Horror Stories from the Grocery Store Pt 1

I have decided to start blogging about people. But not just any people, customers. And not just any customers, customers at a large chain grocery store who are completely and totally rude and perhaps slightly insane. Does that narrow it down enough?

If you didn't gather it from that wonderful introduction, I work in the clothing department of the Canadian equivalent of Wal-Mart. As part of my job, I run the till, clean, put out stock, run fitting rooms, and do pretty much everything they do in a normal clothing store.

Now, I haven't done the research, but from what I have seen, people who shop at this store are potentially the worst customers you could ask for, and I'm not exaggerating at all. I'm not saying that every customer we get is brutal, there are some very wonderful, polite people who shop there, don't get me wrong. However, some people who shop in this store are downright rude and insane. No jokes here.

In this series, entitled "Horror Stories from the Grocery Store", I will discus the craziness that happens at my store involving customers. Who knows, maybe you are one of these people, but I certainly hope not. This people seem to have no idea what manners and respect are. I learned what those two words were when I was around three. At three years old, I was way better behaved than some of these people. Again, no exaggeration there. And I'm not going to lie and tell you that it's easy to just laugh off like it's no big deal. What some of these people say really takes a toll on you and makes you feel really low. If my job were not in danger, I would give these people some of their own medicine. However, because I can't, I will just write about it here and hope that maybe a few of them will read it and realize how foolish and ignorant they look.

I have found through working there that the worst customers are the ones who don't even see the employees as human beings. Generally, they see us as these silly teens (most of are 19 or older) who have no idea what they are talking about and should not be entrusted with such a precious job like taking care of their clothes. Another misconception they have is that we have to take whatever they say to us and just give them what they want. While this happens to be the case when it comes to the store managers, it is not so much the case with us. If you harass us, we are allowed to refuse the sale or return and send you somewhere else.

Sadly, many of these people do not realize that we respond better to polite people. Instead of yelling at us when we screw up one little thing, politely point out the mistake and we will correct it for you. However, if you yell at us and begin calling us names, we will get flustered, make more mistakes and in the end you will just end up talking to a store manager who will tell you that you are not allowed to treat employees that way and that you should be nicer to us in the future. Can you guess which one will take longer?

So, I will include an example of a crazy customer who created a scene when there was along line for the tills. This scene really frustrated other customers who were in a hurry, and just resulted in more unhappy customers

Example: Crazy Bag Lady

One thing that you should know about clothing stores is that if we get busy and there is a counter we have two people working at, it's going to get a little messy and hard to work through. Another thing you should know is that my store started charging five cents a bag at the beginning of the summer. While some people were not at all happy about this, they have pretty much gotten over it and moved on with their lives except for a few. Here is where our story begins...

So, it was a crazy busy day at our store and the line up for the tills was very long. From what I gathered, this woman brought back something that she wanted to exchange in a bag. During the exchange however, the bag got lost and was thrown into our plastic recycling with all the other bags people leave behind. This recycling bin is not used for anything else besides bags, and we give out bags from there all the time. When this lady found out that her bag was thrown into the recycling, she demanded that we give her a new bag for free. We are not allowed to do this, as it is theft on our part. The girl working the till called over our department manager who also told her that she couldn't give her a new bag, but that we had plenty of clean used bags that she was free to use. Again, this woman refused and demanded that we call store manager over to do it. The store manager came over, and decided that she should just get the bag. Of course, this woman was a perfect angel to the store manager after being a complete jerk to the girls at the counter. This transaction took almost twenty minutes.

Moral of the story: if your bag gets lost, a plastic one like hers, and we offer you a completely clean used bag free of charge, just take it. Is it really that different from the other bag you were using?

Anyway, stay tuned for more horror stories from the grocery store.
Keep Swimming!
Jill