Relatable Cashier

Hi I'm Lauren and I hate being a cashier so I made this blog ***INACTIVE***

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

I just started working in retail a few weeks ago but I have had two experiences worth mentioning.

>The first happened about 20 minutes after closing when our phone was called twice. We aren’t supposed to answer the phones after closing but my coworker gave in after they called for the third time. There was a woman on ths other side who was pretty angry that we weren’t answering. She called to ask when we close.

>During my first real day working on the register an older, pretty cheerful, woman bought something that came with a warrenty. As I was explaining the deal and that it lasts a year she interupts me to say “oh honey I dont plan on being alive in a year I won’t need that”. I hadn’t gotten used to talking to customers yet and in that moment all of my training came to me saying “I’m really sorry”. That’s all I could figure out to reply with.

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

Oh Okay! ...No.

I work with a spoiled brat who is twice my age. I’ll call her Aron. She refuses to do simple shit on her own and she doesn’t really know how to talk to people. I’ve tried to get along with her, but there’s only so much pretentiousness and entitlement I can take from her. One day, she got on EVERYbody’s nerves. She kept bugging all the managers to let her go home an hour early. Not because she had an emergency. Not because she wasn’t feeling well. Legitimately because she just didn’t feel like working anymore. Like what kinda shit…. Anyway, yesterday (4/29), she’s working and I’m working. I was scheduled til 9 and she was scheduled til 10. She goes on her break or whatever at around 8:30, comes back, and tells me “Hey, [Head Cashier] says she needs you for another hour!” This isn’t unusual. I’ve been asked to stay later plenty of times. I would not have had a problem with it, but OF COURSE I’m gonna call and confirm. I get HC on the phone and ask her what’s up. “Hey, Aron said you needed me for another hour?” “No no no, that was not the story. She wanted to switch shifts with you so she could leave at 9 instead of 10, and I told her that that was between you and her!” Oooooohhhh okay, so this bitch is tryna use ME to get her way now? Aight. So I tell HC “Okay, that makes sense. I’ll be leaving at 9pm tonight then.” I walked out the doors a little after 9, staring at Aron on the way out.

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

Im a manager at Michaels and I literally get alot of calls to register because people from Canada come to shop and we dont take their cards and they get frustrated with me and I have to explain theyre in a different country

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

Some stories from concessions at a movie theatre

We have two major theaters in the neighboring towns, and we all have similar names. The one to the west is in a town that we share a partial name with. The one to the east has the name of the shopping center we have our theater in as part of their title. I get asked about specific showtimes all the time and spend minutes explaining this problem.

I had to give someone a refund for “using the lord’s name in vain” in a movie, and another for not having Scarlet Johansson in Sing (which she is a voice actor for)

I’m allergic to our dish detergent. And I only ever work as a closer.

The only old people that really respect you is the ones who come back on a weekly basis.

I once got angrily signed at by a deaf man who came on one of the busiest nights of the year (opening night of Rogue One!) for running out of closed caption glasses, and we had to explain if we gave him the only pair left it would die in three minutes, since it was still charging.

[relatable-cashier]

I ended up being the troublesome customer because I went into a donut shop and was surprised to see someone I had worked with at a different job four years ago, and we both got really excited and tried to catch up in a roughly two-minute timespan. Luckily, the people behind us were all about our age and were laughing at how happy we were rather than screaming at the cashier for making them wait an extra minute.

Aw that’s always nice! People can get really impatient, so I’m glad these customers didn’t mind!

[relatable-cashier]

I have this one customer who comes in about once a week with reusable bags and I swear that these bags have never been washed, they have ACTUAL MOLD on them it's so disgusting! I've actually started carrying plastic gloves in my pocket for when I see them coming. They are absolutely disgusting and they reek of piss.

That is so grossss! There’s this one man who comes in frequently and I’m pretty sure he’s homeless because he has like 10 reusable bags that he fills with what looks like all his belongings, and he always keeps them hanging on his wheelchair. Anyways, occasionally he’ll get new bags because the other ones are so old and dirty and falling apart and he’ll get one of us (usually whoever is working the service desk) to help him transfer all his stuff into the new bags. It’s a whole new level of disgusting. 

