Could be extreme-couponer-types got there first and cleaned out the stock.
Self service checkouts: the cash interaction has to be among the worst interfaces man has ever designed. Why do the notes have to come out next to my right knee when I’ve put coins and notes in a good stretch to my left? I remain convinced that the real schematics were mixed up with a drunken Twister session.
Cashiers who cannot understand the concept of “I only want one” when there’s a two for one offer on a food item that I would be unable to use the second item before it went off.
Cashiers who can’t figure out minimum coin/note transactions. Even when they have a till that can do the maths for them. My handing over 11.50 for a 6.30 bill does not justify an expression usually reserved for witnessing a horrible crime.
Being asked if I want a bag when purchasing 1 or 2 items.
“Special offers” where 1kg of something costs more than 2 of the 500g. I know it’s a tax on those who can’t do even simple sums, but I’m morally outraged on their behalf…
You use cash? Freak. 
One of the local supermarkets(pack your own type) has registers that display a diagram of the cash drawer and indicates which coins/bills to return and how many of each.
My lord this pisses me off to an unreasonable degree! There is a way to angle your hand to kind of force the cashier to give you the change first, which I can’t find the words to describe… and it works about half the time. The other half of the time they precariously balance change on all the paper and sometimes it falls to the conveyor belt or counter.
I actually always sympathize with this. Sure, it’s one thing to say you can do math really fast in your head, but it’s not really that easy. First you have people that just aren’t really that quick at math in their heads. Then, you have the added pressure of critical people staring at you.
But really, I was a cashier, the clincher is at the end of an eight hour shift on my feet, I am too exhausted to even remember my name. Cashiering is a tough job and no one ever thanks you for it, they just take everything out on you. Thank goodness the register does everything for me.
and someone out there right now is bitching because the cashier didn’t automatically give them a bag for one or two items. the cashiers can’t win. suck it up and just say no thanks.
Yeah, I have a friend who worked as a bagger at a grocery store for a while and once when I was complaining that every time I go to the store the bagger tends to put 1-2 items in each bag so that I have like 384903 bags to unload, he said, “yeah, that’s because there are a lot of people who bitch loudly if you put too much stuff in their bag and make it too heavy so you learn to just put a couple of things in each bag to keep them happy.”
Actually, although it irritates me I still always thank them and (try to) not let it show. (AFAIK) cash registers make you enter the amount tendered as you’d write it, while the mental arithmetic is way easier if you separate the coins and notes in your head - I’d be doing something like
Amount required: 6.30
OK, I haven’t got 1.30 in change, but I do have 1.50
“Here’s 1.50”
I haven’t got a fiver, but I do have a 10.
“And here’s 10”.
Meanwhile the cashier’s standing there with the 1.50 and can’t do anything yet. Only on getting the 10 can anything be entered on the till, and then the fun begins. 
TBH, I don’t think it’s a cashier problem so much as a till UI problem. If it allowed up to 5.00 or so to be entered as coins then these things would just go away:
Push coins button. Enter 1.50
Push notes button. Enter 10.00.
You could extend this and add a “gosh darned coupons” button.
I’ve worked in both mind-numbing and thankless jobs in the past, admittedly without the added pressure of an audience, so I do sympathise.
Hands up who likes having a gajillion <£10 lines on their card statement. That’s the kind of maths guestimation that I can’t do. :eek: Getting £100 out every n weeks makes it so much easier to maintain a rough grasp of what I’m spending.
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one trying to teach you grocery store hooligans a well-deserved lesson.
When I arrive at the grocery store, I begin my shopping expedition in aisle #1 and precede in an orderly fashion, aisle by aisle, until I make it through aisle #12, the end of the line, dairy. I go up and down the aisles in the correct direction (not generally posted, but easy to ascertain if you think of the front door as being the on-ramp merging onto aisle #1). I don’t do anything nutty, like skipping aisles or traveling back to a previous aisle. I’m a safe, predictable shopper who follows the rules; I expect fellow shoppers to do the same.
There aren’t a great many rules when it comes to navigating the aisle-ways of America’s grocery shops, so abiding by them is not difficult to do. Rule #1: Don’t go the wrong way down the one-way aisles. Rule #2: Do not attempt to pass from behind, the aisles are single, non-passing lanes. Simple, right?
I feel it is my right and, in fact my duty, to teach other shoppers a lesson if they break rules number 1 and/or 2, as described in the previous paragraph. When enough of us rule-compliers join together and teach you rule-breakers a lesson, society at large is the beneficiary. So, let me describe how I handle aisle-way rule-breakers, then you too can join the effort in making our grocery stores safe and enjoyable, as once they were, long ago.
