Of course. Life is hard enough.
It’s not the friendliness, it’s the faux-familiarity that grates. Like being called “honey” or “dear” by a cashier or clerk or whatever.
Look at my example – remember the overly bubbly cashier?
“Are you feeling alright? No Fresca this morning?”
Sure, just being friendly and joking around … but I don’t know this woman from a hole in the ground. It’s a little presumptuous to be cracking unsolicited jokes to someone you don’t know. What if there was something wrong with me that day? In fact, now that I think about it, I wish I had responded, “I just got back from the doctors. I have brain cancer,” … taken my muffin and walked away. That woulda learned her.
Well, for myself, I expect my cashiers to be inanimate extensions of the cash register; part of the mechanical process of checking out that I have no choice but to do. To have to suddently interact with them at an interpersonal level with them is not something I expect, and so it catches me off guard. When caught off-guard like this, I am prone to incorrectly interpret their comments as being from the context of somebody who is intruding on me inappropriately, merely because I have an expectation of what the checking-out transaction will entail and chatting isn’t part of it.
It would necessarily be worse if they seem to be judging your purchases; you have no choice but to expose your purchases to them, and it comes off as being railroaded to judgement. Yeah, intellectually I know you’re just trying to be friendly, but if I had any choice in the matter I wouldn’t give you the opportunity to examine my purchases and make judgements on them.
Yikes.
I think it’s a joke. I think.
An exaggeration, but not a joke. And I honestly don’t think I’m alone.
When I walk up to a cash register, I simply don’t expect the person working there to strike up a conversation. I’m there to get the junk I’m buying rung up, and honestly, that’s usually what happens. The cashiers who ring you up with only mild generic ‘hello’ type comments and comments directly related to the sale are by far more common than the chatty ones, in my experience. So yes, when one starts asking for me to pontificate on my purchases, I’m surprised, and have to take a moment to ‘shift gears’ from ‘buying stuff’ mode to ‘chatting’ mode. Or maybe ‘justifying my purchases’ mode, if that’s what seems to be required.
And like I said, I don’t think I’m alone in this. The “Just shut up and ring up my damn purchases” sentiment seems to have been shown by several people in this thread.
This kind of thing happened to me last night and it was hilarious.
First, the back story. For this you need to understand 2 things. First, my husband and I are both overweight. Second, for the past 2 weekends we have gone out to his mother’s house (about 2 hours from us) and helped do some readings of the book she recently wrote. Because of this we have had to cram all of our chore-type things into the weeknights. We always do our grocery shopping on the weekends and because of the busy schedule we’ve kept we just haven’t found time to go to the store for more than a quick half gallon of milk. So last night we were about 2 days away from having gone 3 weeks without buying any kind of real food and our pantry had 2 cans of soup, a pie crust, and a couple boxes of jello in it. We decided that even though the store is so crowded it looks like they should be playing techno music on Thursday nights we were still going to go shopping.
So we get our cart and wheel it down to the grocery store. We knew that this trip was going to take us forever and that we were going to be buying a ton of food so we took our time wandering through the aisles and loading up the cart. We had plenty of room in the pantry for all of it considering it was empty, after all, and lots of stuff was on super sale. And to make it worse since we were pretty much restocking our entire kitchen we had mostly canned/boxed/dry/frozen goods. Plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables too but proportionally we had a lot more of the other stuff.
We got up to the check out lines and they were incredibly long. To ease the boredom of standing in line the woman behind us started make conversation. Very light, easy, weather-related conversation at first. Then we got up to the front and started unloading the cart and her eyes got huge. That is when the pseudo-insulting questions started. It didn’t even register at first because they were fairly innocent questions and comments.
“Wow, how big is your kitchen? Do you have room for all of that stuff?”
“How long does it take you to go through that much soup?”
“I think you missed their celery sale.”
Then they started to get more personal.
“Is your hand cart even big enough to haul all of that food home?”
“Wow, I didn’t know adults ate chicken nuggets.”
Then as she was bagging up her purchase she started telling us about the wonderful whole wheat crackers she was buying and how they were tasty and very low calorie. She encouraged us to by some 4 or 5 different times.
The longer she talked the more I laughed inside my head. It got to a point where I was holding in my guffaws by covering them up with faux coughing. I just wanted to wait for her to ask another question so I could respond with, “Damn, we’re fat! I hadn’t noticed before! Quick, honey, put some of this stuff back on the shelves!”
At Smiths, the following happened this afternoon.
Sister: Oh, we didn’t buy carrots and I didn’t get any from mom.
Me: That’s fine, I hate carrots anyway.
Sister: But you make me buy them every week at the farmers market.
Me: I don’t. I just don’t tell you not to get them.
Checkout clerk to my other sister: They don’t get out much do they laughs
I tore that bitch a new cunt.
I don’t get it, what about your guys’ convo indicated that you guys don’t get out much? I’m genuinely confused. That is AMAZINGLY rude to say your customers have no life though!
The “they don’t get out much” line does seem a bit weird, but I think if I were watching my response would be that the carrot conversation-havers were a bit insane. I’d try to be polite if I were waiting on them, though. If I were just another customer, all bets are off. 
There are some places where that level of familiarity is just…normal. That’s how everyone talks to everyone.
Didn’t really mean it to be a question. The guys that work at 7/11 don’t know they are low life scum that don’t deserve to make comments or try to be friendly, they think they are actual human beings and are allowed to notice regulars and strike up conversations. Believing the guy is actually saying the customer is an alcoholic instead of just making an inane comment is blowing this way out of porportion.
So what? Some poor sod in a tedious, menial job mentioned he didn’t like the lobster that you were buying. Are you really that sensitive that the comments of one bored and probably unhappy cashier are enough to ruin your special treat? Seriously. I’m sorry things are tough for you, but don’t let the largely insignificant opinions of bored/frustrated/misguided cashiers ruin a treat.
Probably not. The last time I complained to the manager at a retail store (well, a bank, actually) about something, it was because all the tellers had simply closed their windows and left their posts to vanish out the back, despite a sizeable (and rapidly lengthening) queue. In the middle of the afternoon. Anything less than that? I don’t care, because it’s not worth caring about.
I think insulting what someone is about to eat at a Grocery store is as horribly unprofessional as a shoe store clerk telling someone how ugly the shoes someone is buying are. Very, very bad.
Saying he doesn’t eat lobster is one thing, but calling them disgusting bottom feeders like the example, is ONLY excuseable by the fact that that poster later four out that employee was mentally disabled in some way, imo…
Sometimes clerk cheekiness can pay off. When I was a teenager I pumped gas in the evenings and weekends.
One day an American guy pulled in to the forecourt in a convertible Ferrari Testarossa, with a scantily-clad, model-hot blonde girl in the passenger seat. I wiped up my drool and filled his car, and when he came into the shop to pay, I put on my poshest accent and said “Sir, the situation in which you present yourself has elicited in me at least four of the seven deadly sins.”
I got a laugh and a £5 tip.
Well this thread is just full of little snowflakes.
Were you all this socially stunted before the internet?
I too hate it when lower orders have the audacity to address me in an informal manner with nary a bow or curtsey
You can’t get good Help these days.
It’s well past time to bring back flogging!
I was having my items rung up by the male owner of a local small mom&pop-type drugstore when I realized I’d forgotten something. This 50-ish man standing next to the register, probably a sales rep, immediately offered to go get it for me.
“No thanks, I’ll get it myself.”
“No, really! I know where everything is here! Just tell me what you need, and I’ll grab it for you!”
“I’d like to get it, thanks–”
“I insist! What can I get for you?”
“Tampons.”
To his credit, he retracted his offer.