Diary Of A Retail Worker

A retail worker’s stories and experiences of dealing with customers. Some venting may occur.

[doarw]

That’s How They Track You

I don’t remember the exact day that this happened, but I know it was back in March.

The store that I work at offers a discount card. All you do is sign up with your name, address, and telephone number. You don’t get spam messages on your phone or unwanted mail. If you do get anything in the mail, it’s just coupons to use at the store, which can result in some very nice savings.

One day, I’m scanning a customer’s items and the last item was a case of beer. I asked for his ID, as it’s store policy to see an ID for all alcohol purchases. He hands it to me and I swipe the back of the ID, where the barcode is, over the scanner, because it’s quicker than entering the DOB on the register’s touch screen. The touch screen doesn’t always register that you pushed a selection on the screen, which can be fucking annoying and it can be a time waster. Here’s the exchange that happened after I scanned the back of his ID.

Customer: Oh, you scanned my ID.

Me: Yeah… (So?)

Customer: That’s how they track you.

Me: Oh? (Wtf?)

Customer: First, it was the store’s card that they used to track you, now it’s done by scanning IDs.

Me: *hands back ID and finishes up the transaction* Alrighty, you have a nice day, now. (Holy fuck, what insane conspiracy is this guy on?)

For the less than 6 months that I had been working at this job, I had only heard about encounters with those types of people from other workers, but that was my first experience encountering one. (So far, I haven’t encountered him or others like him again. Knock on wood.) My mind is still blown over the experience. Who is this “they”? I have no idea and I don’t think I ever want to know, because I have a feeling that it’ll be something crazy. Our registers don’t store personal information on people. They aren’t capable of it. Hell, they can’t even do Apple Pay.

[doarw]

Friday/March 25th: Check The Cameras!

I was cashiering at a lane that has a pathway behind the register, that anyone can walk through. (I wish customers couldn’t go behind me, as it’s annoying.) it was getting to be pretty busy at the store, as people were getting off of work and coming in to do their shopping. As I’m busy with a line of customers (My bagger had to disappear for a moment, so it was me scanning and bagging for a couple of minutes, trying my best to keep the line moving at a good pace.), I heard a customer walk passed me from behind. She stopped at the end of the lane and asked me if I can watch her cart for her. I’m thinking, “What? Do you not see how busy I am? Do I look like I have eyes in the back of my head? That’s not my job.”. For some reason, I told her I would, and now that I think about it, I believe my subconscious was being a devil. As I glanced toward her direction, I noticed that she placed her cart where we normally have a cart for non-perishable items to go in to be returned to shelves. (Say a customer changes their mind about buying a can of soup or a pack of toilet paper, the item will go into the return cart.) I didn’t say anything to her as she walked off to wherever, because I was busy and it’s not in my job description to cart sit for customers. Sure enough, as I’m scanning items for my current customer, I see an employee from produce walk through the front end section of the store. As I’m working on getting more customers checked out, my brain is like, “Oh shit, I wonder if he grabbed anything out of the woman’s cart.”. Granted, that wasn’t my problem. I’m not a cart-sitter. When the woman came back to her cart, the first words out of her mouth were, “Someone stole my celery and my broccoli from my cart! They could have walked right out of the store with it! I bet it was caught on the cameras!”. My coworker that was bagging for me, had returned in time to witness the customer’s reaction. My coworker asks me if I heard what happened, in a worried tone. To calm my coworker’s worries (My coworker is a very nice person, but is a little on the mentally disabled side, thus why I didn’t want her to be worried or panic.), I told her and the customer that I did see an employee from produce stroll by and that they likely thought the cart was full of recent return items that they were called to collect by a coworker at the front end. (I wasn’t being dishonest, as I remembered overhearing a coworker make a call for produce to come do a pickup at the front end.) The customer said that my explanation made sense. She didn’t seem to be mad or anything. I won’t lie, I half expected to get yelled at by her, because people are nuts like that. After she walked off, I thought that was the end of it, but nope. She ended up finding one of the managers and bringing him to where she had left her cart. All I remember catching from the conversation was her talking about checking the cameras to see what happened. I had to focus on helping a customer figure out what item was preventing her from using her health card to pay. I still expected the other customer to complain to the manager about me, while I was helping the other customer. If she did, I have no idea and knowing the managers, they likely won’t say anything to me as they know cart sitting isn’t part of my job. I’m certain that my subconscious knew what the outcome would be if that woman left her cart where she did. My subconscious wanted to do something devious to a customer that asked me to do the impossible. Thanks, subconscious. You know my pain and seek appropriate revenge.