Yeah, I don’t want to hear about some random cashier’s personal life while waiting in line but it happens. I don’t want anyone to lose their job or get in trouble for it but by the time I get in line, I’m READY TO GO HOME!
I tried this a couple of times at the grocery store with a certain chatty cashier that I seemed to always end up in line with and it worked. When I thought I’d waited patiently for long enough…
I’d made it far enough in line to put my purchases on the checkout counter so I started shifting them around “loudly” to get their attention. When the cashier and the customer she was blabbing to turned my way to see what all the noise was about, I impatiently looked at my watch and then back at them. I never said a word and the cashier started scanning items faster… and stopped talking.
Or better than getting them in trouble I would rather just say … “Excuse me…Is there another cashier I can go to?” … I’d rather do that than turn them in…
Did the whole store break into a round of applause as you strode proudly away from the counter, confident that you had just showed that minimum-wage tattooed person not to mess with your urgent shopping?
I know some non-profit resale stores like the Salvation Army do things like this; this particular store is for-profit, with about half a dozen locations in the region, although they do some charitable donations. Do you have the two mixed up?
I didn’t really get the sense that this is the OP’s major complaint, although I’ll concede that the fact he mentioned it might be an indication that it swayed his judgement somewhat. My interpretation is that he’s pissed because he was trying to get served and the employee was not doing her job properly. Why are people having such a hard time understanding, if not sympathizing with that? Also, true, no one gets to be the “judge” of what is appropriate public conversation, but we all have opinions and there is such a thing as social mores. It’s not about offending random strangers’ sensibilities; it’s just not the image that I would assume her employer would like to have conveyed. I know this board contains a veritable plethora of zen masters but surely everyone here has had an occasional moment of irritation at bad service, no?
True, but I just took his recounting of the story as venting, as opposed to the whole " it all turned out okay in the end" type of thing. I must admit the story would have been much more “horrific” had he been stuck there for another twenty minutes waiting for her to finish her story.
My dad bought a store when I was 9½ years old, so I was running the register and making change before I was 11. Okay, in Delaware there was no sales tax. That’s where I’m coming from in my following comments.
There’s a difference between a cashier having a brief conversation with a customer (who may or may not be a friend) while ringing up their purchases, bagging them, and making change and a cashier having a extended conversation with a customer (friend or no) while there are more people waiting in line to make their purchase. The latter is just wrong. The store had to open up another register because the cashier could not handle 3 customers in a timely manner.
Now, going by the OP’s mention of the cashier’s tattoos and her topic conversation about her ex, maybe there’s some classism on the OP’s part also going on here, but still, the cashier shouldn’t have held up the line like that. The topic of conversation or body art shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
Some people are not cut out to be cashiers. They just do not have the temperament. I’m sure they - and their managers - would agree. I was checked-out by one yesterday - slow as molasses, and when it came time to announce the total, she said, “That’s two-seventeen-something-something.” Like, literally said “something something.” I glanced over at the total - 217.44 - and thought, “Is it really easier to say ‘something something’ than ‘forty-four’? Isn’t ‘forty-four’ shorter, with less syllables? Is it a that’s-enough-thinking-right-there type thing?”
But people need jobs and cashier is a job, so, well.
That said, kind of uncool to complain, but someone’s gotta do it, so, well.
The guy at the front of the line complimented her on one of her tattoos, and asked who did it. Apparently she had gotten that particular tattoo while she was married to her ex (it sounded like he also did some of them, as did the woman he left her for) and that’s where things went after that. When I say “heavily tattooed”, I’m not kidding, because she even has them on her ears and fingers. As for the person who said they were surprised I didn’t add that she was fat, that was in part because she isn’t, and even if she was, I wouldn’t have mentioned that because it doesn’t matter. She probably weighs 100 pounds soaking wet; I won’t speculate on how much of that weight is ink.
There’s a young man who works there who is very flamboyantly gay, and in addition to being heavily tattooed, also dyes his hair in neon colors. I don’t mind being checked out by him, because he’s efficient and friendly without being TMI.
Most of the people who work there are women who look like the kind of people who want to work when the kids are in school, or in the evenings, so they don’t have to worry about babysitters. I knew a lot of women who did that when I worked at the grocery store ca. 2000, and at Target in the early 1980s.
Manager: “Smith, it seems our strategy isn’t working. At any time you only have three customers standing in line, and we have to open a second counter just to handle the queezy ones. Try something kinkier next time…”
How long are we talking about? Were you standing there for one minute of employee non-action? Four minutes? There’s a point in which I might complain as well, but cashiers are paid shit to do shit work that makes very little diffrerence in the scope of my life, I really don’t expect them to care.
It seems to me that the OP brought up the cashier being tattooed in order to provide a characterization that would elicit sympathy here on the SDMB. IMHO, in that regard the OP is very mistaken and does not know their audience well.
I’m just waiting to see how this thread unfolds. I hope that no one here gets harmed or harms someone else. That would be a real shame. Don’t you think?
I agree that the cashier having a long conversation with a customer while I’m waiting in line is annoying. But it happens all the time (I live in the south). You know what I do? I suck it up and deal with it. If I’m in a bad mood, I might sigh and roll my eyes a bit, but that’s as far as it goes. If the cashier was being profoundly annoying, the most I would do is sigh loudly and maybe piss and moan about it to my friends or my husband or on Facebook afterwards.
A nicer person would have just said something to the cashier directly, rather than get her in trouble. To complain to the manager about something so small just seems petty- like someone who would go out of her way to mention in her story that the cashier had tattoos.
