A rant in 3 parts: Stupid store management, stupid customers, stupid drivers. Yeehaw.

So, it being Friday and I’m out of groceries, I decide to run to the grocery store down the street from my office to get lunch at their salad bar. The store is only two miles away, and it’s usually a quick, easy option for lunch.

All is well as I get a bit of meat and cheese from the deli and some veggies from the salad bar. It’s only when I walk up to the checkout area that I notice it. The lines. The huge lines on the mere 2 aisles they have open. Fuck me.

Herein lies Part I of the rant:

You stupid managerial fucks…how about not letting all of your asslicking cashiers take their lunch breaks DURING THE WEASELHUMPING LUNCH RUSH!!! How about it, huh? It’s Friday. It’s lunchtime. There are a million people in the store. Can you not engage your teeny tiny brain and call up the lessons you learned at The Bumblefuck School of Business that dictate that during your rush periods, you actually KEEP THE STAFF AT THEIR POSTS!!! This is not a difficult concept. Do restaurants let their waitstaff eat dinner during the dinner rush? Do hotels let their housekeeping staff take vacation during the big convention? No. See? They managed to learn the lesson…WHY CAN’T YOU???

So anyway…I get in line with my lunch, behind the dozen other people who are grumbling about how stupid it is that the lines should be this bad during lunch. My ire begins to abate as we wind our way up to the cashier, since the cashier (one of the blessed two on duty) seems to be pretty on the ball and the line is moving well. It gets down to one person in front of me, and then I notice that what I thought was a normal patron was actually the superhero, Clueless Wonder, in disguise.

Herein lies Part II of the rant:

Listen up, you twatsniffing throbbing pustule…you were complaining about the long line with the rest of us. Did it ever occur to you that once your items were rung up, that you’d…oh, I don’t know…BE REQUIRED TO PAY FOR THEM?? Get your wallet out of your ratfucking purse before the cashier is done ringing you up. Open your ratfucking wallet and remove some money. Kindly extract your ratfucking discount card from your skanky ass and present it to the cashier before she tells you your total so that she doesn’t have to scan it and readjust what you owe, thereby confusing your inferior intellect and necessitating a complete recount of your funds. Asswhistle.

OK…deep breaths. I’m remaining calm, even though the cashier finishes ringing me up and my credit card transaction is completed and signed before the above asswhistle customer actually collects herself and moves out of my way. But things are good…I have my lunch, it’s paid for, I may now leave. Everything is lovely until I get up to the exit of the parking lot, which requires me to turn left across a three-lane road (two travel lanes and a turning lane).

Herein lies Part III of the rant:

While I appreciate what you think is kindly generosity in trying to wave me out in front of you as you wait to turn into the parking lot, Mr. Got My Driver’s License From a Gumball Machine, you’re actually CREATING A TRAFFIC JAM AND ENDANGERING US BOTH!! For fuck’s sake, it is MY responsibility, as the one pulling out into traffic, to wait until there is a clear and safe opportunity to do so. It is not YOUR responsibility to do what you think the neighborly thing and try to wave me out when there is still a line of traffic coming up behind you in the travel lane. Just because you don’t see anyone coming from my left DOESN’T MEAN THAT THERE IS NO TRAFFIC ANYWHERE ELSE!!! Gah!! Get off the road, you’re a danger to yourself and others!!

For the love of fuck, it should NOT take me over half an hour to get a takeout lunch from a store less than 2 miles from my office.

Asshats, every last one of them. Grrrr.

Wow. What a long, eloquent rant over a minor annoyance. Sounds like someone needs a weekend. :slight_smile:

Incidentally, this is why I’m glad I don’t have psychic abilities. Every time I stop to tie my shoe, I’d be able to hear the person behind me let loose a profane howl of rage and despair.

It’s funny that I should see this today. I am an insurance agent and a client of mine is being sued for this reason. It seems she was doing the considerate thing and waved a car to pull out from a side street. What she didn’t know was that there was a car travelling in the next lane. No good deed goes unpunished.

I once didn’t eat at a restaurant, because it was closed for lunch. It happens.

Honey, this is almost precisely why I never accept a wave-on like that. Just because one lane waves you on, doesn’t mean the other ones will.

Incidentally, on my 18th birthday, I was involved in an accident that happened just like this. A woman was making a left turn into a parking lot. The person going in the opposite direction waved her on. She went, not seeing that whoops, here I come in the right turn only lane right next to the driver that let her go through.

I have a feeling this scenario happens way too often.

