Grocery Drama
When I was a senior in high school, I was hired part-time at a grocery store as a cashier. The only training I received was “Um these are roma tomatoes and this is how you type in cash and check.” Everything was fine those few months, but by the time I graduated and new management rolled in it all went to hell. I gladly signed up to get called in and take on 40 hours a week (I had to wait about a year to go to college for financial reasons) but it turned out to be a huge mistake.
I hardly ever had breaks. Even though cashiering isn’t hard physical labor I am still human and I get hungry. I was usually the only person working up front. The other cashier would leave sit in the break room. The front end manager would either join her or eat chips in the office. I could never finish sweeping outside or refill bags because I couldn’t leave the front. I was called in and kept for an extra hour frequently. One of the few times I refused to come in I was screamed at because work is supposed to be a main priority. It was my only day off since I had already worked and extra day that week. The next day I was yelled at again for having so much overtime.
So basically I was yelled at for asking for breaks, not finishing tasks, for not working enough, and working too much!
Also there are so many individual stories I could tell about the horrible customers. Here are two summed up. There was a racist old man on an oxygen tank. He constantly complained about my white mother contributing to the downfall of “class and cleanliness” by marrying my Mexican dad. Another time I was backed up into by a truck while I was loading their groceries. The man sat down and started the truck right away. I unloaded the two carts by myself (only taking two minutes tops) when he decided it was time to leave. I wasn’t given any time to recover after I got back inside. There are also stories, of two drunk men, a nasty old woman, a cracked out woman, pickle lady, and sexual harassment I don’t have space for.
On my last few days of work, the old man pooped his pants (before even getting out of his car). I have sympathy, but it got everywhere! His front seat, the store scooter, and his back and legs. Also I found a large amount of warm hamburger meat stashed in the shelves, a broken jar of salsa (blamed on me), a broken jar of pickles (blamed on me), and an old woman had her leg gashed open by a pizza box.
I worked in a grocery store for a summer and you have all my sympathy. It’s not particularly difficult, but it is very taxing to stand in one place for 8 hours. The customers are rude, there’s an extremely high turnover of employees, and if the managers sense a good worker, they’ll work you to death.
I hope your job was at least in a union grocery store. I got a decent wage for picking up extra shifts, and could’ve had benefits if I’d been able to hack it.
Sounds like a bunch of much more interesting stories that got mentions at the end. I want to read those!
The amount of drama contained in one store can be surprising. Bravo to you for toughing it out, retail and grocery jobs suck.
There’s other sites that’s perfect for those stories that you don’t have space for here. I’d love to hear more about those myself.
tell us about pickle lady!
I’m with zomboid! I wanna hear about Pickle Lady!
I’m surprised they didn’t blame you for the lady cutting her leg on a pizza box.
Hey everyone this is my story. Sorry I had to leave out a lot of isolated stories, but I was worried about space. Also I didn’t want to talk about one rough day or one specific customer and have people go “How does this one thing make the whole job suck? It’s part of the job deal with it!”. I know that having to deal with people is part of the job, but there are so many crazies that would come in all the time!
Pickle Lady was a woman who seemed a bit off balanced. She would wear a huge puffy coat in the summer, thick gold lipstick that was very smeared, and sneer at people . She had a fit because the quarter machine gave her a piece of candy instead of a plastic ring. Also she kept a family sized bottle of mouthwash in her bag. One day she was extremely hateful to me when paying for a jar of pickles. She had a Target coupon for pickles, but we were at another store in a small town that didn’t even have a Target. When she tried to use the coupon I told her I was sorry I couldn’t take coupons for another store. She figured she could talk it over with the manager, so I called him over. He told her the same thing. That is when she lost it. It was a sudden swing of rage and she spoke with a lot of hissing and head shaking. She told me I was pathetic for taking advantage of a poor old woman. Then she had the bright idea to put the pickles back. Buuut while she was shopping she opend the jar and started snacking on the pickles. There was no way she could return them! After a lot of yelling and damning the store she left. Later when the next round of customers came in I was told she busted the jar on our sidewalk.
The lady who had her leg gashed by the pizza box was elderly and taking blood thinners. The box fell out of our freezer and the corner of the box cut her leg! I was so shocked! This was a woman who would dramatically scream “Oh Lord noooo!” when she left her wallet in her car, (which I must admit she had a really hard time walking) but she didn’t even react to the pool of blood on the floor! All she did was look down and say sweetly say “oh my, can I have a rag?”. I only mentioned this incedint because it added to the huge rolling snowball of drama that day. On it’s own it wouldn’t have really made it a tough day. It just sucked having to clean it all up, which really isn’t supposed to be done by spill magic and windex.
@BikeLizard: Yes very true. They will work you to death! I was only supposed to work 5 days a week, but instead I would get called in all the freaking time. Usually to work another full day and then again to work a four hour day. The four hour days were weird because it would be two hours in the morning and then two hours in the evening. It was really annoying because I had to fit in my plans around it.
My checks were great, but I wanted to enjoy a day off. The customers were soul sucking and I couldn’t take it. Eventually I stopped answering my phone on my days off. I was always threatend to get written up for it, but it never actually happend. The old assistant manager would gripe about me being imature for “blowing off work to have playtime, hug friends, and pet kitties”.
When the union finally said something I was knocked down to 15 hours a week again. Instead of cashiering they made me sweep. All day.
I hate those jobs that act like they can control what you do in your off-time & think you should work whenever they call when you weren’t scheduled. I had a job that would schedule people to be “on-call,” so if you were the lucky lottery winner you couldn’t do anything all day just in case they called. I was only scheduled as that once & told them, & I quote, “I am not a damn doctor & I’m not going just sit around & wait for you to call me.” I was never scheduled as that again. Yours sounds worse because there was no prior notification that they may call you.
lol i worked in a grocery store once and never will again. the last straw was when a very normal looking lady put an empty bag of crackers and told me to ring it up. You ATE these BEFORE you paid? I was dumbfounded. I would expect this from a child or a mentally disabled person but not an adult! That’s the same as stealing. Eating the product before you pay for it is the same as using it. Apparently it is common these days but I never have nor would do it. it’s the same is stealing for me.
exgf — my mom used to do that a lot for me, I get hypoglycemic and when I get hungry I get hungry NOW so she’d open whatever and let me eat before we got to the checkout. It never struck me as stealing and still doesn’t because we DID pay for it. As opposed to eating it and then cramming the bag in a corner or something.
Correct, Mandie. You aren’t stealing if you want to enjoy a snack while shopping and you pay for it at the counter.
It is stealing, you haven’t paid for it and yet, you are using it. And just because you are a bit inconvenianced by having to walk up and pay for something first, doesn’t mean you get to do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care that you walked around and ate a snack, but don’t pretend like it isn’t out of order to take something that doesn’t yet belong to you and use it as if it does.
You still paid, though. I don’t mind customers that hand me an empty bottle, bag, or box to ring up because they’re still paying. I find too many empty wrappers shoved under shit or half-drunk energy drinks on shelves to get mad at someone for the order in which they pay. Pay, and I’m fine.
It’s not stealing if you pay for the damn thing before you set foot off the property.
A store may have health concerns with people opening packages and spilling food/liquids all over – but that is their call. Personally, as long as the customer isn’t making a mess, I would rather that they come to my store than not.
When you eat at a restaurant you eat the food before you pay too, no biggie. As long as you pay.
Uhh, do you not eat the food at a restaurant before paying for it? THEIF! /sarcasm
Damn, should have refreshed. You beat me to it efaneo.