So, I went to the 99 cent store to pick up a few groceries. Got in line behind a woman who had largish amount of stuff. Very carefully set my stuff on the tiny conveyer belt, making sure I kept a space between my stuff and her stuff. As soon as she moved the little dividie thing from in front of her stuff to its customary perch alongside the conveyor belt, I grabbed it and placed it in the space between my stuff and her stuff.
The cashier rang her stuff, then moved the little dividie thing back to its customary perch alongside the conveyor belt, looked at the lady in front of me, looked at me and said, “This is all together, right?” The lady in front of me said, “No.”
I said, “No”
OK, so, Miss Cashier, think a minute.
Why do you think the little dividie thing was there? Do you not know that, at grocery selling establishments throughout the known universe, the presence of a little dividie thing on a conveyor belt at a checkstand means “this is where one person’s stuff ends and the next person’s stuff begins” unless the customer explicitly states otherwise? You saw me remove the little dividie thing from its customary perch alongside the conveyor belt and place it between my stuff and her stuff. Do you really think I would have done that if we were shopping together and my stuff and her stuff were to be on the same bill?
It’s pretty obvious that you must have been exusding some sort of overwhelming sexual magnetism vibe toward the customer in front of you - the cashier picked up on this and assumed you were ‘an item’. Eh? Eh?
Or maybe she just had one of those brain fart things where you ask a really stupid, obvious question, but frame it in the wrong way.
A cashier needs training to know that the little dividie thing on the conveyor belt means “the stuff on one side of me belongs to one person, the stuff on the other side belongs to someone else”?
Every single person who has ever shopped in a grocery store knows what the little dividie thing means.
Once, a few years ago when I was in college, I used the stick-thingey between my items and the items of the person in front of me at the grocery store as nature intended. The cashier evidently got that we were not an item but picked up the stick, looked at it carefully, seemed confused, and asked me “Do you know how much this was?”
Er?
Confused myself, I realized she had no idea what the thing was or what it did, so I told her. She said it was her first week on the job and she’d honestly never noticed the things before in a lifetime of grocery shopping.
I mean, hey, I’ve said and done dumb things before that I wish somebody would have clued me in on at the time. So I felt kinda guilty about snickering about her in the parking lot.
Several years ago I went into a small store in a very small town when we were on vacation. I was purchasing a single carton of ice cream, which was marked at $2.49. The clerk punched 2-4-9 into her register and then scanned the carton. The ever-so-helpful computer figured that I was buying 249 cartons, and rang up $620. Fortunately the clerk realized that was probably not the correct amount.
She was just trying to increase sales. You didn’t follow through on your part, though. You were supposed to say “Well, since you’ve already rung them up, I’ll just go get another 248 cartons. Be right back!”
She should be immediately captured and interrogated to learn what she knows of her Evil Alt.Universal Overlord’s invasion plans, then summarily executed.
These beings are a threat to all species living in our universe.
Obviously the clerk was “winning the contest” that day.
Anecdote: My ex-boyfriend and I used to smoke pot just about every time we left the house to go do our errands and stuff. And yet, no matter how stoned we got, the person behind the counter or the person driving down the highway at 40 mph or whatever would somehow manage to act even more stoned than us. Eventually we decided that every day was a contest to see who could get the most stoned. So whenever we came across a clerk such as the one described in the OP, we would always say something like “Well, she definitely won the contest today.” Occasionally, one of US would win the contest. But only rarely.
Hell, I used to do that, just to be mentally prepared to handle the various stupid, ignorant, or just plain completely clueless people I’d be forced to interact with while running said errands.
I don’t know. If you do that shit all day I think it’s reasonable to assume that you might not remember if you picked that divider thing up thus thinking two peoples crap were together.
To parallel; I remember working as a waiter once I tried to take the same tables order TWICE!
I had taken their order went and did a bunch of crap then tried to take their order again. (it was very busy that day)
Heh. People walk up to the circulation desk at the library where I work and stand right in front of the sign that reads ‘Please return all library materials here’ and ask, “Is this where I return stuff?”
