Ha! That reminds me - once, many, many years ago I stopped at a little grocery store after a long waitressing shift to pick up a few things I needed on my way home. When I set a box of tampons, bottle of Advil and a fifth of Southern Comfort on the counter, the cashier - with complete sincerity and sympathy - said, “Oh, one of those days, huh?” I hadn’t really thought about how it looked to buy those things at the same time and I had to laugh.
I think I normally find it a LITTLE weird when a cashier comments on my purchases because I’d had a brief stint cashiering in high school and after awhile, I really stopped paying attention as I scanned people’s stuff, but I’m certainly not bothered by it.
I think it sounds like something that could have been lifted from the book Future Shock by Alan Toffler; specifically the section titled Modular Man.*
*The above is not intended to be a veiled or overt accusation of plagiarism, btw; it’s just that the entire thread has put me in mind of that excerpt, and begbert’s post seemd to be the most “out there” wrt the phenomenon.
While I have settled into an average wife/2 kids/2 dogs/1 cat household, un-recognizable from millions of others, my youth was actually fantastic, filled with world-travel, unlimited debauchery, motorcycles, airplanes, and countless trashy girls and women. Then the money ran out.
Cest la vie! I have my stories and a few pictures!
It’s horseshit like that which has me convinced that everyone, everyone, should work one (1) service/cashier job and one (1) food prep/waitstaff job at some point. Little perspective, ferchrissakes.
One of the things I enjoy at my job at the ol’ corporate movie rental chain is telling non-regulars (and regulars as well, but they don’t get the same look on their faces) that the movie they’ve picked is horrible. Not like I’m judging them for their choice or anything, and I always temper it with an ‘I’ve heard’ or ‘I thought,’ and with some regulars it’s more of a raised eyebrow and a “Seriously?”
“This movie? Awful. Really bad. I’ll take your money if you want it, but I cannot let you leave without a fair warning. No refunds. Please, for your sake, pick something else.”
I’d say, for non-regulars, about half will pick something else, about half will stick with it.
Never had a complaint about it, but from the thread I’m guessing some of you would either bite my head off or have it eat you alive for the next few days.
I’d just as soon not have cashiers make comments about my purchases, but since I always look at what others have in their carts, who am I to complain?
I did think that it was over the top, though, when Mrs. Ispolkom went to the bank to deposit her unemployment check, and the teller said sympathetically and oh-so-very-loudly, “Oh dear, you still haven’t found a new job?”
When I was laid off from my previous job, my severance check was just that, a paper check. When I took it to the bank, the cashier looked at the company name on the header and said, “Oh, you work there? What do you do?”
Well, I do have some problem with this. Just because you don’t like the movie doesn’t mean they won’t. I like lots of stuff other people don’t; other people like lots of stuff I don’t.
I mean, unless it’s Showgirls or something. And even then, if someone whose rental history is Girls Gone Wild Vol. 1 through Girls Gone Wild Vol. 22,316 wants to rent it, you’re going to tell him it’s a bad movie?
There are some movies that are just awful no matter how you look at them- movies that are designed to cash in on more popular titles, for example, hurriedly rushed-to-DVD movies that look promising but really aren’t, and so on.
Also, just to scuttle your own example, there are lots of people who don’t think Showgirls is a bad film. I’ve seen it, and whilst I wouldn’t call it an Oscar contender, I honestly don’t think it’s anything like the Worst Movie Of All Time And An Embarrassment To The Movie Industry that everyone seems to think it is.
I don’t think Chimi is going to be criticising the choices made by customers of movies that he, personally thinks are terrible; but rather movies that are widely acknowledged to be terrible or quite probably not what the person renting them thinks they are.
I’d rather my local video library give me a heads up that Plan Nine From Outer Space is not a great film so I can say “Thanks, I know it’s bad, that’s why I’m renting it” than have them say nothing, have me get home, and discover the movie isn’t the Worthy Classic (But it’s in Black & White!) that I thought it was going to be, and then get mad at them for “letting” me rent something they knew was terrible, how dare they!
Other people who’ve worked in customer service for any appreciable length of time will understand the rationale behind that, I’m sure.
I cultivate my relationship with service people most of the time, since they are the source of suggestions and such. It’s a good deed to make a person in a sucky job laugh.
Plus I love buying the weird selection of things that might just make them wake up at 2 a.m. and wonder if they should call the cops.
Excellent 