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All right so the other day (Wednesday) I was cashiering at PetSmart. I was 6 hours in to an 8 hour closing shift and we had been swamped for the last 2 hours. It seemed like every 5 minutes, 2 people would walk out and 3 more would walk in. Since it was around closing time, I was the only cashier. It was me, my manager, and the person working the floor. All 3 of the only employees in the building were cashiering, and don't even get me started on the people that needed help with something on the floor. About a half hour before close things finally died down completely and I was left alone at the cash register like normal. The customer that came up to the register next was the definition of Satan.
Elderly ladies that buy cat food come in 2 different types. The nice and patient ones, or the mean and impatient ones. There is no in between, it's one or the other. This particular customer was a regular, but since I'm so new I didn't know that. A lot of the regulars like to take advantage of the fact that I'm new, and try to get what they are usually denied such as more than the coupon limit, extra discounts, etc. They always say "Well your manager always does it for me." Usually as soon as I say I'm gonna call the manager they tell me to forget it. I'm not dumb, and I don't let them use me to save a buck or 2. I can sometimes tell if a customer is going to give me a hard time as soon as they get in line. But not this time.
This cute old lady hobbles up to my line pushing a cart full of cat food, about 40 cans. Most cat ladies buy in bulk so this isn't unusual. She's sporting some seriously red lipstick, and big horn rimmed glasses. To be honest, she kind of looked like Mrs. Doubtfire, down to the floral dress. She turns upon me the most sickly sweet smile, and speaks in a condescending tone like I am a child. "Hello sweetie, are you ready for me?" she says. The cans of cat food in her cart were in no way organized. Because of that, I have to scan each one individually or sort them by flavor and scan one of each. Either way, it was going to take me a minute. I set all of the cans on the counter, and start sorting them by flavor. "Hurry up sweetie, I need to get going" she says. At this point I just start scanning each one so maybe I can hurry a little faster. The customer is still being sickeningly nice to me. That is until one of the cans wouldn't scan. Cue Satan....
We have an issue with a certain brand and flavor of cat food that won't scan for some reason. So I need to have a manager input the price and override it. While I'm waiting on the manager to come to the front, I start inputting the coupons. The customer at this point is becoming irate and threatening to call corporate. All I can do is ignore her while I put in as many coupons as I can accept. When she hands me the 3rd competitor coupon, I inform her that we can only accept 2 per customer per day. She says, "Honey, I've been coming here longer than you have been alive. What you're going to do now is put in these coupons so I can get the discount I deserve. I've probably paid your salary by now."
Luckily the manager chose that moment to make an appearance, because I was getting a little frustrated myself. My manager told the lady that it's the policy and always has been. The customer decides she has had enough and demanded the number for corporate. After my manager gave her the number, I asked the lady if she still wanted her cat food. She said "well unless you want my cats to starve, I would think so." After I gave her the total, I began to bag her cans. She wanted them bagged a certain way, 7 cans per bag, double bagged, with the inside bag tied in a bunny loop. And it had to be perfect or she would make me re-tie it.
By the time she had left it was closing time, thank goodness. Not a good way to end the day, but I was happy to be done nevertheless.
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Okay so that was a true story that actually happened. I need to work a little on my closing, but you get the idea.
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