I think excessively polite signage - something along the lines of “we deeply apologize for the shortage of checkout register clerks due to most of our employees being in quarantine.” - would maybe shut those people up. Or not. It does require the ability to read.
I say a little atheist prayer of gratitude every day that I a) live in Canada where most people are polite and b) live in one of the two provinces that have had no new cases of Covid in roughly two weeks and no deaths yet at all. /humblebrag.
It’s hard to wrap my head around what it must be like to live amongst so many assholes.
I’ve seen mostly patience and humor at the shops I frequent. At Meijer I’ve been using the shop and scan app and what a blessing it is! I pick my groceries items,scan them using my phone and place them in bags in my cart. Once I’m done shopping I go to the dedicated shop and scan aisle which is almost always clear of other shoppers, scan a QR code and it downloads my cart, I add any items that didn’t scan, input coupons, then I pay and on my way.
Occassionaly a cashier has to do a cart check, but they seem to prioritize the shop and scan aisle and come right over. On crowded days with long lines at all the other checkouts it really comes in handy. Once in a while someone thinks it’s a self checkout where they can scan in their items, but I gently explain what’s going on and encourage them to download the app, it’s for everyone!
I almost always use the self-checkout aisle. I like to sort and bag my own groceries and I usually don’t get that much at the supermarket - mostly shop local or in bulk.
This last trip in I noticed the self-checkout clerk, who used to mostly just hang out behind the overseeing station, was being run ragged. She was disinfecting each station - the entire thing including the card-pay terminal - between each customer, as well as dealing with the usual issues. I hope that store rotated their clerks out regularly. That store also had an employee at the door limiting the number of customers in at a time, as well as a hand-washing station by the door. The carts were all disinfected as well. And oneway aisles. The other store I went to required you to wear disposable gloves after wiping your hands with sanitizer.
I didn’t see any misbehaving customers at either store.
Based on how many other signs around the store don’t get read I don’t think that will help.
Even in the US most of the customers are polite (although still probably a lower percentage than the legendarily polite folks to our north)
But I’m here to bitch about the assholes, of which we get a few each day.
ETA: we also had yet another customer collapse and be taken away in an ambulance - what was wrong with them? Who knows? Kind of none of my business but the EMT’s where in full hazmat.
Also, we got another group of new hires today, I was training one this afternoon. One of our regular customers as it turned out, we actually know each other. Getting some more new people will help.
The assholes might take a step back if the sign is one of those at the end of each register only it says “Please use next register. The check-out person for this register has Covid-19”
Glad to hear you’re getting some help. And even better that it’s someone that’s familiar with the store.
Yeah, Friday everyone at work was cool, wearing their masks and staying behind lines I now have in different places. Except for that one asshole. She walked up to me and I quickly held up my hand and said, “STOP, stay behind the line”.
She “stood her ground” and explained that she was wearing her damn mask and enough was enough. I stepped back from her as far as I could and told her to get the fuck outta my building or I’d call the police. She said, “fine, I’ll stay behind your stupid line”, but I told her it was to late, cf “hair trigger”.
I really have had to make a conscious effort to change my shopping practice.
Pre-pandemic, I pawed through things. I went through clamshell packaged produce and store packaged cuts of meat looking for the optimal package. I would pick up a clamshell, examine it, put it back, check another one, repeat, repeat. Now I just grab one and try to be copacetic about the fatty cut of beef or shriveled tomato or moldy strawberry at the the bottom of the carton I would’ve rejected in the old old days.
And I did the same thing with perishable like milk and bread with regards to the expiration dates. I was the one that pushed all the milk cartons around to check the ones at the back of the rack because they were usually a fresher by a day or two. No more. I don’t do that anymore.
And I try not to change my mind so much, in the old days I would frequently put something in my cart, then change my mind and put it back in favor of something else. I blame the store layout a little bit - sometimes their will be a premium version of an item in one section and the standard versions are on the other side of store.
Basically, my new rule is that if I pick it up I’ve bought it, no backsies.
And the masks drive me crazy in a way I didn’t expect. I’m fairly extroverted and I communicate a lot via facial expressions as well as body language. It’s subconscious and I’ve been doing it my whole life, I guess. And I feel the psychological communication barrier whenever I wear the mask in public. I didn’t expect that and I’m surprised at how much it bothers me. Just to be clear this is just an observation - not a complaint. Wearing that mask is the least I can do.
We have more Iinstacart shoppers in my store than regular customers. Many of them use our store as their primary because it’s smaller than the other area supermarket and therefore it’s quicker for them to rush in rush out, deliver the order, rinse and repeat.
However, we don’t give them their own line nor their own register like some other stores. This angers some of them because we now “force” them to the back of the line. The guy I had to stop the other day from cutting in front of everyone waving his badge was pissed I called him out on it. The woman whom he was trying to cut in front of applauded me, LOL.
Recent update from Politico about shortages of protective gear for front-line medical workers. With this quote: “…an unprecedented threat to America’s health care workforce, having already sickened at least 9,282 medical workers and killed 27. Those grim numbers, which come from a CDC report almost two weeks ago, are certainly an undercount…” There’s dozens of these on the interwebs.
Perhaps if there had been a national effort to prioritize such workers over others? But really, what kind of hideous monster would suggest such a thing?
Jesus fucking Christ, why are you such a fucking asshole, elucidator??? Quarantine got you so bored and attention-starved that you have to intentionally piss people off days after the vitriol directed at you died down?
Oh, really? Not enough to go around, what do we do? Have a national debate, perhaps. How about a lottery system, that’s totally fair. Everybody has an equal chance. Doctors, nurses, cops, grocery workers, cab drivers, totally fair!
And then some asshole, back of the room says we should prioritize health care workers, because they save lives. (That is the goal, right? Save lives?) And, of course, whereas other people are exposed to danger, they are exposed more frequently. In some cases, constantly. So, they should get more, for the common good.
And your answer is: Call that guy an asshole and refuse to discuss it. Duly noted.
Yes, they get whatever N95 masks there are and the grocery workers get the cheaper and less effective cloth masks.
Almost nothing on that list is the fault of grocery workers who wear/use very little in the way of Isolation gowns, Viral swabs, face shields, and ventilators.
And there has been a national effort. However, grocery workers and other essential workers need to come next highest in priority- or we starve.
Grocery workers arent taking Isolation gowns off the back of medical workers. Mostly grocery workers wear cheap cloth masks, often handmade, of which there is not a good supply.
It’s a difficult question, but the answer is not that we should sacrifice some people in favor of others. What is wrong with you that you have this pathological need to rag on grocery workers, particularly Broomstick? Your self-esteem is that low? You’ll try to re-frame and misrepresent your argument and the people here who are refuting it, but the reality is that you’re a terribly cruel, hurtful person.
