Rilcham, have you discussed the idea of putting a “line begins here” sign or floor marker with your boss to make everyone involved happier?
I once shamed a woman who cut ahead of a bunch of people in the airport security line.
I fly regularly on business. At least once a month I take the same flight from LA to Salt Lake City, work a few days with the team out there, then fly back. So I’m very used to the routine at the Delta terminal at LAX.
The way the security line works is that as you reach the head, you split off into the different security stations. Since you never know which station will be the fastest, people tend to hang out at the head of the line until a station looks like it’s opening up.
Last year I was waiting to go through security with my shoes in one hand and my carry-on in the other. It wasn’t a huge line – maybe 40 people, but long enough for the wait to be a bit of an inconvenience.
Suddenly this woman and her husband come bustling up out of nowhere. They’re both in their mid-50’s. He looks gray and beaten down. She’s a whirl of imperious energy.
They skirt the line entirely. There’s a gap on the right side where the little ribbon barriers don’t go all the way to the wall and the slip through it and march right up to the far right security station and start piling their crap on the belt.
Now, normally I’m a pretty quiet guy in public. But I HATE line jumpers. Maybe I goes back to my childhood when some line jumpers cut ahead of my family after a three-hour wait for the Imax theater at the National Air & Space Museum. Few things rouse my sense of righteous indignation more that someone CUTTING.
So, in a very loud voice I shout across the security area:
“Excuse me! But the line is over here!”
The woman hears me. How can she not? The entire line hears me. But she acts like she doesn’t. She keeps unpacking her bag. So I take it up a notch:
“EXCUSE ME! ARE YOU CUTTING IN FRONT OF ALL OF THESE PEOPLE!?”
THAT gets her attention. She turns arounds and says in a very aggrieved voice:
“We’re flying first class!”
Now this is bullshit. Maybe some terminals have a special “first class avoids the security line” policy, but the Delta terminal at LAX doesn’t. This point isn’t lost on the several people who ARE flying first class who are WAITING with me in line.
A grandmotherly woman in front of me pipes up. Not as loud as me, but loud enough for everyone to hear:
“WE’RE flying first class and WE’RE waiting in line!”
And I add, at the top of my lungs:
“THAT WOMAN OVER THERE THINKS SHE’S BETTER THAN THE REST OF US! SHE THINKS BECAUSE SHE’S GOT A FIRST-CLASS TICKET SHE GETS TO GO AHEAD OF EVERYONE ELSE!”
The woman, now quite red in the face, says something like “Screw you!” and walks through the metal detector.
She and her husband are already gone by the time I make it through a few minutes later. But I found out later from the coworker that I was travelling with that they were on OUR FLIGHT and they sat next to him IN COACH.
When they sat down, he gave them a withering look and said:
“First class all full?”
According to him they didn’t say a word for the entire flight.
Hee hee.
And let me just say a very sincere “Thank You” for being open on holidays. Last Thanksgiving my son woke up with strep throat. Luckily, we go to a pediatric practice with 6 or 7 doctors, so one is always on call, and we were able to get in for a quickie appointment, had a rapid strep test and got a prescription for an antibiotic. The Walgreen’s 2 blocks from my house was the ONLY place open (the grocery stores were open, but not the pharmacies), and they cheerfully and quickly filled the prescription for us.
I love Walgreen’s.
I had the bad station set-up at Disneyland, in a handful of locations I worked. Nothing was worse than the indoor/outdoor candy shop in Frontierland. Ever. Because I had to swap sides, constantly, and there was only one register in the location.
However.
I’m actually posting to comment on the racial aspect to some people’s attempts to beef. This is not my story, but my sister’s.
On the day in question, she was working barn door at Splash Mountain. This is where heights are checked against various posts to make sure that short people (primarily children) are tall enough to ride. If not, the kids & parents are told that the child is not tall enough to ride, and (usually) the child-swapping system is explained to the parents.
In this one instance, however, the parents were of a different skin tone from my sister, who was very Disney and continued to try and politely explain that race had nothing to do with it, that it was the safety of the child that was in question, all in the face of being called a “racist bitch” and so forth. Finally, she got on the radio and asked her lead to come out to barn doors to talk to an upset guest.
I’m guessing that her lead (who was a cool person all around - I met him a few times - and of the same skin tone as the angry parents in question) could hear the ranting and raving through the radio, because he came around the barn and up behind my sister and said, “You folks wanted to say something about racism?”
I gather there was some sputtering, but that was pretty much the end of that.
People will ignore any such sign, or claim that they didn’t see it.
We had a saying when I worked at Disneyland: “All signs say ‘no smoking’, except the ones that actually do.”
It’s been my experience that very few people EVER read signs placed for their benefit. How many times have you borne witness to someone pulling with all their might on a door labeled “push”?
Amen. I work in a consignment store that takes items on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It says this on the door. It says this on the business cards. It says this in the ads, and on the contract that all consignors are expected to read. This has been our policy for four years now. Guess how often I have people come in with a carload of stinky, stained crap on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and get pissy because they’ve “been consigning for years!” and were somehow “NEVER told” that we only take things on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Go on, guess.
Rilchiam - I swear that, for some women, making the cashier cry is a competitive sport. They just aren’t fulfilled as humans if they don’t make someone cry on a daily basis.
Yes, I have. I’ve also suggested “Please Don’t Sit on the Beds” signs. The floor managers are not opposed to either idea, but I think the ultimate decision has to come from way upstairs. And anyway, what cruel butterfly said.
