Massive shopping

[Jay 2K Winger]

Not quite sure if this belongs in SC or elsewhere (and to the Almighty Mods, feel free to move it where it DOES belong if so), but this story I tell all the time at my job, only fair I should explain it here.

So, it's the summer of 1999. Your Friendly Maniac Jay 2K Winger was a recent high school graduate, and got his first job working at Giant Foods grocery store. I was a pretty good worker, I thought, even if they decided NOT to re-hire me the following summer.

Anyway, it's mid-to-late afternoon, I'm finishing up my current customer's order when this guy comes up to my lane with a cart PACKED with stuff. I mean a heap OVER the sides of the cart, PLUS stuff on the bottom. And as he maneuvers into my lane, my supervisor swings by and says, "Take your break when you're done with that guy."

I nod, and keep ringing up my current customer, and notice that Massive Shopper is gone. Then he shows up as I'm ringing up the last few of Prior Customer's order... and he's pushing a SECOND cart. PACKED, just like the first.

Uh oh.

Then he pushes up a THIRD cart.

Crap.

And then he starts bringing ARMLOADS.

Shit.

As I get ready to start ringing him up, he tells me, "I'm gonna need these double-bagged in paper bags, please."

Shit! Yo, supervisor, I'm gonna need a bagger down here! And a bagger is appropriately summoned and put to work.

Still, I take a look at his stuff, seeing all these long-shelf life things like canned foods, crackers, etc., and (this being '99), I jokingly ask, "Y2K shopping?"

Massive Shopper tells me, "Nope. Seven months at sea."

I gape at him at this point. He explains he's going out on his boat for several months starting next month, and is just stocking up provisions that'll keep on his boat. And being that this was July, I think about the math for a moment, and then point out, "Well, then this IS Y2K shopping, 'cuz you'll be at sea when the world comes to an end!"

A few chuckles, and we set to work ringing him up, the bagger doing his best to work quickly, but things are slowed down because we have to prep the double-bag paper bags for his stuff. MS explains that plastic bags sag under the weight while he carries them out to his ship, and he doesn't want the bags falling apart on the dock, losing his stuff into the water, or possibly losing the plastic bag into the water and clogging propellers or whatever.

I'm about three-quarters of the way through cart 1 of MS's ginormous order, when my supervisor walks up, having heard about all this. He takes one look at the order, then at the carts we're filling up with his bagged items, sighs, and tells me, "Take your break. We'll have someone else keep ringing for you."

So I escape for a little while and get food from the BK Lounge across the street. I return, and back to working on MS's order. Of course, double-bagged paper bags take up a lot more space in a shopping cart than plastic bags, so although he managed (somehow) to fit this massive order into (essentially) four carts, we already know he's gonna be leaving with about TEN.

I end up taking my SECOND break while ringing this guy up, and they stick me on the express register using my supervisor's till while one of the other cashiers is working on the MS order. MS, I should note, is popping off now and then to make sure he's not forgetting anything, and occasionally returning with more stuff to add.

And he walks up to me while I'm on the express register. I see him, mockingly sob, "Nooo! I thought I'd gotten away from you!" We have a couple laughs about this as I ring up the three items he'd brought to the express line, and then go back over to check on the progress of the MS order, and with one of the managers, explain that next time he's going to do a massive purchase like this, he should contact the store first and explain what he needs and how much of each he wants. We could then pull the merchandise, ring it up, and have it prepped and ready for him to pay for and then take home.

Anyway. He came to my line about 5pm. He was there UNTIL CLOSING TIME, 11pm. And he couldn't fit it all in his car, either, so he had to pop back home to get the truck or something!

All told, the Massive Shopper ended up spending over $2,000 to buy his provisions for his "seven months at sea."

It makes for a good story at my current job, though, when I can look at a $600 order, and scoff, "That's it?" and then get the customers to guess how much my largest order ever was.

J2K: $2,000
Customer: Oh, well, that had to be for a business.
J2K: Nope. Not a tax-exempt purchase.
Customer: Then they must have bought one of those big-screen TVs.
J2K: Nope. No big-ticket items.
Customer: Then who--
J2K: One guy. Spending seven months at sea. Needed to stock up.
Customer: ...
J2K: And this was (pause for math) [x] years ago.
Customer: ...
J2K: At Giant.
Customer: !!!

Blows their minds.

[nomorecarts]

holy hell, how many items was that? the most I've had is 130something

[Jay 2K Winger]

holy hell, how many items was that? the most I've had is 130something

I never count the items for something that big.

Also, this was NINE YEARS AGO. I can't remember EVERY detail. Hell, I can barely remember every detail of something I did an hour ago!

(Cursed borderline ADD.)

[One-Fang]

Math it.

He took six hours. What's a halfway decent scan rate? Multiply that out, and you'll have an idea of how many items.

[nomorecarts]

you mean you didn't keep his receipt to count the items and remember it?


my registers print out the number of items at the bottom, for when receipts are checked at the door, I forget registers are different sometimes, especially when the ones I use were made 5 years after that incident happened

[ShadedWings]

Trying not to thread-jack, so just a quick comment that your story reminded me of... also, several years ago. I once had Cher's "people" come through my line, doing the shopping for her entire entourage. I think it ended up being around $1300... and they paid in cash, all $100 bills. Definitely some interesting conversations during that ring-out, and I kept a copy of the receipt too, just as a memory/souvenier. No idea where it went, or if it got thrown out when I moved, but wow, that was crazy! It didn't take hours though...

