Tales of a Supervisor Working at a Supermarket

Working at the supermarket is not all fun and games, you run across some fairly odd and ignorant people who always think they're right and go out of their way to make your life miserable. It's not only the customers, either. Sometimes the employees can turn your life into hell too, especially when you're a supervisor. Now for a collection, or more of a recollection, of memories from my time as a supervisor. I feel like making one of those Law & Order introductions here. "In the retail industry, the attitudes of customers and employees can be especially inappropriate. In supermarkets, the dedicated employees who must put up with these people are known as supervisors. These are their stories. (Dun Dun)"

"Are You That Fucking Stupid?"

One can expect even the foulest of language working at a supermarket, especially when the customer is drunk of his ass and has not a clue what he is doing. Normally you wouldn't help a drunken customer and just refuse their service, but all he wanted was a pack of cigarettes and just selling them to him seemed to be easier than trying to make him leave without them. The total for his cigarettes came to $4.45 (or something close to that). He hands me a $20 bill and I count out his change and as I'm handing it to him he gives me a quarter for some reason and snottily says, "What, you don't ask if I have change to give you?" First off, no, we don't sit there and ask if you also have change to give us. When you give us a bill and then just stand there, we assume that's all we're getting, just for your information. If you have change, say something like, "Hold on, I think I have some change." Is that so hard? So as he hands me the quarter I'm sitting there wondering what the hell he expects me to do with it because it wouldn't round him up to the next dollar and I'd just give it back to him. I don't know if he was trying to quick-change me or something, but I'm not easily confused in that way. I try to explain to him that he'll just receive the quarter back and it won't change anything and he goes off on this cursing rampage claiming I'm an idiot and all that. After a minute or so I just slam his change into his hand and tell him to leave. When he doesn't, I do. I just secured my terminal and walked away since there were no other customers in line and we had another register open, which seemed to calm him down enough to leave.

"That's Just Asinine"

What a brilliant way to start off: with a silly word. This was on a day before I became a supervisor and I was working back in customer service. An elderly man came up and was asking where the shrimp was that we supposedly had on sale in the ad. So I walked back to the meat department with him and we looked around at all the shrimp and nothing was on sale. Since there was no one working back in the meat department at the time (it was later at night), I walked all the way back up to the front to actually get a weekly ad. As I was browsing through it unable to find anything about shrimp, the customer walked back up as well and I asked him if he remembered where it was in our ad. He then proceeded to tell me that he knows it was in his ad that he got in Fremont. Pause. Fremont? This is Omaha. So hoping he really wasn't that stupid, I explained to him that our store ran different ads for Omaha than they did in Fremont. Before I could even say anything else, he subtly states, "Well that's just asinine," and stomps off out of the store. Oh well. I was more trying not to laugh because I never thought in a million years I'd actually hear someone use the word asinine in real life.

"Isn't He a Bit Anal?"

First off, yes I am, and not in the gay way like everyone is probably thinking right now. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with being anal and it's a good way to make sure you're not getting screwed over by customers like this one. He wanted me to go get something for him and also wanted to match ads on them but it was one of those $ 10/10 deals and I asked if he actually had ten participating items. He hesitated and showed me the other items that would be a dollar each and then I went and grabbed the items for him. Shortly after the customer left, the cashier tells me that while I was gone he said I was extremely anal for actually checking. Well, it's my job to check, and personally I don't want to go all the way back to get some items and then come back up front only to find out that you can't match them and end up having to take them all the way back. It doesn't sound very appealing to me. So he can just stop being such a pain and just show me the ad and the items he's matching and there would be absolutely no problem. I went and got the items for him. He was happy. Move on.

"That Was Rude [That He Tried to Help Me]"

This one got me the most, just the arrogance of this woman to say that I was being rude. The experience was short, but worth telling. One of my cashiers called me over because she couldn't get a coupon to scan. Since it was an internet printed coupon, we had to get it to scan or we couldn't accept it (manually typing in printed coupons is a horrible practice for any business). After about a minute of trying I did finally get the coupon to scan and I informed the woman that in the future if we can't get the coupon to scan then we would be unable to accept it. Seeing that the ink was very light, I also informed her that fixing her printer would probably solve the problem. Later on the cashier, who was a bit of a problem and neither of us liked each other, came up complaining to me that she and the customer both thought I was being rude by telling her to fix the printer. I just sort of looked at her and dismissed her comment as I was not concerned at all about either of their "opinions." If she wants to come back with her poorly printed coupons and get them rejected, that's her problem, not mine.

