The Customer is Always Right... Sometimes... Maybe...

You never realise just how annoying customers are, or how you as a customer are, until you are working behind the till. Tapping your fingers impatiently along the edge as you wait for your change will definately make me stop, grit my teeth, then retrieve your change as slowly as possible. No tapping fingers? You'll get your change in no time at all. It might sound a bit like an attitude problem on my behalf, but when you've been sat at the till for hours on end and people are rude or just plain ignore you, it makes you want to force feed them receipts. There are also the "trolley teeterers" as I like to call them, the ones who stand nervously between two tills, pitting them off against one another. You look across at your work-mate, they look across at you, a sense of competition is suddenly in the air. How will the winner be decided? Well it's usually who looks the most lonely. We're each trying to lose. It's when they catch you off guard that's sometimes the worst: "You look a bit lonely here!" or "Came over to keep you company!". I'm sure they mean well but it's not exactly the best of conversation starters. I mean, if I really was lonely at my till and you came over with that cracker of a line, I'm sure it would be very uncomfortable for you if I burst into tears and divulged my years of loneliness at being misunderstood and how my job makes me contemplate suicide, but then when I think of the customers and how they really understand me, life just makes sense again. -blows nose on receipt-. What I'm stressing here is that a simple "Hello there" will suffice, you can keep your scale of lonely judgement to yourself, don't want to cause a scene after all. Of course there are the lovely customers, it's just that one customer that comes along asking whether or not you have "crushed cloves" or some other request, to which you reply "I'm pretty sure we don't", then they demand to speak to a supervisor, who'll obviously know better than someone working on the tills or shop floor because everyone knows that when you become a supervisor you are mentally wired to the shop, you and the shop are ONE BEING. "No sorry we don't do crushed cloves." says the supervisor, ahh that bitter remorse of the customer twice wronged. Soak it all up and revel in that fleeting sense of smugness and slight superiority, even if it does come from knowing the spices and condiments aisle better than your own kitchen cupboards.