When posting my last entry, i'm reminded of how funny life is. I've both worked in retail at a small clothing/department store and various grocery stores over the years as well as obviously been a customer at various places. Having worked holidays and snow storm warning crowds as well as summer time rush all with low staff I tend to be a lot more patient than my husband is when it comes to waiting in large lines or behind someone with a thousand coupons or someone that waits to write a check until the cashier tells them the amount (as in writing the ENTIRE thing out, not just the amount).
He always asks "Why are there only two lanes open when there are so many people shopping??" Remembering how it was when I worked, my reply is normally "They probably either had someone call in sick, several people called in sick or someone is on a break..legally, they have to take a break or they get in trouble. It sounds silly but it's the truth".
It always brings me back to my days as a grocery bagger. Now I was an older bagger at 20. Not the oldest, as there were people there in their 30s 40s and 50s as baggers but most people think of baggers as either young teens are older folks who are retired and just want something to occupy their down time. For me, it was simply the fact that I am to shy and nervous to be a cashier. Simple as that. I didn't particularly always enjoy bagging or working the bottle room (I HATED working the bottle room..people bringing in sticky bottles, not understanding we had to scan each one into the computer system for inventory purposes and getting mad at me..having to put very heavy barrels full of crushed glass onto a dolly and carrying it out back and then replacing that barrel with an emtpy one behind the glass crusher ugh) but I enjoyed keeping busy and keeping moving. I didn't mind cleaning the toilets (unless someone did something disgusting like do you know what in a urinal or leave dirty underwear on the floor) or collecting carts (we called them wagons) and I didn't mind dealing with people for the most part. Sometimes though, people were just jerks.
When I was younger, it bothered me when the customer would aknowledge the cashier but never so much as say hello to me or speak to me unless they thought I was doing something wrong. As an adult, with a seven year old and an impatient husband as a shopping companion (lol) I understand that most of these people were not TRYING to be rude, they were just frazzled and wanted to get the heck out of there as fast as possible.
The big one that I learned was that grocery stores like to hire a LOT of highschool kids. Not all are bad of course but many don't take it seriously and many many call in sick constantly, which means we are short on people and those of us who show up for work to do our JOBS are punished by angry customers giving US the evil eye because we're backed up and no other lanes are open..guess what? it was because no one else was there to work haha. People would growl at me "Why don't YOU get on a register and open up a new lane?" I wanted to say "Then who would bag your groceries? YOU? I doubt you could be bothered" but of course i'd never do that. And that leads me into something else..customer service.
As mad as I would feel at times, or as much as an irate customer might hurt my feelings, I always tried to not show it. That, unfortunatly, is just part of the job. The customer is NOT always right, but you have to at least PRETEND that they are. Another thing..if I was having a bad day in my personal life outside of work, i'd shut it off the minute I clocked in. I'd put on a happy face and treat every customer with a smile. So when _I_ am the customer and I get a rude cashier or clerk I just want to smack them. So I've had both bad customers as a retail worker and bad retail workers as a customer lol
0 comments:
Post a Comment