*My* day at work...
Aug. 28th, 2004 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugeeCross-posted from "customerssuck". Oh, what would I *do* without this community!! Probably go stark raving mad...
I had an early shift today: usually I work nights, but for some strange reason, I was scheduled to work the day shift. And it was a scorching hot day today. And I was in a vile mood since I didn't sleep good last night after working the night shift/having supper at a strange time/not sleeping good because of my sinus problems. You with me? Okay...
About two hours into my shift, this old couple (about ~75, give or take a couple decades) comes into the lane where I'm working, and first they start off with a few rounds of the Old People Grocery Store Anthem, aka "Don't Make the Bags Too Heavy". In two-part harmony. Okay, I'm careful not to put more than one banana in each bag (Have I told the story about Banana-Bag Lady? Let me know...). Then the husband keeps entering my personal space by *GRABBING* the bags and tucking them into the carriage as soon as I finish each bag; I barely set them down on the end of the lane before he snatched them away from me. In the meantime, the wife starts rearranging the contents of the bags. Then it's "Don't put anything else in the bag with the bread, you'll squish the bread!" And then it's "Don't put the cheese with anything else, it'll make everything else smell like cheese." Mind you, if I recall correctly, the cheese was American cheese. Cut into individual slices. Each slice wrapped up inside the outer plastic wrap. And for that matter, American cheese doesn't even smell like anything. I could understand if it was Gorgonzola (which smells like a dead Gorgon, or what I'd imagine a dead Gorgon would smell like), but I couldn't see what the big deal was.
The rotten cherry on the melted ice-cream sundae of their obnoxiousness: The husband turns to the cashier and says, "What's wrong with your bagger? Doesn't she know how to smile?" And the wife, in the meantime, sticks her face at me and says, "You should be smiling! You're earning money." At that point, luckily, nature made a collect call for me, so I hastily excused myself and ran for the bathroom... Where I let myself have a good cry/scream/pound the walls of the stall for a good three minutes.
Mind you, I'm not the smiliest person in the world: I have Atypical Asperger's Syndrome (a condition slightly similar to autism, though I'm not spaced out most of the time), and part of the way it manifests is that I often have a blank, slightly clueless look on my face. I do try to smile at work, but it's pretty hard to smile when obnoxious geriatrics are telling you exactly how to do your job and you aren't feeling too swift yourself. At least I kept my mouth shut, but I honestly wanted to lit into them thus:
"Listen, you chattering ingrates. How would you honestly like to bag your own damn groceries, since you seem to know so much about it? Or better still, maybe MIT should design some kind of robotic bagging system: a pair of metal claws on arms at the end of the lane, and if you move into the area around it, the claws mistake your head for an errant canteloupe (spelling?) and tries to stuff *YOU* into the bag! Last time I looked, my job-title was 'Bagger' not 'Smiler'. Don't expect me to smile on command; I'm not your dog. I bet you can't even get your grandkids -- if you have any, in which case, I pity them for having such vile grandparents -- to smile on command. I bet they look at you and screeeeam. If you're wondering why Jimmy and Jennifer never bring Madison and Colby around to visit, you can find out the reason why by listening to yourselves once in a while. And for that matter, in about five years, don't be surprised if you both end up in a crummy flea-bag nursing home where the staff won't go near you to wipe your crapulous ass because they're sick of your attitude!"
I was sorely tempted to stick my thumbs into their turkey. (Oh yeah, how the hell do you bag a turkey and not make *THAT* bag too heavy?!) Or accidently drop their bag of tomatoes and accidently step on it.
And believe me, if they'd somehow tormented me into giving them a smile, they'd be looking at a fiendish grin something like this (courtesy of Jude Law as the eeeevil reporter in "Road to Perdition"):
Well, once I got through my cry/scream/pound the wall, I went right back to work feeling much better. The cashier, "Katie" was very empathetic: "That was *beyond* rude coming from them! No one should order anyone to smile like that." So if you're reading this, "Katie", thank you for bearing with me!
