Conversations With Customers

  We get all types working in customer service, and when you work in a grocery environment, that is no joke or exaggeration. Everybody needs to eat, and at some point or another, everybody comes shopping for food. This means that we cashiers/checkers get into some of the most crazy, zany conversations. I know that I have, and there are certainly some that have stuck in my mind. As I like to share, I am going to record some of them in this blog post. If you are cashier/checker you'll have some of your own, but these are some of the memorable ones that I have had.

Conversation 1: Not Human

   This one was a double act. I had two separate customers talking to each other at first.

   "Everything is going up. I guess that's how it is," she said, "Nothing's free."

   "Oh, I don't know about that," the man behind her chimed in, "A man bought me a free tank of gas once because he had just won the lottery. I was at the gas station and he just offered."

   "Things like that really show you that some people are just still human and not, well, whatever they are." the woman exclaims. 

   The man gets all sly-faced and looks at me and says,"Maybe this nice lady will show us that she's really human and give us our groceries free."

   "That'd be great!" the woman exclaims.

   "Nope," I say. "I'm not human; I'm whatever they are."

  You should have seen the looks that I got. Well, whatever, I thought I was funny.  

Conversation 2: Grandpa-faced

   For some reason, when I first started working at the place that I work now, I got a lot of people who thought that I was Russian. We have a high Russian customer base, and I do have a lot of Russian coworkers, but I am not Russian. Since I was a military brat, I started out my life being raised all over the place, but when my dad retired, we permanently moved to Mississippi. I was nine at the time, and Mississippi is the place that I identify as my childhood home. But I had a lot of customers who would come up to me and just start speaking Russian at me. This was the case with two young woman, probably early 20's. They came up and just started talking away to me in their language. I looked at them, baffled, and told them that I did not speak any Russian.

   "You don't speak Russian? You aren't from Russia?" one of the girls asked.

   "Nope."

   "That's so strange," she replied."You have the face of our grandfathers."

   Well, I have a sense of humor, so I about died laughing at that one. Good to know that I'm grandpa-faced. I'm sure this was an example of a misunderstanding due to language barriers, but it was pretty funny and never let it be said that I can't laugh at myself. 

Conversation 3: The Sheep Spy

   I have this man come through my line on a fairly regular basis and though  I can't be sure, I am pretty certain that he is homeless. He is also crazy, but when he is in a good mood, he can be a pretty fun guy. The first conversation that I had with him cemented the image of the nice guy in my mind. He was carrying the huge backpack that he always have, and he looked pretty gruff and wasn't clean, so I do admit that he did make me nervous. Especially when he leaned over my counter, with a dead-serious expression.

   "Can I tell you a secret?" he asked.  

   Being the verbal genius that I am, I responded with "Uhhhhhhhh......"

   Despite my lack of enthusiasm, he gleefully responded, "I'm a sheep spy!"

   "A what?" I asked, befuddled.

   "I'm a sheep shy. Because I'm not a vegetarian!"

   "Okay," I laughed, "Me too." 

   I finished ringing him up and he paid with coins and crumpled dollars and then he exclaimed "Hey, watch this!" And he began to juggle the oranges that he had just bought. 

    He does come in really grumpy and mean, but I try to remember that he can be really fun too. It can't be a sheep-spying, orange juggling day everyday. 

    There you go: a small but colorful peek into the working life of the cashier. 

The Gremlins in Register 6

   I thought that today would be an average day at work. Go in, talk to some customers, get annoyed at others, yak at my coworkers, and then go home to my daughter. I was not counting on the stress and aggravation that the check reader in register 6 would cause me. But when I went to take my first check of the day....
   We have old stuff. I know that some of you are used to the machines that read your check and then your checker hands the check back to you and the amount comes out of your bank account as fast as a debit charge. Ours are not those. Ours has to read the check info (routing number, account number, and check number) and then the reader checks this information against the bad checks in our system, and then if there are no matches to bad checks, the reader prints our deposit info on the back of the check. (At least, that is my assumption of how the reader works, but no one has really explained it, so I could be off). Well, the first check I tried to put through jammed, so I had to enter all the information manually. Then the reader printed the deposit info correctly, but took about two minutes to process that it had printed and to let my cash drawer open.
   So in the meantime, the customer was looking at me, and I was looking at the customer, and we were looking at each other, and since this was not a romantic interlude, all this looking at each other was really awkward. Then the check reader messed up on the second and the third, and all this looking at people, waiting so I can give them their receipt and send them on their way is really bugging me. Looking at all these people for these lengthy periods of time is making my skin itch, and I'm jamming on buttons and opening shit and repressing the urge to bang on the thing, but I'm losing my cool. So I call my manager, and he comes over and wiggles some wires and tells me I need to be patient. Patient!!! An indication of how little he really knows me; or else a nod to my acting skills.
   And so the next check comes along, and his tinkering with the wires has done nothing, so my customer is looking  at me, and I'm looking at her, and we are looking at each other, and I'm wishing that I had a sledge hammer, and see if I wouldn't show that printer at thing or two.
   And then I realize, I really do need a hammer, because the only explanation is that my register is infested with gremlins. Not those weird ones from the movies, but the ones that were rumored to mess with the engines in the airplanes during one of the World Wars (I am not good with all that history). They have left the planes and infested my freakin' register.  I know that this seems far-fetched, but that makes even more sense. No one expects them to be in the grocery stores infesting the old equipment. Fey little bastards.