotton item, you're not just inconveniencing me, but everyone waiting patiently behind you. Hey, sometimes you forget something and gotta go back. But could you at make a genuine effort to go quickly?

My biggest pet peeve regarding this matter is people with extremely large quantities who shove all their stuff onto the first belt, then wait idly to pay as I ring everything up, struggling to find places to cram their never ending order. You're going to have to bag everything at some point, so please, use what I hope is common sense and begin bagging WHILE I'm scanning your items. Otherwise, sometimes after I scan consecutive customers items, everything smooshes together and I look incompetent as everyone annoyedly tries to decides whose items are whose. I ask this ESPECIALLY if you have been shopping with multiple people. One of you is clearly the bitch of the relationship, so go start bagging while the one with all the money pays for everything.

6. My job kinda sucks.

I don't get paid much past minimum wage. All my job really entails is showing up on time (sober), greeting you, swiping your items across a scanner, telling you the total, taking your selected form of payment, giving you a receipt, and telling you to have a nice day.
Sound boring? It is. That being said...

7. Every instance of small talk I engage in makes my time go by just a little faster much faster.

We don't have to pretend we're lifelong buddies who've lost touch and are ecstatic to see each other. Hell, even a simple, "hey, how're you doing tonight?" and "Thanks, have a good one" will suffice. Call me brainwashed by Minnesota nice, but you're kind of an asshole and borderline a terrible person if you live your life in such a self-absorbed rush that attempting to show kindness to, or even acknowledging the presence of, someone else isn't worth your time. I mean, I'm pretty much a selfish asshole, but I make an effort to recognize and maybe even appreciate the things I've come to expect to be done for me because of people who work shitty jobs.

If you're in a good mood and it seems like we'd get along well (I mean YOU, homosexuals and lonely forty-somethings!), just start a goddamn conversation. I honestly don't mind discussing the weather I'm missing outside or the upcoming local sports game or hearing the same bad jokes dozens of times a day. Because sometimes out of those come really interesting conversations, and ultimately my inching further towards the belief that maybe most people aren't so shitty after all.

/end rant


If for some reason you are so bored that you find my incessant bitching of some interest and have made it this far, I shall reward you with some more light-hearted observations I've picked up:

-For every single thing without a barcode or sticker, I need to know the corresponding four digit code. While it's easy to pick them up, they're really overwhelming and confusing to someone new, as there is no rhyme or reason to them whatsoever. White onions are 4663. Sweet onions are 4166. Yellow, 4093. In fact, my first few shifts I had been trying to wrap my head around these codes so much that one night I found myself half asleep during a noisy thunderstorm. In my counscious-of-the-outside-world-yet-still-lucid state, I dreamt that someone was buying a thunderstorm and I was really happy to have remembered the code- 4400. WTF!

-A flat out surprisingly high number of people buy rutabegas. What the hell are those?

-Cashiering when you're hungry sucks, and fried chicken passsing by smells good no matter how totally not hungry you are.

-Even better than friendly, chatty people coming through are chatty, friendly people with ADORABLE children! I don't even LIKE babies, but when they're not my responsibility and they're strolled by, all chubby-faced and wispy-haired... well, I have a heart. Also cute sometimes are kids of the general elementary school age, like little Jason: "Hi I'm Jason I'm six years old I'm in the first grade I really like pizza." Hi, Jason! Wow, six is a cool age. And you know what? I just happen to like pizza too! :D They might be my very favorite part of this job.



Sorry, rant/rave over (like anyone even read this far anyway, ha!). Even if nobody so much as glances at this, it felt great to get out. As much as I bitch, I really don't mind cashiering. Time goes by pretty fast, and above all it pays the rent. I guess there's a broader scope to my wishful thinking, in that it's not just me I'm bitching for. Call me naive, but I wish people (myself included, oh God am I a hypocrite) would stop making such big fucking deals out of the most trivial things and learn to try to see stuff from the perspective of others. The world doesn't exist to serve your interests, and there's not always someone to blame when things go wrong. Ease up and get the fuck over it.

I need to take my own advice... and that's depressing. But at least I won't blame you :)

I was so excited, too.

Ha, ha. Right guys? Guys?!

I like to do strange things "as a joke," but sometimes I'm not sure if I'm really joking or not.



Take, for example, what I chose to do with my other canvas. I was originally going to paint a horse corpse to hang alongside the happy prancing unicorn, but that seemed too difficult. I decided instead to think of other stupidly cute things, and decided on a cat and a cupcake. Ta-da! Again, horrible picture quality, I know. I miss my camera... WHY did I have to get drunk and go on rides at the State Fair?! (Oh yeah, because it was the most fun ever)







Why did I make this? Why are they in love? Why is the cat so apprehensive?



WHY IS MY CUPCAKE SO CUTE?!

worst of all is SNAUSAGE.

Today I compiled a list of my least favorite words, and ended up with this:

knapsack
knickerbocker
Narnia
snog
nibble
munch

Notice what they all have in common... damn you nnnnnasal letter n! My apparent hatred of nasal sounds justifies my hatred of the French. K? K.

You can bet there will be more to come.

What a lame blog this is. "Hey I was bored, here's a few lines about something dumb I was contemplating while bored today."

Forget creative writing!!

Recently Andrew gave me some leftover acrylic paints and two canvases from a failed stint as a painter when he was young.

Naturally, I decided the best use of these resources was A UNICORN PRANCING IN FRONT OF A RAINBOW! Excuse the horrendous quality... my phone is old enough I'm grateful it even has a camera at all.

Maybe I am just jealous.

Today, all I've need to accomplish is to read a 14 page excerpt on structuralist literary criticism. It is now 6:54 pm and apparently this has proven too much for me to handle. Granted, I'm on page 12, and I didn't wake up until noon, but I'm still averaging less than two pages an hour.


Earlier Moe and I took turns reading paragraphs of our assigned readings aloud, secretly competing to see who was attempting to absorb the more mind-numbingly dense academic work. His book on the historical spread of various clans across the Arabian peninsula centuries ago (or something boring like that, I sure as hell wasn't paying attention) won, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to complain about the convoluted bullshit I've been struggling all day to pretend I care about. As I read about the belief that all cultural practices, literature included, should be analyzed from the perspective of comparing an individual work to all others in its field to discover meaning, I can't read more than a few lines without pausing to reflect on the sheer pretentiousness of this work, comparing it, of course, among the framework of scholarly essays as a whole to prove I'm learning something. (Even typing that sentence made me feel like a jackass)


Currently I've reached a spot where the author has picked out five people who've made "memorable" advancements in structuralism since it was first created, scholars whose entire lives' works are each summarized in a page hidden in a chapter hidden in a book about a theory that's sure only to be read by:

a) unenthusiastic college students, only because it's a requirement for their major,

b) an only marginally more enthusiastic college professor, simply browsing for something to assign to said college students, or

c) the random douchebag doing legitimate, independent research he hopes to be seen as so revolutionary as to be included in the next revision of the book.


Basically, though I've been kicking it around for the last two and a half years, I have definitively realized that there's only one evident objective for being an English major at the college I'm paying more than $8,000 a semester to attend: to have done so much research on something meticulous within an already obscure topic that I'm mentioned later in someone else's slightly more in depth research paper.

If it sounds that uninteresting posted on a blog, imagine how dull it must be to live that life. Sigh.