Time for me to play Grumpus …
So my dear wife Karen and I are shopping at the, oh, third largest big box family fix-it store in our part of the world.
You can never have enough.
We want to put something large together, so we’ve brought an example nut and bolt to this usually easy place in hopes of bringing eight of each home in relatively painless fashion.
I know enough to try to discern the proper size by threading each with the labeled demonstration pieces on the side of the aisle. But, wait, there are so many boxes to decipher … Hello! A helpful worker comes to our aid and finds eight bolts, them eight nuts. He makes sure they fit on each other. They are the last of each box, so he puts them inside each cardboard receptacle, they go inside our basket with the couple other things we’ve selected, and up we go to the register.
The one line is long, so another cashier is paged from the back room. We split off to that line. He rings up our bath tub grippees and batteries and gets down the nuts and bolts.
He asks if we know how much they cost.
I know a little about registers, having worked front end for the biggest of family improvement box boxes three years ago, so I suggest he use his scanner to shoot the bar code on the box. That gives him a price for multiple pieces, not individual pieces. He’s annoyed. What’s the price?, he asks us. Don’t know, I say. Karen scurries back to the aisle, where the helpful worker reappears, I see, and I know it will take them some time because he gave us the boxes for the final nuts and bolts of this size.
I stew. And then I speak my piece.
You know it’s your job to know the price of these things, not mine, I tell the cashier, a man roughly the same age as myself. And besides, it’s not a good idea to make me feel dumb for not knowing the price.
The guy is pissed at me. His face gets red. He argues back. No, he says. He never said we should know the price. He just asked if we did. The woman at the next register looks at me and opens her mouth in a silent “oh!”
I stand silent. I do not say how he should have looked up the price or called the guy on the floor or …
Karen and the helpful worker return with the prices for the nuts and bolts. They inform the cashier, he finishes our tally, and I pay.
Have a good day, I tell him.
On the way to the car, I informed Karen how I’d said my piece for the way the guy had treated us. I knew you would, said my dear wife.
When I worked front end, the customer was always right, even if the worker thought the customer wasn’t.
Mark Bialczak 
Better than a kick in the….nuts. OK, I’ll leave now….
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Ba-da-bing, Tom.
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Yep. Ugh. I think we could do with a little “rewind” when it comes to common courtesy. It used to be that civility and eye contact mattered . . .
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Yes, we could all use that reminder, Kay.
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I hear you. Hubby and I went to what probably was the same chain of big box stores, to buy hardware for our kitchen cabinets (which maybe someday will actually get repainted). I found knobs I liked on display, then we had to find the actual knobs in the little plastic bins. Not as easy as you’d think – several people had put the wrong knobs in the wrong bins, we needed X amount and could only find Y amount. Then when we finally found what we needed, we had to carry all those loose individual knobs and hinges to the checkout. Only to be asked the same question – what was the price of each? Who knows, I was too busy trying to match them to pay attention to the price on the display board. Fortunately, hubby’s more observant than me and had a pretty good idea which of the prices for all those knobs were looked at was the actual price for the knobs we ultimately chose. The clerk simply took our word for it. And thus they sit in my garage or basement (wherever hubby put them), waiting to be affixed to newly refurbished cabinets. Hopefully, we can get that done sometime in the next couple of years.
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That chain needs a better system, to be fair to their cashiers, CM. I would not be able to remember the price of every little thing, for sure.
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I agree! The customer is always right. Simple customer service on his part and not being a “Lazoid” would had made your experience so much better! “Lazoid” is a term I made up describing lazy individuals. Lol!
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You know it happens too much if you came up with a term for it, Nance!
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DWK knows her DHM doesn’t she? At least you have the experience of the kind assistant from the floor.
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Yes, we were fortunate that one worker tried hard, MBC.
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yes, it’s sad how some people do the minimum and others do their best.
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Agreed, Beth. Some service is spectacular.
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after many years of waitressing, bartending, and catering – do your best
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