So I have a really old story from when I first started my job as a cashier.
So, I thought that it was about time I posted it somewhere. It’s not a very long story but it’s entertaining and infuriating nonetheless.
This was three years ago, I had just finished my training and it was a really busy day at the store. Everyone has their food stamps and are rushing to get the groceries they need so the store was packed. Keep in mind that this is a small store in the rural south, so a lot of people in the area come to this store to buy a lot of groceries. It is also not unusual for people to buy a months worth of groceries at a time.
So anyways, I had just finished ringing up a few customers with small orders when a lady with a child in a cart, another older child pushing another two carts, and a man with another two carts come along. The lady says that they were all together and I was shocked. This lady had five overflowing carts of food. The carts looked similar to the picture below.
She then asked if we take food stamps and checks. I tell her yes, call for backup, and begin to ring up her stuff. My backup was a guy who had trained me and had been at the store a lot longer, so he was faster at ringing things up. To make the story easier to follow, we’ll call him Conner. Well Conner takes one look at this family’s groceries and immediately takes over and makes me bag. We had rang up about 2 of her carts and I began to get a bit overwhelmed. Conner was scanning really fast and I could barely keep up. I ended up panicking and I accidentally set a bag of cans too close to her bag of chips. This seemingly calm lady loses it. She screams something along the lines of, “My chips!! They are going to get crushed!! I don’t want to eat crumbs!! How dare you! I want new chips and a different bagger! This one clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing!!!” Like I said this was three years ago so I don’t remember every word. Conner calms her down while I get her new bags of chips (even though the chips she had before where just fine). He then tries to calm me down and we start ringing up her groceries again. There were no other problems until she tries to pay.
Her total was something close to $1000. So, she pay about $500 of it using her food stamp card. No problems there. Then she writes a check for the remainder. Again no big deal, except the checks bounces almost immediately after we put it through the check machine. Conner tells her that we cannot take her check, it’s not authorized. She’s clearly angry but her husband (I assume that’s what the man was) gives her a begging look that clearly says, “please don’t cause another scene.” She huffs then says in a condescending tone, “I don’t have any other way to pay. Are you sure you can’t take the check?”
Conner: “Yes ma’am, I’m sure that we cannot take the check. Our system will not let us.”
Lady: “Well I want to speak to your manager!”
Conner calls one of our managers over. The manager confirms that we cannot take her check. She gets angry again.
Lady: “Well I have no other way to pay! I left my debit card at home! I can’t just leave everything here and come back!”
Manager: “Actually you can. We will refund your money back onto your food stamp card and hold onto your groceries until you come back. We will then re-ring it all up and let you pay.”
She’s happy again, we refund her money, and she leaves without her stuff while promising to return with her debit card. We put the stuff in the back and continued with our day.
The lady never comes back.
We have to put all of the groceries back. All three of the managers, plus two stock guys, were trying to put it all back as quickly as they could. Needless to say, they were beyond angry that they had to do this on top of everything else that they had to do.
We never saw that lady or her family again.
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