FranniePantz: You Go Target Cashier!

September 30, 2012

You Go Target Cashier!

Allow me to note before we go any further in this post one of my biggest pet peeves. My biggest pet peeve in the world is when people are rude, impatient, annoying, condescending, snobby or otherwise nasty to people who work with the general public. This means cashiers, waitstaff, maids, coffee baristas, bartenders or fast food workers.

I got my first job when I was 15 years old at Subway. I worked there for 8 years and was a manager for 4 of those years. I have also worked at Circuit City for 5 years, Black Eyed Pea (worst waitress EVER btw) for 4 years and various other second jobs of the same variety.

I've been yelled at, stiffed on tips, had things thrown at me, looked down on, told how to do my job, cursed at, pushed and taken a lot of guff, generally speaking.

I've heard that it should be a requirement for people to work these kinds of jobs for some amount of time at some point in their lives and I completely agree. The reason for this is being that you gain an appreciation for the kind of actual work that goes into these kinds of jobs.

For whatever reason, some people feel that they are privy to feeling above those that work in these kinds of jobs because they feel that they are there because they are uneducated or lazy or unmotivated or whatever. They may or may not realize that this is what they are doing while they get their education or are going through divorce and need to feed their kids or a million other scenarios.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me tell you what I experienced a few days ago while I was in line checking out at Target.

So I'm at Target picking up a prescription for Kaden late on a Thursday night. Because I picked up a few clearance items (old habits die hard . . .), I opted to go through the regular checkout rather than piling up all my goodies at the prescription kiosk.

There were only two checkstands open and the lines were pretty long. Being checked out in front of me was a woman getting a cartload of groceries and two guys, probably in their 20's or 30's.

The two "gentlemen" in front me decided to, very loudly, voice their concerns with the wait and how their superiority and importance of time was so much more precious than everyone else's. They opted to yell out phrases such as: "uhhhhh . . . hello??? Anyone else checkingouthere??? Can we get checkers on checkstands 4, 5, 6 and 9 through 32? Hellooooooooo!" Keep in mind that these gentlemen were next in line to be checked out, not at the back of the line.

Then, we witnessed several other Target employees getting off of their shift and heading out, saying goodnight to our checker at hand. This really got the "gentlemen" riled up. "You see? You see?!?!? That's what's wrong with 'Merica (yeah, they were rednecks, that's how they say America) today! That's why there's such high unemployment! Too many people who are lazy and just don't wanttowork!!!"

Just as I was about to defend these poor girls who were probably on their feet listening to bullshit like this for the past 11 hours of their day, a checkstand opened up next to me. Behind me was a woman with two kids and a cart full of groceries. She went to get in the shorter line, but the first guy grabbed his stuff and huffed on over to the other checkstand. His friend, Mr. Opinionated, was left behind to wait. So Mr. Checkstand Butter Inner had to wait along the wall after he got rung up while the checker finished checking out his friend. As Mr. Opinionated approached the end of his checkout experienced, his friend returned. "Finally got through, huh?" The checker, a woman in her 50's and looking like it took all the energy she had left in life to respond to him, turned to him, points and goes "You know what? I don't like you. Why don't you go home?" Boo ya! This is where I chime in because I'm passive aggressive like that with comments like "No doubt! Hope you didn't lose too much precious video game time in your six minute wait!"

Assholes.