Welcome to Groceryland!

Welcome to Groceryland's inaugural post. I'm starting this blog to vent, rant, share the humor of, and allow others to experience the world of a small town grocery store such as the one that I am a part-time cashier at. Now you may think being a cashier is easy. Well I hate to break it to you, it's not that easy, especially in a small town where half the people know you by name and at least one interesting thing about you. I live in a community of around 2,500 people. our grocery store serves our community and the next town over in three directions. Ours is the largest community. The three other communities we serve have about 700 people each. Our store is small enough to only have five registers and usually only three are running at a time unless, it's a Holiday or important event such as the Superbowl or the ice fishing opener. (we're big on ice there's a movie about our town, more on that later) We have 62 people on the pay role and only ten aisles. we also have a full service deli, a bakery, and meat department(partial service). We have a system for driving up for your groceries and before you go saying my store has that it's no big deal, you are probably thinking of the style that they push your cart up to a door and then you load it yourself. Um, no. we put your gorceries into a grey tub about the size of a Rubbermaid tote and push them out a chute, then you are given a number on a card and drive up for your groceries. A man, or teenage boy depending on the time of day, comes out and puts them in your car for you and thanks you, no tip necessary.

As a cashier I am expected to not only scan groceries (lifting them out of a cart we don't have belts) I am also expected to clean, answer phones, help train new people, take care of customer complaints, know exactly where to find anything and everything, as well as be polite and have a smile on my face. That being said there's a lot of humor that comes from working at a grocery store. As well as anger and the feeling that I should stab someone in the eye with their carrots when they complain that we are out of the baby cut ones. Seriously people they are the same thing get over it.

Today was an interesting day. before I even walked into the door a coworker met me in the parking lot to tell me there was a situation inside. It turns out that another cashier was having a problem with a customer and couldn't figure out how to fix it. This customer was using a food stamp card, called an EBT card, and she couldn't purchase hot chicken from our deli on the card because it's considered fast food. She was okay with this part. the problem was that the freakishly tall baboon had just began pressing buttons when the receipt didn't print after her voided off the chicken. I took me about 15 minutes to figure out what was wrong and how I could fix it. It pushed four buttons to fix it. Payment Menu, Cash, Exact Change($0.00), OK. I then examined her receipt to make sure everything had gone through. One item was missing on the receipt however her EBT card had been charged $4.55 over the total so i subtracted that item from the money she got back and then refunded her the total that was overcharged. The baboon then insults the customer by calling her cranky about 10 times. I don't blame her for being cranky and I don't blame the cashier for being upset. However, you do not under any circumstances every say things about customers to their faces. You wait until they leave and then do it behind their back. Now I get to go in on Monday and explain this all to my boss. yeah.