Smile at the Supermarket :)

It is no secret to anyone who has a class with me that I work as a cashier at the Big Y in Northampton. Overall, it’s truly a swell first job. You get to meet lots of kids who go to different schools in the area, get to go behind the scenes and get a different perspective of a place you probably only visit for half an hour weekly, and get some of your own spending cash. Well, while all those things are still true, customers have become un poco loco in the midst of this pandemic!

Due to the shortage of supplies and the delays in shipping/receiving in every grocery store right now, Big Y must limit certain items. For example, you can only buy two cartons of eggs. You can buy two cartons of eggs that each contain 4 eggs (for a total of 8 eggs) or you can buy two cartons of eggs that each contain 24 eggs (for a total of 48 eggs). However, you cannot buy 4 cartons of eggs that each contain 12 eggs (for a total of 48 eggs). You can purchase 48 eggs, but you must do so buy purchasing the two 24 packs. This becomes very confusing for customers. Said confusion violently angers them. I was simply trying to explain this same concept to a customer (even though we have numerous signs near the products explaining this) but it was about tissue boxes. Here is a helpful visual for what I was trying to tell her about tissues…

You can buy one thing of tissues. One. It doesn’t matter if it’s a multi-pack or a single box, you can only buy one. She brought four single packs of tissues to my register. So, I gave my usual “Oh, I am so sorry ma’am, but right now you can only buy one.” She however, wasn’t having that. She was like, “but you see, the sale is 4/$5, which is a better price than the multi-pack.” I kindly explained to her that she could buy one of the single boxes for $1.25 (the sale price) or purchase the multi-pack. She began yelling at me and the bagger, Ryan who is a senior at NHS, that the rule was ridiculous and a scam and at one point she even called us dumb. So, Ryan just walked away and got the manager. They proceeded to have the same conversation I just had with the woman, only she was ten times angrier now. She finally decided to buy the multi-pack and physically threw the single boxes across the register.

While this was an extreme case where the person became physically violent, many people have started yelling at us high school students trying get through our first jobs on the daily. I find this so strange because there is no doubt in my mind that these adults who yell at us workers are the same people who share a post on Facebook saying “Make sure to give thanks and appreciation to those who must still go to work everyday! THANK YOU ESSENTIAL WORKERS! 🙏” None of us are asking for special praise. We simply want everyone to keep their cool and be respectful as you should to others – pandemic or no pandemic.

I will share on final story here. There is a lovely person who I work with who has had a tough life. They are in their early twenties, essentially got rejected from their family for being LGBTQ+, and trying to afford Community College on their own by working at Big Y. Due to the increased regulations regarding germs and the spread of germs, cashiers are no longer allowed to have water bottles at the registers with them. This means, we could be talking non-stop for 3 hours at a time without water. As you could imagine, this causes our throats to get super dry. Due to this dryness, my friend coughed a small cough into her elbow while turning away and using hand sanitizer promptly afterwards. Regardless, the woman at their register proceeded to loudly exclaim, so that I could hear everything 3 registers away during rush hour, “I feel uncomfortable with you now! You need to leave! It is disgusting you are even here! Where is the manager!” The cashier began to cry and had to excuse themselves to the bathroom as the manager handled the woman.

Everyone is under immense stress right now, but some people, like that cashier, are relying on these paychecks and need to show up to work. I am so lucky that I do not neeed to work right now, but am instead able choose to work so the elderly employees don’t have to worry about their shifts and the store isn’t under staffed. No matter how stressed, confused, or frustrated you might be, when you find yourself at a register of a supermarket, it would truly make any cashier’s day if you could offer a smile 🙂