It was the end of my senior year of high school and I decided it was time to get a job. My local supermarket was looking for a cashier and I saw it as the perfect opportunity. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I’ve shopped at this supermarket several times before and I was familiar with some of their customers and workers, what I wasn’t familiar with was the cruelty that some of the customers showed the workers.
The First Week
My first week at the supermarket was not the greatest. The store’s policy is that cashiers must ask customers for ID, no matter how old they look. It was my fourth day at work and an older man was buying a 12 pack of beer. I politely asked, “may I see your ID please”. Politely asking him for his ID was a huge mistake. He began to flip out on me and shoved his ID in my hands. Ever since that incident, I was petrified to ask anyone else for their ID.
The Marriage Proposal
It had been a month since I first started working and I was slowly getting the hang of everything, from punching in codes to dealing with customers who think you’ve overcharged them. However, I was not prepared for the customer I was going to deal with next. A man with a navy helmet strolled into the store and went on my line. He had bottle return receipts with him.
For those who are unfamiliar with bottle return receipts, when you buy a bottle of soda or water, you have to pay a 5 cent deposit. You can get the five cents back if you recycle the bottle in bottle redemption room your supermarket has. The machine will print out a receipt which you bring to a cashier so they can redeem the cash you have made by collecting the bottles.
Back to the story, this elderly man, who appears to be in his late 50’s, comes on my line with a huge stack of bottle receipts. While ringing up his receipts he compliments my eyes. I simply thanked him for the compliment. After complimenting my eyes, he asks how old I am in which I respond with: “I’m 18 years old”. He proceeds to ask me if I’m married and when I told him I was not married, he told me that he wanted to marry me. I told him again that I was 18, implying that I’m way too young for an old man in his 50’s. Unfortunately, that didn’t go through his head. After I gave him his money, he told me he wasn’t leaving the store until I married him. He made me feel completely uncomfortable. I told him I wasn’t interested and politely asked him to leave several times. He was on the side of my register and wasn’t budging until I had to call my manager over and ask him to leave. After he left, I was hoping to never see him again.
A month passed by and he hadn’t been in the store since that incident. I was counting change and I saw a man with a bike helmet come on my line, it was the man who asked me to marry him. I got very nervous because I remembered him from last time. I was hoping he wasn’t going to say anything to me. He came again with his bottle receipts and was talking some non-sense, none of which I was paying attention to. After I gave him his bottle refund money he pulls out a huge bag of change and was unclear with what he wanted me to do with it. Since he was unclear, I asked him to repeat himself. Asking him to repeat himself ticked him off, he went on and called me a “dumb b*tch” in Russian. My whole family is Russian so I understood him perfectly. When he insulted me I firmly told him to get off my line. Again, he wouldn’t budge so I had to call over my manager and explain to him what had happened. My manager kicked him out of the store, in the midst of collecting his big bag of change he was insulting me from every angle. He told me that I won’t amount to anything in life and declared that he doesn’t want to get married anymore. Ever since that day, he has been banned from coming on my line.
The Rude Encounters
Working as a cashier, it was a surprise when a customer would show you respect because of the amount of rude people you encounter. Just a few weeks ago, I asked a customer “Hi, how are you?” in which the customer responded with “Better than you”. That taught me that there’s a way to rudely respond to such a polite question. I’ve gotten keys, money, and receipts thrown at me and I was even told that my lipstick looks terrible on me several times in one day.
The Sweet Encounters
Several elderly people shop at the supermarket and 99.9% of them carry their own shopping carts with them so they can place their groceries inside. There was this one elderly lady who stole my heart and really made think about the importance of helping out elderly people when they shop. This lady has been on my line in the past and I always helped her with pay with her card and put her shopping bags in the cart. While I was putting her bags in her cart, she turned to me and said: “Thank you for being so nice to me. I cry so much. My son died. My husband died. All I do is cry. Thank you for being nice, it feels so good to see a friendly face.” When she told me this, I repressed my tears and told her that I’m sorry about what happened to her and being nice to her is a pleasure.
After she left it made realize that a lot of these elderly people who come to shop, come for company. Many of them live alone because their spouse has passed away, a friendly face means the whole world to them. It really gave me an entirely different perspective about why some people come to shop.
The Reflection
I quit my job two weeks ago because it was mentally draining for me and I knew the best decision would be to leave. Reflecting back on my experience, I realize that you will encounter several rude people in life and the best way to respond is by killing them with kindness. I also realize that kindness is crucial, you never know how much someone needs to see a friendly face. Working at the job for two months taught me a lot about life.
It was the end of my senior year of high school and I decided it was time to get a job. My local supermarket was looking for a cashier and I saw it as the perfect opportunity. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I had been to this supermarket several times before and I was familiar with some of their customers and workers, what I wasn’t familiar with was the cruelty that some of the customers showed the workers.