I had an early shift today: usually I work nights, but for some strange reason, I was scheduled to work the day shift. And it was a scorching hot day today. And I was in a vile mood since I didn't sleep good last night after working the night shift/having supper at a strange time/not sleeping good because of my sinus problems. You with me? Okay...
About two hours into my shift, this old couple (about ~75, give or take a couple decades) comes into the lane where I'm working, and first they start off with a few rounds of the Old People Grocery Store Anthem, aka "Don't Make the Bags Too Heavy". In two-part harmony. Okay, I'm careful not to put more than one banana in each bag (Have I told the story about Banana-Bag Lady? Let me know...). Then the husband keeps entering my personal space by *GRABBING* the bags and tucking them into the carriage as soon as I finish each bag; I barely set them down on the end of the lane before he snatched them away from me. In the meantime, the wife starts rearranging the contents of the bags. Then it's "Don't put anything else in the bag with the bread, you'll squish the bread!" And then it's "Don't put the cheese with anything else, it'll make everything else smell like cheese." Mind you, if I recall correctly, the cheese was American cheese. Cut into individual slices. Each slice wrapped up inside the outer plastic wrap. And for that matter, American cheese doesn't even smell like anything. I could understand if it was Gorgonzola (which smells like a dead Gorgon, or what I'd imagine a dead Gorgon would smell like), but I couldn't see what the big deal was.
The rotten cherry on the melted ice-cream sundae of their obnoxiousness: The husband turns to the cashier and says, "What's wrong with your bagger? Doesn't she know how to smile?" And the wife, in the meantime, sticks her face at me and says, "You should be smiling! You're earning money." At that point, luckily, nature made a collect call for me, so I hastily excused myself and ran for the bathroom... Where I let myself have a good cry/scream/pound the walls of the stall for a good three minutes.
Mind you, I'm not the smiliest person in the world: I have Atypical Asperger's Syndrome (a condition slightly similar to autism, though I'm not spaced out most of the time), and part of the way it manifests is that I often have a blank, slightly clueless look on my face. I do try to smile at work, but it's pretty hard to smile when obnoxious geriatrics are telling you exactly how to do your job and you aren't feeling too swift yourself. At least I kept my mouth shut, but I honestly wanted to lit into them thus:
"Listen, you chattering ingrates. How would you honestly like to bag your own damn groceries, since you seem to know so much about it? Or better still, maybe MIT should design some kind of robotic bagging system: a pair of metal claws on arms at the end of the lane, and if you move into the area around it, the claws mistake your head for an errant canteloupe (spelling?) and tries to stuff *YOU* into the bag! Last time I looked, my job-title was 'Bagger' not 'Smiler'. Don't expect me to smile on command; I'm not your dog. I bet you can't even get your grandkids -- if you have any, in which case, I pity them for having such vile grandparents -- to smile on command. I bet they look at you and screeeeam. If you're wondering why Jimmy and Jennifer never bring Madison and Colby around to visit, you can find out the reason why by listening to yourselves once in a while. And for that matter, in about five years, don't be surprised if you both end up in a crummy flea-bag nursing home where the staff won't go near you to wipe your crapulous ass because they're sick of your attitude!"
I was sorely tempted to stick my thumbs into their turkey. (Oh yeah, how the hell do you bag a turkey and not make *THAT* bag too heavy?!) Or accidently drop their bag of tomatoes and accidently step on it.
And believe me, if they'd somehow tormented me into giving them a smile, they'd be looking at a fiendish grin something like this (courtesy of Jude Law as the eeeevil reporter in "Road to Perdition"):
Well, once I got through my cry/scream/pound the wall, I went right back to work feeling much better. The cashier, "Katie" was very empathetic: "That was *beyond* rude coming from them! No one should order anyone to smile like that." So if you're reading this, "Katie", thank you for bearing with me!
