not-so-swift cashier

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The other day, I stopped by the Indian takeout that I visit once or twice a week and had the following exchange with the cashier. Mind you, it was not crowded or busy, and I certainly spoke loudly enough.

Me: I’ll have two veggie samosas with mango sauce.

Him: Okay. (Goes to prepare food. I notice he’s putting chips in a bag too, but I figure they’re giving out samples or something. Returns to cash register). That will be 3.30.

Me: (knowing that this order costs less) I’m pretty sure it’s only 2.20. I just had two veggie samosas.

Him: Oh, I thought you said chips.

Me: No, samosas with mango sauce.

Him: (Recalculating total). That’s 2.20 (I pay.) Would you like any sauce with that?

Me: (slightly dumbfounded) Uh, the mango sauce would be nice.

:smack:

Lucky for him I was in a good mood and didn’t get irritated, but geez! I felt like I was in a Monty Python skit and “mango sauce” had some kind of code meaning…

2

Duh! Sounds like he was mentally on vacation!

3

Samosas and chips? You’re in the UK, aren’t you?

[serious question]
Is it the norm to call that wonderful substance “mango sauce” where you are? We generally call it “red chutney” here, as opposed to the somewhat more mysterious “green chutney.” I wouldn’t have guessed what you meant by “mango sauce” if it weren’t for the context.
[/serious question]

4

The only Indian takeout we have round my parts are cigarettes and fireworks.

5

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Indian fireworks. Anything good?

What’s a samosa?

6

Samosa is a little triangle pastry filled with meat of veggies. They’re pretty good. Go out and try em.

7

Actually, I’m in Washington DC. They were indeed homemade chips, not fries.

Re: mango sauce. To me, mango chutney is chunky; the stuff they dish up at this place is smooth so it’s a sauce. I dunno, maybe the red sauce/green sauce is a Canadian thing, but down here we want a little more description.

8

here’s my interaction at the lovely, inefficient US postal service yesterday:

Me: “I need to purchase a book of 3 cent stamps” (because they raised postal rates again, the theives)

Her: “Ok, they come in books of 500”

Me: “ok.” <thinking> “wait, I don’t need 500 stamps.”

Her: “Oh, did I say 500, I meant 100”

Me: “ah.” <thinking> “that’ll be fine.”

Her: "That will be $1.50.

Me: <thinking> “uhm.” <looks down at sheet to see it only has 50 stamps> “right.” <exchanges money and quickly leaves>
three cheers for human incompetence!

9

Trust me, I’ve been that dumb cashier myself before… And no, I will not regale you with tales of my own stupidity :stuck_out_tongue:

10

Wikkit, gatopescado was making a funny: (Untaxed) Cigarettes & fireworks are often sold at (american) indian reservations.

Guess so… I think it’s the same stuff though, indian “chutney” never seems to be “chunky” as your auntie’s chutney. They sell potato chips at indian takeout in Washington. That just seems weird to me. Although I guess if you have the deep-fryer there…

webguy, that anecdote boggles the mind. Although apparently simple arithmetic boggles the mind, too, so I guess it’s nothing to jump up-and-down about. :smiley:

Myself, I’m constantly amazed at the dullwittedness of barristas.

I’ll never understand why the meaning of a short sentence, a third of which is represented by the words “black” and “bitter”, is cannot readily be apprehended by these people. It’s easily understood by everyone else that I know – why is it that it is invariably met with blank incomprehension by people who have actually have some profressional association with the sacred bean?

As if that’s not ironic enough, it’s apparently easily understood by everyone in Ireland, but you can’t get a decent cup of coffee there to save your life.

Ah, I guess I’m going to have to learn that “simplified english” with the 50-word vocabulary if I want to make myself understood.

(Yes, I’ve worked retail. I don’t recall having any difficulty making myself understood from the other side of the counter.)

I blame our indoctinat-- err, I mean, educational system. Pitiful failure, apparently.

11

Could be force of habit. I’ve been known to say, “Have a nice day” at 9:30 pm, or whatever. Seriously, sometimes you just saying it by rote.

12

Damn. Went right past me. I even wondered about typing indian. D’oh.

Wearia, it sounds good. I’ll have to hit an Indian place when I’m in a larger town, around here the only good asian restaurants are chinese and vietnamese.

13

Over twelve years ago this occurred and I’d like to say that I still have no conscience over the affair. If it happened again, I would tell the manager sooner.

There is a Mega-Colossal-Super Store around here. You use to ( and still can AFAIK) take your paycheck to the store and as long as you bought something like $15 dollars worth of stuff, you could cash your pay check. This is no problem. My income was entirely and completely disposable at the time.

I had my purchases, which is about $20. I hand the cashier my paycheck, let’s say it was $100. I show ID and do the thumb print thingy on the check. I am suppose to receive $80 back.

She gives me $150.

I ask her if she is sure. She recounts it, checks the computer register and says, " Yep". I have her count it out for me. She doesn’t get it. The guy behind me in line even got it. the change I was suppose to get was *on the computer screen * I was giving this dip lots of chances and being very patient.

I leave merrily on my way.

Repeat this every paycheck for many weeks. The guy behind me, did the same thing, for a couple of weeks. We met, like theives, and always went to this woman’s lane. It was the longest and the slowest, but it wasn’t like we weren’t giving this woman five or six chances. Nearly everyone was cashing their paychecks with her. Yes, I know, just because everyone was doing it doesn’t make it right…

I think my best money back was two hundred dollars over what my change should have been.

After that, I told the manager that she was giving the wrong change back…in the clients favor. The dipwad was gone after that.

This store now pretty much has had its cosmic payback on me. I easily spend $600 a month there.

That goes down as the stupidest clerk I’ve ever encountered that it ended very highly in my favor.

14

I used to part-time for a grocery store in the afternoon and I’d say, “Have a good evening.” Or, on Fridays, “Have a good weekend.”

15

Well, Shirley Ujest, you will be glad to know that after that cashier got fired from that store, she found gainful employment at a little curio shop in Atlanta, where I was doing some Christmas shopping.

She gave me an $80 cash gift for patronizing her store. Instead of trying to get HER to figure it out herself, I actually TOLD her about her mistake, and explained the math.

She argued with me (guess she didn’t want to get fired again).

So I happily walked out with my extra 80 bucks, and my family got better presents that year than they usually got from my broke ass. :wink: Oh, and I gave 10 bucks to the guy sitting on the sidewalk outside the store (should have told him to go buy something in the store and plump his earnings).

16

Okay, I know I started this thing, but I have been on the other side. I think my biggest oops was when the US Treasury started that thing a couple years back that changed the way the bills looked. At the time this happened, I had only ever seen the “new” $50 bills. When a guy payed me with an odd-looking bill, I assumed it was a $50. I discovered my mistake long after I had given him his change–it was actually a $20 and he had only bought a couple dollars’ worth of stuff, so he got off pretty good…