A Couple of My Best, I mean, Worst Customers

Over at Punny Money he shared his experience with a rude retail worker. Then Mighty Bargain Hunter shared with us his jaw-dropping experiences with retail workers.

I can’t top those, but I can offer a different perspective – from a retail worker’s side.

I worked as a cashier for a few years and here’s the best er…worst of my experiences:

1.) I was training another cashier and scanning through a woman’s groceries (the trainee was bagging as I was talking him through things). Something didn’t scan and I was explaining to my trainee how to enter the barcode manually. It probably took two more seconds to talk while performing the action. The lady went off on us! She started yelling and screaming and we just took it because that’s what you are supposed to do. She quieted down, and we continued with her order. Afterwards, we both tried to figure out what happened, but we couldn’t figure out what made her blow. A few days later, she came in and apologized to us and said she was having a very bad day.

AND

2.) Late at night, a man stumbled into the store. He tripped over the gumball machine and proceeded to go towards the beer. He had to check-out in my lane, and I told him that I could not sell to him because he is intoxicated. That never goes over well. He started slurring obscenities and calling me every name in the book. He finally gave up because I wasn’t budging. He was about 10 feet away from me and he turned around and threw a few pennies at me. As he did that, he said, “Here’s a few pennies for ya!” Thank goodness for the beer because he missed me by at least 10 feet. He saw he missed me, called me one last name and stumbled away. He must have remembered what he did, because he avoided my line and when he had to go through it he was very quiet and very polite.

Anyone else have any cashier stories?

Posted by Tricia on July 11, 2006 at 12:56 PM in Life Experiences, Misc | 3 Comments »
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ntbeachnc responded:
Posted: July 11th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
I worked at a video store for about 6 months. It was a fun job and I got to meet a lot of people…however a lot of them asked the stupidest questions ever. Our favorite were the people that would come up and ask if they had to rewind the DVD. I couldn’t believe it the first time I got asked that.
D responded:
Posted: July 11th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
I did the cashier thing too. Anytime you deal with the public, you put yourself at risk. People are rude and self serving. The ones who do it, I don’t think were ever taught to put themselves in anothers shoes.

I am so impressed by the lady who came back to apologize. You know that was hard. 1st you make an idiot of yourself then go and eat crow. I respect her more now, which I am sure you do as well.
Tricia responded:
Posted: July 15th, 2006 at 8:58 am
It did take a lot for that woman to apologize. I forgot to mention above that she was a regular customer and was always nice. I guess she really was having a bad day.

When a cashier is rude, as long as it isn’t extreme I tend to let it go. I know how hard it is to get chewed out by a customer for no reason and really having it put a damper on your day.