[relatable-cashier]

Yesterday I was so exhausted that when I handed the customer their receipt after finishing their purchase I said hello. Twice

Don’t you just love those days?

[relatable-cashier]

I send my friend something about the customer voice everyone has and said that I had it to. She answered: but you're nice, you don't have to act! I literally laughed for like 5 minutes

The customer service voice is like a staple of working retail. Sometimes I forget that I’m even doing it

[relatable-cashier]

So I know everybody hates when the customer just puts the full basket on the belt and yesterday this woman does it but I see that she has this cosmetic she wants and since the brand is pretty expensive we have to get it from a locked shelf so I say: "why don't you empty the basket onto the belt while I get your cosmetic from the shelf, that way it's faster!" Of course with my best smile and while I walk away to get it I hear her get flustered. Ha!

Haha, educating the public through sass! I like it!

[relatable-cashier]

I have now taken to automatically saying "one moment please" once the customer says they want to pay by card because else half of them already insert their card in the reader which DOESNT WORK because I have to press the FUCKING BUTTON first that activates it before that it won't work! I hate the people who just do it without telling me they're not paying cash because I'm sitting there telling them the total while they're already shoving their card into the stupid card reader thingy

Sometimes after I finish scanning everything I’ll be waiting for the customer to present their payment, and after a very awkward silence, I’ll realize that they’ve inserted their card way before it was necessary. I just don’t understand it???

[relatable-cashier]

do you know if most grocery stores dont allow piercings and dyed hair? i work at market basket and the dresscode is sexist and ridiculous so i was just wondering if anyone else had that problem and knows how to get around it

Where I work is super inclusive and accepts diversity in appearance, so we’re totally allowed to have dyed hair, tattoos, the works. Piercings are allowed too, but you just can’t have facial piercings if you’re working with food. Any other cashiers out there have experience with a dress code a little less accepting?

[ratbastarddotfuck]

So tonight I was in charge of the store for about three whole hours. This is a pretty big thing, since we’re a large supermarket and it was literally my first ever shift as a supervisor and they put me? In charge? Of closing the place? Which means they trust me a lot/think I’m capable of doing the right stuff.

Somewhere between realising I was in charge and really good at it and joking around with my workmates, I realised I actually love my job? And I’m genuinely excited to go to work now! So that is a cool thing. It’s weird, because I always act like I don’t want to work because, y'know, that’s how everyone feels about supermarket/retail work right? But I really am genuinely passionate about the work, which when put into the context of working in a supermarket sounds super stupid, because nobody is passionate about supermarket work. It’s a job for school kids or people close to retirement age, there’s no such thing as passion in a job like that EXCEPT THERE IS, AND I LOVE IT, AND I WISH THERE WAS MORE RETAIL POSITIVITY BECAUSE I ABSOLUTELY LOVE MY JOB AND I PLAN ON RUNNING THE PLACE ONE DAY. GOODNIGHT.

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

Jokes

I work as a cashier in a café. Like most food service places when you order food you get a buzzer. These buzzers have to charge and every time I take one off the charger it goes off. Lights, buzzing the works. I can’t tell you how many times I have to hear “Oh that was fast!” Or “Guess the food is already ready!” Everyone grins like the fucking Cheshire Cat and it makes me want to pull my hair out. It doesn’t sound like a huge deal to most but when you have to hear it over and over every time you go into work with these people expecting you to laugh every time is super frustrating

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

So I work at a bookstore and this lady comes in with her three kids. I start scanning their things and she asks if she can pay half with cash and half with her card. I say that it’s fine, and then she makes her kid pull out what looks like their entire allowance in POCKET CHANGE. And, mind you about ten dollars of it, unrolled, and not just in quarters but nickels, pennies, and dimes as well. I start counting meticulously, even recounting to make sure it’s right and as I’m counting the queue is starting to build up and I’m too busy concentrating to call for backup, and as I’m counting the lady had the nerve to say to her daughter right in front of me “That’s just sad,” as if I couldn’t hear her. Like, it’s not like I don’t know how to count change!! What did you expect when you basically bring your entire inheritance in coins?? I could have cried that day.

