Kids, Parents and Idiots

Not that these things go together all the time, but some days it seems like it.

Wednesday, working the afternoon to evening shift. On a regular register and its fairly busy. Through the store I could hear these parents and two kids traveling around getting their items. Don't you know they choose my register to come through.

So its Billy don't do that, Billy be quiet, Billy quit grabbing the candy, Billy be quiet, Billy don't climb out of the buggy, Billy be quiet, Billy don't push the buttons, Billy be quiet, Billy don't climb the water bottles, Billy be quiet, Billy don't hit your sister, Billy be quiet, Milly don't scream, (she stopped, he didn't), Billy be quiet, Billy don't open the ice fridge,Billy be quiet, Billy don't do this, Billy be quiet,Billy don't do that.

So: Billy stopped doing that, kept screaming, stopped grabbing candy, kept screaming, climbed out of the buggy, kept screaming, stopped pushing the buttons, kept screaming, stopped climbing the water bottles, kept screaming, stopped hitting his sister, kept screaming, Milly don't scream, (she stopped, he didn't), stopped opening the ice fridge, kept screaming, stopped doing this, kept screaming, stopped doing that.

This is all going on while I am trying to ring through their order. Finally I got sick of it.

"HEY!!" I yelled. The kid stopped screaming! The whole store stopped. I actually thought the other customers were going to applaud me. "Billy, you should be quiet." Well, THAT'LL teach him.

The order is almost complete when he starts up again. I asked him if he wanted me to come around the counter and talk to him. Then the mother says to me " we should take you home with us. He listens to you."

Well, yeah. Because YOU don't do anything. He could tell that I'd have climbed the water bottles to get at him. Why should he listen? There were no consequences to his behaviour.

That was incident number one:

Number two: Guy buys about $14.00 worth of reduced produce and the credit card is declined. "Can you do it again?" Sure, and it is declined again. "Well, maybe if you punch the numbers in?"

What?? It is going to be the same result but WTF. So I punch the numbers in and, surprise, its declined!! Then he says to me "Well, I don't know why it doesn't work. I use it all the time." (Well, maybe that's why it doesn't work. Do you pay the bill 'all the time'?)

Then he asks if I will cash a personal check made out to him? We don't even do checks made out to US!! I said no, do you have a debit card? No, he replies, and then he says he'll be back.

I figured I'd never see him again, but sure enough he came back (an hour later). Then he's aggravated because the groceries are all taken out of the bag. That was done because after he left the receipt disappeared. No idea where it went. I had JUST come on so there wasn't any place it could have gone. Checked the garbage, etc, so we just totaled it up and charged him the correct amount. And he paid in cash. A lot of work for $14.00 worth of day old produce.


Incident number three: I asked the customer if they wanted bags and they said yes. So I bag the whole order up and then after they've paid they stand at the end of my register taking it all out and putting it in their own bags and backpacks. Again: WTF. All you had to do was say something. And also, to the lady that rearranged all her stuff after I bagged it, if I did such a lousy job, why wouldn't you have said something.


Had the union rep stop by yesterday and while I'm trying to talk to him about the water situation, The Rambler walks over and starts to listen in. We were almost done so I didn't think much of it. But later, when he comes through my register to buy some food for his cat, The Rambler comes back and asks what we were talking about. I nearly, well, you know. I couldn't believe she asked that. But he covered very well. (He got points from me for that). For the most part I am pretty sure she didn't mean anything by it, but still, to just ask what two people were talking about????!!!!