Most nights, I surf the net, rapidly clicking the Stumble button, looking for some sort of inspiration for a blog post.  Most nights end up slumped over my keyboard, still stumbling, no closer to to inspiration than when I started.

Tonight was different.  After finishing up the rounds on my usual hangouts, I clicked the Stumble button just once and happened upon this gem.  It spoke to me.  You see, I used to be a supermarket checker.  A beepeuse.  It was a job that no matter how hard I tried, I kept going back to.

The grocery store was not my first job.  That was in a popular ice cream shop chain at the mall when I was 15.  That was hard work, and towards the end of the summer, when I realized that I totally misunderstood how the whole tip reporting procedures worked, screwing myself out of quite a bit of money, I decided that I was never going to work a tipped job again.  So when I was 17 and the babysitting job I had fell through, I went to the local supermarket – one of the major chains in New England.

I was hired right away, and got to work learning how to bag groceries.  It’s not as easy as it looks, but eventually I got into the groove.  There were all sorts of rules to bagging: pack a square bag so things don’t roll all over the place (this bit is kinda like playing Tetris), pack like items together – no soaps with food, packy leaky meats separately, etc.  Once in awhile you get the customer with a special request.  There was a regular customer who would buy quite a lot of stuff, and want it all in one paper bag, double bagged.  After awhile I think he sought me out because I was the only one who could fit it all in properly.  Another customer would buy about a million of those tiny cat food cans, and wanted each flavor bagged by itself.  At least she was nice and put them up on the belt by flavor so we wouldn’t have to sort through them.

After a few months of bagging, it was on to cashier training.  To prove my worth, I had to take a math test.  It was simple enough – basic arithmetic questions that I could have answered correctly when I was in the third grade.  Then we learned about all the buttons on the registers, codes, and produce.  We had to learn to identify all the produce and pass a 20-item produce test before we were let loose on the customers.  One thing I remember learning, that no cashier seems to know how to do these days, is count back change.  You can’t just tell the customer the total of their change and dump it in their hands.  Count it back to show the customer that you can count and that you’ve got a handle on this cash thing.  Plus, it shows them that you’re being honest and meticulous with their money.  In over 10 years of running a cash register, not once have I had a customer get upset for counting back their change.  Ever, even though it’s a bit slower than dumping their cash at them in one big pile in their hand.

Anyway, I like cashiering, for the most part.  I like scanning – scanning’s my favorite.  (Said with all the enthusiam of Buddy the Elf.)  Customers don’t always pay attention to the bagger, but they will definitely notice how the cashier handles their stuff.  As a cashier, I took more notice of the strange things that people would buy.  For example, older people love bananas.  Put bananas on sale at 19¢ per pound, and watch the frailest old woman in the world buy 30lbs of bananas, along with two bottles of prune juice and a single can of cat food, store brand.  Then, when their order total ends up needing 4 cents in change, they’ll pull out the biggest change purse you’ve ever seen, rummage around in it for a good five minutes, and declare that they haven’t got the change and just take it out of their $100 bill.  Good times.

After a few years, I got promoted to being a checkout assistant, or as Officer Friend liked to call me, The Bitch With The Keys.  Now I was someone!  I got to make change for the checkers, help the managers schedule breaks, make sure we had enough lines open for the number of customers we had, and of course take the brunt of customer’s complaints.  It was stressful at times, but I learned to appreciate the mangement hierarchy.  As a Key Bitch, I’d tell the cashiers that if they ever had the smallest issue with a customer, call me over.  That’s what I was there for.  And I knew that there was only so much I could do, so I would be able to call in the store manager (or manager on duty) to take over for me.

I also got to learn the service desk.  This was interesting because people come up to the desk for all sorts of stuff.  Returning chicken that doesn’t smell right (that was allegedly purchased yesterday and has a sell-by date of 3 months ago).  Western Union.  Check cashing.  Lottery tickets.  Yeah, those were fun.  Especially the Christmas Eve $314 million Powerball.  Do you know how many people got losing lottery tickets in their stockings that year?  And then there was Claire.  Claire (aka “Coupon Claire”) would come into the store and immediately have to make a phone call, using the store phone of course.  She had to call her 90-year-old mother to see if she needed milk.  We’d see her coming and call the checkout just to keep the phone unavailable for her.  The coupon part of her moniker referred to her penchant for coupons.  She’d scour the reduced rack to find things we might possibly pay her to take off our hands and hope for an inattentive cashier.  I was not that cashier, much to her chagrin.

So bagging, cashiering, being the Key Bitch, and working the service desk.  I did a lot at that supermarket.  I also got sick a lot, because a supermarket is the one place that everyone has to go to, and can’t always skip when they get sick.  We’d get customers buying lots of cold remedies and other illness accoutrements, coming in looking like death warmed over.  They can’t stop coughing, and they cough into their hands before handing over their cash.  Can I just say that hand sanitizer is the best thing ever?  When I stopped working at the supermarket, I stopped getting sick every other month.

I kept trying to quit working at the supermarket, but the fates had other plans for me.  I tried other retail jobs, but honestly I didn’t like any of them as much, and the pay was usually better at the grocery store.  I even quit in an effort to get into office work – regular hours, weekends off, a real wardrobe instead of a uniform – and that worked for awhile until I got laid off in late 2001.  So back to the store I went, and because the economy sucked, I had a hard time finding another office job until I sold my house, quit the store for the last time and moved here to Vegas.  I put in over 10 years at various stores in that chain.  And I learned a lot.  Here’s a few things to remember:

Customers:

• Lottery tickets make lousy gifts
• If you are deathly ill, please try not to go to the store and get the staff sick.  Pay someone else to do it for you.
• If you have no intention on using exact change, please don’t go looking for it.
• Spend a little time reading shelf tags.  They all have the item and size listed on them.
• We won’t pay you to go shopping, so watch your coupons.
• If it’s unusually busy (as in, right before a storm), it’s darn near impossible to get extra staff to come in.  Please be patient with us.

Supermarket workers:

• Learn to count back change.  And hand the customer the coins first – don’t just pile it in their hands!
• Pay attention to what you’re bagging.  Do not put a customer’s cake frosting-side down (this actually happened to me when I was shopping once).
•  A smile and a friendly greeting can go a long way, and don’t carry on conversations with your co-workers as if the customer doesn’t exist.

Has anyone else worked in a supermarket?  What did you learn and tips can you pass on?