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

When it rains it pours

Not exactly a cashier story, but I am a cashier who had to cover a shift in the fitting room. The thing about my store is that it is a discount store and as such; people think they can do or say whatever the fuck they want. So all day I had people ignore the fitting room sign explaining the rules and being dicks when I had to ask them to hang their shit back up. And then three hours into this a man comes out of the fitting room to tell me someone peed in it. What.The.Fuck. I know it can’t be a kid cuz I would not have let a kid that young in without a parent. So after I clean up the piss and resume sorting clothes a random ass customer struts out with her soccer mom look on her face and says “ You need to smile more sweetie.” And sits and waits for me to thank her. It was a long day.

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

These are only a few I’d like to point out; (I work at a movie theater)

•Actually really similar to another submission on here with the chip reader. We’re often asked chip or swipe and there’s a plastic card in the chip reader that clearly says please swipe. People often try to shove their cards inside. There was one time I told a woman to swipe and she acted as if she had never swiped a card before. She tried to swipe it along the bottom and I had to point at the side and tell her to swipe it here… The chip thing has kind of become a running joke for us when we go to buy food.

•People buy a bunch of concessions and then complain about it being more than the movie…. I hear that comment more than thrice a day.

•Someone bought $77.11 worth of concession….

•I confirmed several times with this man asking if he really wanted TWO large popcorn’s and once I get the second he looks at it and says, I only asked for one…. I took a deep breath and dumped the popcorn..

•I was in box office and I picked up the phone and someone was asking me how to get there from where they were (I’m bad with street names) and I told her I wasn’t exactly sure, so she said “It’s okay, I’ll just look at my GPS.”

•I was on the register next to the one that one of my managers was using to help out (It was the opening week/end(?) of Wolverine and for big movies, my one manager likes to dress up as one of the characters. She was wolverine {without the claws.}) and I was with a customer, like she was, and as I was opening a popcorn bag I heard her customer say, “Come here.” She leaned over the counter enough that he whispered to her and said “You look cute in that costume.” Then louder, as she laughs awkwardly, he says; “I just want to put you in my pocket….. And lock you in my basement…” My eyes widened and I quickly turned to get the popcorn… He had three of his kids with him… They were teenagers but who says that around their kids to someone they don’t know… DX

•I was with a customer, it was slow, and I didn’t understand what she was asking me to do. So I had a coworker come and help me and he kind of understood her better. So we helped her how we could and I was annoyed and a bit shaken up once she finally moved on to go to her movie. So when I took the next customer, I went to get her popcorn. While I was away, she had picked up a pen, a scrap piece of paper, and wrote, ‘U do a great job :)’, and it didn’t sink in right away that it was from her and that it was for me but she pointed at it and said it was for me and I was so flattered.

[relatable-cashier]

Submission

So i work at a grocery store that has a loyalty card for club prices and work at customer service and deal with assholes all the time but i recently just had an encounter that has been one of the worst over my career of three years lol. So its Sunday morning at like 8:30 am and its super busy so I had a huge line. This guy is next and all he has is a bag of rolls and a pack of gum, he tried punching in number for the $0.30 difference for the gum, but it doesn’t work, so i tell him that and he doesn’t answer me. SO i’m in a rush bc the lines are getting longer and this guy is taking his sweet ass time eyeing the screen and finally hands me a five dollar bill, then, as i’m about to put it into the system he decides to snatch the money out of my hand, proceed to tell me to “F off, and F the f-ing store policy”  and something about how stupid i am, gives me the finger and keeps yelling until he finally leaves. Of course i get a little upset bc i was just yelled at in front of other customers and coworkers, and i continue to ring everyone else up as I cry lol. People are so rude, for what, thirty cents? I wish people knew what shitty things we go through for no reason.