Crazy Rant

I'm going to preface this by saying that for about a year I worked in a grocery store. A very busy grocery store. I did many jobs: cart hauling, bagging groceries, cashiering, some bakery, cleanups, customer service, I even went to the night crew and did some stocking for awhile. It occurred to me then, as it does quite often now, that a lot of customers are dicks. If I describe the kind of customer you are in this rant, I can't really say I apologize because I don't. Bad customers piss me off. Just know that this is NOT a personal attack on you, it's just a rant because I was talking with Scott last night about grocery stores in general and now this stuff is on my mind.

I was very fortunate in my teen years to have an incredibly supportive mom who said that as long as I kept up my grades she would be happy to financially support me so that I wouldn't have to split my responsibilities between a job and school (within reason, I gave up a lot of "privileges" for the sake of being able to concentrate on school). However, when I was in my second year at a local community college I realized that maybe school wasn't the thing for me at the time and I should go a different route. So at the age of 20 I was faced with having to find my first job. It was difficult, but a friend told me they were hiring at the store he was working in, and I should put in my application and he'd put in a good word for me. Within a couple of weeks of doing that, I had the job. This buddy of mind did warn me that it wasn't exactly all it was cracked up to be, but I figured no job is, right?

First of all, the store I would be working at required joining their Union. Great. I was going to have to pay for the privilege of working. Whatever. Dues weren't that bad, so I figured I could take the hit to my paycheck (turns out I could, and it didn't hurt that bad...I wasn't getting rich anytime soon, but still). Second, pretty much every job at that level sucks. Every job. Mostly because you always have to deal with customers or their aftermath (unless you're nightcrew, which is a whole other nightmare). And with every job you run into a different kind of customer. So from an insider, these are the kinds of customers you run into in each area of work. I know nobody's perfect, and I'm probably guilty of some of theses at some point or another, but for the sake of the poor minimum-wage employees of the grocery store, please try not to be any of these customers:

• Cart hauling - If you're one of those assholes who props the cart up in the planters and figure "it's their job to get it", go to hell. Straight to hell, do not pass Go. Because the cart haulers do not only have to deal with getting that cart, but trying not to scratch up the cars in the parking lot for fear that some other asshole sees them bump their car and the complain to the manager. Or worse yet, if you park in another part of the parking lot and leave your cart in front of another store, screw you. Yeah, it takes up part of a shift, but a lot of times getting in trouble for leaving the parking lot isn't worth it. They put the little cart collectors everywhere, I have never seen a store with less than about 8 different cart collectors, pretty evenly spaced, and it's not that hard to walk the 10 extra feet to be polite to some poor sap who's only working here to pay for school, you lazy bastard
• Bagging groceries - If you have a specific way you want your groceries bagged, fine. Pay attention when the bagger asks if you want plastic or paper, or if you've brought in your own bags (I cannot stress this enough) PUT THEM ON THE CONVEYOR IN FRONT OF YOUR GROCERIES! Most baggers don't mind doing a special bagging order, such as paper-in-plastic, plastic-in-paper (strange, yes, but I did have someone ask for that once), and they really don't mind using your bags because then they don't get reprimanded for using too many bags (yes, that happens too...you'd think the companies making multiple billions of dollars a year wouldn't care about the plastic bags that cost .003 cents each, but they penny-pinch wherever the hell they can). What they do mind is getting halfway through your order and then getting yelled at because you weren't paying attention and you left your canvas bags in your cart.
  
• Cashiering - This job and the Customer Service desk have a tie for interacting with the most customers. They see all manner of asshole. I once had someone hand me a $5 bill to pay for milk, and when I gave him his change he told me he'd given me a $20. In front of the store's bookkeeper, who sided with me. He raised such a stink with my manager that they had to close my register (the only express lane open during the busiest part of the day) to audit it. To be fair, that was just one example and he really was trying to cheat me out of 15 bucks. But that kind of thing happens all the time. People come up and quibble about the price, and then bitch at the cashier when the person doing the price check takes longer than 5 minutes. Don't do that. Chances are they either can't find the product or got asked a question by a customer who didn't know they were doing something. Patience is a virtue, and if you're in that big a hurry just come back for it later and leave it at that. Also, if you're going to eat something in the store, open up something with a bar code. If you eat something measured by weight, someone has to then go get another one so that you can be charged. If you're really that hungry, and you don't want something like chips, just go to the service deli. They have premade food that's not all crap, and they give you a bar code with it. A lot of stores can even charge you for it there, so you can show the reciept at the cash register (or they'll put a sticker that says "PAID" on the bag). That's always appreciated too.
• Bakery - I didn't do a whole lot of bakery, but I had a friend in this department and she said that it's a pain. There's a ton of daily stuff to get done, and then on top of that you have to deal with customers. A lot of time it's kind of dark in their little corner, and if they're in the back or busy with something they don't always see you right away. Be patient. Don't yell at them for not being at your beck and call right away. They're doing the best that they can. And if you need something written on a cake, for God's sake get there during the normal bakery hours. They are a hell of a lot more comfortable writing on the cakes than the regular clerks. I flat out refused to write on cakes. If you're getting a cake and you don't want chicken scratch on it, get there before 6 PM. It's not that hard. Do it on a Saturday if you work. Have a friend do it. Or better yet, get the cake done somehwere that actually does cakes. But don't be bitchy because your precious snowflake's cake doesn't look absolutely perfect if you couldn't get the regular bakery person to do it.
  
• Cleanups - If you drop something, let someone know. If you see something's been dropped and there's nobody cleaning it up, let someone know. Nobody likes having to sidestep through spaghetti sauce, and everything's a lot easier to clean up right when it's dropped than an hour later after it's had the chance to spread out. If you see someone cleaning something up, don't expect that they're going to drop what they're doing just because you have a question. If it's a simple question, like "What aisle is cat food on?", that's one thing. But don't come up asking the exact location of the pickled pigs feet, premade hollandaise sauce, or vegan chocolate chips are and think they're going to go searching with you. (On a side note, if you're a clerk, know your store and products. I've asked for maraschino cherries and been told to go to the produce department, and I actually have asked for vegan chocolate chips (in a hippie store no less) and been led to the chips and dip aisle.)
• Customer Service - This is undoubtedly the worst job in any store. People only go here when there's a problem (or to cash in their $3 lottery scratchers). Companies have taken the phrase "The customer is always right" to an absurd extreme (if you're interested in examples of when the customer is not right, read http://notalwaysright.com/). Basically, people have come to the understanding that if they shout and someone long enough, that person will get their manager, who will then be shouted at until the customer gets their way or that person has to get their manager. People can't deal with the disappointment of being wrong anymore. Generally, store employees know their policies better than you do and aren't willing to lose their job to give you the satisfaction of being right. If you're wrong about something, you're wrong. Nobody's perfect. If the policy is that they can't return something, ok, you're out a few bucks. Lesson learned. Being wrong is only bad if you don't learn something from it.

So yeah. Don't be any of these customers. For the sake of the sanity of the minimum wage stockboy trying to get through high school.