As for your previous post, re: reprimanding customers, my mom told me this anecdote today. I was about seven years old, pitching a fit in a bookstore because my mom wouldn’t buy me a hardcover book. The salesclerk took it upon herself to give me a “Don’t talk to your mother that way” lecture. My mom, wondering what business it was of this woman’s, bought the book more to spite her than to shut me up.
I still have the book.
And Sister Coyote. And look!ninjas.
One of the best “Far Side” cartoons ever: Midvale School for the Gifted. 
I wonder how much discretion the security screeners get in determining who to search more intensively.
'Cos if I’d been the security screener, I wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything less than a full body cavity search of those people.
I went into a restroom at Wal-Mart once. There were two young women at the sinks, employees. One was sobbing into her hands and the other was attempting to console her.
I hurried into a stall to take care of business and leave, but I couldn’t help overhearing the poor girl. “I’ve only been working here four days, why did she have to talk to me like that? I don’t know everything yet!” And “I didn’t say those things, she was lying!”
I felt so sorry for the girl, but I couldn’t do anything because I wasn’t really supposed to be hearing all that.
Illegal how?
I have met the Empress of the World, and you, madame, are no Empress of the World!
Seriously, what the world needs more of is old ladies with impeccable manners and the presence and moxie to make idiots mind their own manners. I’ve seen it in action, in my best friend’s grandmother – old Southern lady, with the manners of a duchess and more balls than a prize bull. (I pride myself in being one of those “tough chick” sorts… not afraid of anything… lead with my chin and my attitude. I’m terrified of that 80-year-old lady!)
As a long-time retail drone, the funnest thing ever was taking the Empress to the grocery one day. A wannabe EotW not only jumped the line, but she did so with a full cart in the Express Lane! In front of an 80-year-old woman with a walker! The (real) Empress spent about 12 nanoseconds delivering “The Look,” which is normally enough to send people fleeing in terror of the Wrath Sure to Follow. Ersatz Empress, however, wasn’t bright enough to respond to brilliantly obvious non-verbal cues. The Wrath Sure to Follow, naturally, followed. I could no more piece together the Empress’ exact words than I could describe “purple” to someone blind from birth… The dethroned empress was reminded that her late Grandma would be spinning in her grave, that her late Grandfather would’ve cried to see his grandchild that day, that her parents would be forced to leave the state and change their names if they got word of their daughter’s behavior, and that the Faux Empress’ mother-in-law would bloody well gloat that her “little boy’s wife” the trashy sort she’d always suspected. The Empress never raised her voice, but Buford Pusser couldn’t have delivered a better smackdown with a billy club. I laughed, I cried, I applauded… It was bee-yoo-tiful!
Truly, I can’t wait to take the Empress shopping again. Next time, I’ll take notes! And maybe retailers, instead of hiring those ridiculous greeter sorts, should hire forceful and mannerly old ladies to patrol the check-out lines.
I’ll take “things that sound like sex worker euphemisms” for $400, Alex.
I didn’t run into assholery of quite that level, but last time I was flying out of Boston, my husband and I paused in the security line, amidst the strap-barriers, to adjust a slipped bag, and a couple slipped ahead of us in the few seconds we paused. It didn’t do anything other than move them ahead by two people in the long line - we weren’t waiting right before the conveyor belt or anything - but we shrugged at the jerks’ behavior and didn’t say anything. Same said jerks also didn’t follow the signs that requested that shoes be removed, and so forth, and when they got up to the security checkpoint, we were delighted to see that karma and/or the security guards deemed them worthy of the special search. The guards probably figured that people that clueless would also be stupid enough to bring pressurized propellants or other hazardous materials on board.
She better hope she never runs across me. I do NOT take kindly to rude customers stealing “MY” clerk and would have happily taken the bitch down several pegs for you.
Had I been in the little old ladies place and she tried that, I would have, not loudly, no profanity, told her exactly what she was and what she needed to do with herself regarding this situation.
I have done so before, and would do so again. I HATE people who treat service workers this way and will jump to thier defense and rip my "fellow’ customer a new one with MUCH cheer.
Heh…
No, no, you’re not alone in that. Not all other customers allow EoTWs to spew their crap scot free.
A few weeks ago I was in line at Carr’s a local grocery in the chinese food section, store. Actually it wasn’t much of a line, just one guy was in front of me and he was already ordering. And he was being a real impatient jerk about it too.
Snapping at the poor girl, she was Asian and wasn’t entirely understanding everything he was saying.
After about 3 snotty snapped out orders from him to her, all heavy with disgusted sighs and EVER so carefully re-pronounced items he wanted. I was about to go postal on him.
I turned toward him, and gave him SUCH a look and then was just about to unload on him. I was so completely incensed at his attitude.
I must have looked like Mike Tyson on crank or something, because he took one look at me and my slightly parted, ready to impart verbal armegeddon mouth, and he actually gulped, shut up and was nothing but quiet and polite to her for the rest of his order.
I was actually disappointed. I was SO thinking “go ahead, MAKE my day”.
I have to admit to cutting in line at LAX - I thought I would have had enough time to make my connecting domestic flight, but I was running short of time due to the security line that went a kilometre down the road. I just walked up to someone nearish the front and asked if I could cut in as my flight was leaving very soon. He seemed very okay with it. Even then, I had to run after going through the metal detectors to make the flight. They also lost my baggage for 24 hours.
That was exactly what came to my mind, too.