Exactly, I saw an accident like this when I was filling my car with gas a few months back. Two lanes of traffic each way, car trying to pull out of the gas station and turn left, and another car (minivan or SUV, don’t remember) in the closest lane waves this car on. Nothing is coming from the right, so the car pulls out - and gets soundly hit on the driver’s side by the car in the left hand lane that couldn’t be seen.

Unless I can clearly tell for myself that no-one is coming, I don’t follow wave-ons - and even then I really don’t like to.

Wow! About eight years ago, I saw the exact same scenario DeniseV saw, except replace “so the car pulls out - and gets soundly hit on the driver’s side by the car in the left hand lane that couldn’t be seen” with “so the car starts to pull out - and the previously unseen car in the left hand lane swerves wildly, goes out of control, and crunches some other poor sap in the oncoming lane head-on.” Since then, I’ve made it a habit of never accepting wave-ons unless I’m 100% sure that I can see around them.

“Wave-ons” are the way a lot of insurance fraud accidents are caused as well. ON PURPOSE. (They’ll wave you ahead then ram you and say they had the right of way and now all 6 people in the car have expensive, traumatic injuries.) It’s a good idea to ignore them as a whole.

In Washington State, you automatically assume liability when you wave someone on like that. So if someone hits them it’s your fault.

Jadis: I’d offer you a rabid monkey to bring to the grocery store so you could have a brutal battle royal between the manager and the monkey. But I’m not sure what sort of packing material to use in the box so the monkey doesn’t break.

Hee!! A nice fetid, rabid monkey would be just the ticket for those assgaskets. Shame about the packing dilemma, though…

You wouldn’t want bits of monkey smeared across the inside of the box would you?

There’d be icky aerosols :frowning:

I think I’ll offer some sympathy to Jadis here.

The store manager is obviously an idiot. When I was in retail, our lunches were before noon or after two. The lunch rush is when you can make some serious money. People come in, grab something, and throw cash at you. I used to shop at a store that closed the express lines when the cashier needed a break. The manager could not grasp the concept of replacement tills and replacement cashiers. It only took twice (one time too many) for me to decide that waiting behind two or three someones doing their full grocery shopping while my cottage cheese melted in my hand meant I should find a different store.

People in line to pay for purchases should be prepared to pay. The only time I’ll not get bent out of shape about this is when the person is

  1. elderly (that will be me someday)
  2. surrounded by small children (that will never be me)
  3. the person who’s name in this position causes grief to some

But! the person waving you on: were you blocking his/her path to turn? Often someone turning left will have already veered left in the driveway, and makes it difficult for someone to enter.

At any rate, I certainly understand how all these things that one at a time are petty, can add up when they all happen sequentially. Better luck next time.

I work in a grocery store, and the manager at the one Jadis describes is obviously none too bright. During peak hours you make sure that there is enough staff on - and it sucks just as much for the cashiers as it does for the customers, to have impossibly horrid long lines. In our store, the manager has trained other departments (such as the florists and the produce guys and such) to cash. I’ve seen the manager cashing, too. In a pinch, we can call them up and get all the registers open.

About the people not being ready to pay: don’t bitch at me about the long frigging lines, and then hunt around in your purse for 5 minutes to find a penny. A couple days ago, the store was SWAMPED and a lady paid for her $30 order in unrolled change. She was very elderly and not all there, so what can you say to her? YARRGH!!

I’d like to see a fight between my manager and a rabid monkey. I would cheer for the monkey.

I agree, the store manager isn’t too bright. And, as ** Alexxandra** knows, a good store manager always cross trains people in other departments so there’s enough cashiers when you need 'em.

However, there also could be something more here. I don’t know about other supermarket chains in the country, but Former Employer and its competitors here always cut payroll as tight as possible during the summer months. It doesn’t matter if it’s an urban or suburban store. The powers that be, for some idiotic reason, always figure that summer is the slowest time, so why schedule a lot of people when the store isn’t busy?

I was one of those employees who was always cross-trained, no matter the store. Suffice to say that being called up front to ring right in the middle of doing something more than irked me to no end…

stops here lest she goes off onto her own rant…

There’s always the possibility that a store might be understaffed because more than one person called off. I’ve been in that situation a time or two. Nothing like walking in and having the manager say, “It’s just you and whosis; I’ll try to help out!”

Considering that I generally have three babies in the backseat and a tire iron in the trunk, I can see people having some expensive, traumatic REAL injuries after pulling a stunt like that.