Out of the corner of my eye, I’m continuously on the look-out for breakers of rules # 1 and #2. When I sense that one is positioning to pass me in either direction, I spring, cat-like, into counter-position—turning my cart perpendicular to the aisle and placing it between me and the rule-breaker, with my backside buttressing the cart against potential pushes aside. I make no direct eye contact with the rule-breaker and instead seek out a nearby product to pick up, say perhaps, a can of rolled anchovies and capers in olive oil. I then study the can’s label intently and slowly, even silently mouthing the list of ingredients.
Typically, the rule-breaker will wait a few seconds, then either make a sound or say words to the affect of wanting me to move my cart aside and let them pass by. I don’t look up or even verbally acknowledge their request. My only response at this point is to slowly raise my index finger and wag it, metronome-like in their direction. This is universally acknowledged to mean, uno momento, por favor. If the rule-breaker then waits patiently until I finish my label reading, I’ll finish up in 15-seconds, and then continue to walk ahead of them, straight down the middle of the aisle, still not letting them pass, of course, but walking at a brisk enough pace to keep them relatively stress-free. This is my reward to them for their rehabilitated behavior.
If, on the other hand, the rule-breaker looks like a douche, but otherwise engages in no further infraction, I’ll simply walk ahead of them in baby steps aisle after aisle. If they don’t wait patiently for me to move ahead on my own accord, I’ll pick up another can and read its label for another 15-seconds. If they don’t wait for me to move ahead on my own accord and they look like a douche, I’ll walk ahead of them in baby steps and stop often to read the labels of many cans along the way.
I’m doing my part to turn our fellow shoppers into non-barbaric aisle-trekkers. Yes, you’re welcome.
It’s people like you what cause unrest.
Very funny.
My personal ‘rules’ for shopping: head directly through the store to the meat department first. How can you possibly know what you’ll want for sides and vegetables and such, until you know what the main dishes will be?
Then go the the next to last aisle – not the one next to the wall, that’s frozen foods and who wants their ice cream melting? – and work my way back through the aisles (11 to 10 to 9 etc), naturally skipping aisles I don’t need anything from until I reach the produce at the other end of the store. Then from the produce I do a counterclockwise circuit of the outside walls, produce to bakery to dairy to frozen foods and then out the door.
This pattern has been developed and polished over many years. 
Three major benefits:
- Your produce doesn’t naturally end up on the bottom of the cart getting squished
- Since you are generally going ‘against’ the flow fewer times you are stuck between assholes studying cans and taking babysteps.
- Most important. Again because you’re shopping ‘backwards’ compared to most people, you only pass them once each. This means only a very short exposure to any given shopper, very important when it’s the mom busy talking on her cell while ignoring her screaming brats.
But, please DON’T adopt my method, anybody. If too many people start counter-shopping I’ll lose the benefits.
Compel me? Those are some super powers those marketing firms have. Now if the ads I see are now more tailored to my personal tastes as opposed to the generic ones I would normally get, seems this is a feature, not a bug. Compel away!
Yeah, I just love those ads that pop up for websites that I have previously visited and follow me all around my web browser too. It doesn’t seem stalkerish and creepy at all. To-may-to, to-mah-to.
Yep, they look at you as if you’ve got two heads when you hand over the money but when the machine has done its arithmetic, they sometimes get something of an ‘aha’ moment. Sorry, cashier, my handbag is heavy enough as it is and I try to get rid of coins wherever possible and without causing inconvenience.
Eh, maybe. But I worked at a grocery store and they never did that. Whenever a sale item was out, it was because the person doing the ordering was incompetent. No one was trying to scam the customer, we were just all really stupid.
You’re joking, right? You don’t have a full menu plan based on what is in season, what’s on sale and what you already have at home before you leave and therefore detailed list of what you need sorted by store department?
The thought of going into a store without knowing what I needed. <faints>
This is one of my complaints about Trader Joe’s. Every single time I go there, the cashier always makes a comment on at least one item I’m purchasing. It’s almost as if they’re required to do so. Usually, it’s just, “oh, these are so good”, or “this is a brand new item and it seems to be popular”. Does anyone know if TJ cashiers are told by their bosses to make chit-chat with customers in the check out line?
What exactly are you complaining about here? Are you complaining about not getting the sale price (ie being charged $3.00 for a widget that’s on sale “2 for $4”)? Because if you are the cashier doesn’t have any control over that. Some places will still give you the reduced price even if you’re being fewer items; others won’t. The cashier can’t just overide a pricing policy set by corporate (even managers seldom do that).
Now if that single widget does ring up for $2.00 and the cashier is still trying to get you to buy two then yes, that is annoying.
I run into similar problems at fast food places that do combo/trio deals. No, I really don’t want the fries. Even if they’re cheaper. I object to wasting food. Even your cardboard over-salted fries. If you push me into buying the fries, they will end up in the trash. Yes, the whole serving.
“But it’s cheaper if you get two!” But I don’t want or need two.
They are indeed instructed to chat with customers. According to my friend who worked one of their NYC stores, it’s to help build their image as the “cool, hip” grocery store.