"Well Then, I Should Be Able to Go Home"

You guessed it, this one is about an employee, or more accurately, the employee from hell, and it's quite a doozy. At first, she appeared to be a good worker and did well at the cash register. Eventually management trained her over on the self-checkout machines and we began to see problems. She consistently went off on long discussions with one particular customer at the self-checkouts, leaving the other three to fend for themselves. Occasionally when I saw one needed help I would jump in and help them and eventually I ended up talking with her to tell her that she needed to pay more attention to all four machine. I pointed that that oftentimes I would walk over and there would be alerts still on the machine that needed to be cleared before a customer could use it again and that she should, under no circumstances, be up front talking with other cashiers until all of the customers are taken care of and the alerts are cleared. She merely responded, "Well I can just clear the alert when a customer goes up to use it." Ummm, no you can't. A customer walks up to a machine and sees an alert, they're not going to wait around for you to clear it. They're going to get confused and upset that it's not working for them. She tried to claim that upper management always told her she was doing a good job, so I left her alone and informed upper management about the problem I was having with her, and they agreed with me. So now we're all keeping a closer eye on her. One day, she starts crying to one of my managers that I'm being rude coming over and helping her customers while I'm on the register next to the self-checkouts (obviously when I don't have a customer to help). She obviously doesn't understand the idea of a business. I am going to do whatever possible to help the customer as fast as possible, and if she's off in lala land doing whatever it is she's doing, yes, I'm going to jump in and help 'her' customer, and I'm sure the customer can appreciate that greatly.

One night, I have another employee coming up to the front end to help and she had an agreement that if she had to work the front end that she would only have to work at the self-checkouts and I am perfectly willing to respect that. After I inform the other attendant that she will be moving to a regular register at 5:30 when my new attendant comes in, she goes off on this rampage. She tries to claim that she's scheduled to work self-checkouts only and if she's not going to be there then she should be able to go home. Not interested in getting into an argument with her in front of customers, I just walked away. Later on when the new attendant comes in, I don't even give her the chance to argue with me. I grab a new drawer for her, walk over there, hand it to her, and merely state, "Go to register 11," and I walk away. After a while my manager comes up to me to talk about her and explains to me that I'm trying to send her home and she wants to keep her hours and she's worried about her paycheck, which is completely untrue. She then explains that previously she told the assistant store director that she doesn't want to work on self-checkouts tonight and she just wants to work as a cashier. So now we have this cashier telling three people three different stories of what she wants to happen, none of them remotely matching up. So both my manager and I walk over and we politely explain that just because you're scheduled under the self-checkout category on the schedule doesn't mean you are only going to work there. When you're on the schedule, you're scheduled from this time to this time and we can put you wherever in our department we please between those two times and there's nothing you can do about it. She ends up staying the entire night because I really did need the cashier. We already has a bunch of people call in and my manager wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place, I actually had to call her in too! After all this, upper management decides to have a talk with me because apparently I'm not talking to her correctly and I should be nicer when trying to tell her things, etc. It was a total bogus speech because I'm always like that and I've always adjusted my attitude according to how the cashier reacts and treats me.

The day after that I had off and when I came back the next day, I come to find out that she's been fired and when I ask my manager why, she explains a similar story to that night we had to deal with her. Honestly, it sounded exactly the same except this time she apparently spent near an hour complaining to management about whatever and they got sick of it and just told her to leave. I was excited that I never had to deal with her again because she really was a horrible employee and had no respect for management whatsoever. She was one of those people who would say, "Well I've been a manager at four different restaurants and I'm thirty years older than you." Well, hon, that doesn't mean you know what you're doing and it certainly doesn't mean you're more mature. Apparently there's a good reason why you've worked at four different restaurants instead of staying at just one. After hearing about the problem they had with her, all I could think was, "I told you so." That long speech they had with me about treating her correctly, yea, it wasn't me, it really was just her.