[Jay 2K Winger]

I only worked at Giant for less than three months, and it was nine years ago. I don't remember whether Giant's registers printed item tallies at the end back then.

At my current job, yes, the receipts print how many items were in the order, but again, it's one of those tiny tiny details that I don't bother to remember. I generally remember the total instead.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

You now know what it feels like to be one of the register people at the grocery store in Duch Harbor Alaska during Crab Season.

[MoxisPilot]

I know a guy who shops for several months at sea; it doesn't surprise me at all that it came out to that much.

Said guy that I know will drop about that much in gas for his boat every month (it's a 42 footer).

Wish I had that kind of money, is all I have to say.

[Sheldonrs]

And then after you ring all that up he says "Oh wait, I've got coupons!"

[Gerrinson]

You're lucky that you had good cash registers. The old grocery store registers had a 50/50 shot of automatically rebooting if the order was big enough to go over $400 (assuming no big ticket items.)

I once had to help unpack and rescan the same order four times. I felt so bad for the cashier. Then later in the day I had one at my register that had to be put through three times. I was not amused. Fortunately the customers involved were all really nice. I'd hate to have that happen with an SC's order.

[Chazzie]

Well, it sounds like he was pretty nice about it at least. 8D;

[Nakajo]

This is so me last week. The biggest order I ever rang up was at my current job (bulk store), for $12,000.

It consisted of:
$1000- Cigarettes
$4000- Hot Tub
$1000- Groceries
$2500- Biggest TV we had
$500- Surround Sound Speakers
$500- PS3 Bundle
$500- Xbox360 Bundle
$2000- two laptops


He was having a party. F%*&ing rich people, make me jealous....

Another worker in a nearby store got featured in the employee magazine for selling $5000 worth of eyeglasses to one person. Apparently she needed one for each outfit...?

But it's too easy to get this amount where I work. The Giant story is FTW.

[Hyndis]

Biggest single order I've seen was in the neighborhood of $3,000. The local fire department came for a visit to buy food, which they do on a regular basis, and the entire fire crew is wandering around the store with shopping carts stripping the store bare. We have to restock after they're done, but its worth it.

It usually only takes half an hour at the very most to ring it all up through, and this is for 8 or so shopping carts absolutely full with stuff, top and bottom. However the firefighters will bag their own stuff, take their own carts out to their van, and load it all up, so they're extremely good customers. They spend massive amounts of money in a short period of time with no fuss and no extra work from us at all.

[Jay 2K Winger]

This is so me last week. The biggest order I ever rang up was at my current job (bulk store), for $12,000.

(snip)

He was having a party. F%*&ing rich people, make me jealous....

Another worker in a nearby store got featured in the employee magazine for selling $5000 worth of eyeglasses to one person. Apparently she needed one for each outfit...?

But it's too easy to get this amount where I work. The Giant story is FTW.

Yeah, I get orders easily $2,000 at the wholesale club where I work now, but I don't consider them as "counting" if the person's buying any big-ticket items (TVs, electronic devices, furniture, etc.) or if they're buying a lot of stuff for a business.

I did get this one family come through my line twice in two days. The first day, they were buying a lot of furniture, explaining they'd just moved here. I didn't worry much about them buying new furniture. Could be their old stuff was too beat up to keep when they moved. So they'd spent about $2,000 buying mattresses and bedframes and a leather sofa set. (Oh, and I had to help load the stuff into their car, too. THAT'S always fun. [/sarcasm])

They come back the next day and buy a lot of food (no surprise, gotta stock up the fridge and pantry), AS WELL AS a bunch of electronic gadgets. As in a couple of Nintendo DS's for their kids, plus an iPod for every member of the family. That day, they spent about $3,500 or so. (Been a few years since then, so I'm fuzzy on the numbers.)

Also a lot of stuff, see, but because they were buying big-ticket items both times, I don't really "count" it toward my "largest total ever" story. (Besides, I get a better reaction for the Giant story, anyway.)

While I'm talking about Massive Shopping, anyway, got a couple more similar stories, where the MSer comes up right before I'm supposed to leave.

It's a Sunday, and it's coming up on 6pm, which was closing time back when this happened. This family comes in and buys a couple of small appliances and six beds (mattresses, box-springs, bed-frames). When all is said and done, the total comes to around $4,000.

What was so bad about this, you ask? They wanted to pay BY CHECK.

In our system at the time, if a check was over a certain amount (I think around $500), we were REQUIRED to get a manager to sign off on it. This whole process involved pulling up their membership in our system and checking to see if there were any outstanding checks on their account, or to make sure they're even allowed to write a check that high. This group wasn't. They had no other means of payment, either, so they suggested calling their bank to confirm they had the money in their bank account.

Did I mention this was on a Sunday? When most banks are closed?

We then decided to call the embassy or whatever that they worked for to verify this person was authorized to write a check that high. Took a while to get someone, because, did I mention this was on Sunday?

Meanwhile the rest of the lines are all finishing up, we're getting all the closing stuff done, etc., so we can go home for the day. Finally, we get confirmation that this person was authorized to buy this stuff and write a check for over $4,000. The manager signs off on it, I finish up the order, and all is well.

The second incident was for one of those exporters. As I understood it, this guy was buying supplies and the like to ship to one of our embassies overseas. I'll admit this seemed weird to me at first (my line of thinking was, "Wouldn't the government cover some of this stuff?"), but it's only rarely we'll get these people in our club, and they're usually buying it tax-exempt, too, so we have paperwork etc. on them to verify some of it.

As it happens, this guy comes up to my line about twenty minutes before I'm supposed to leave, pushing up three TOWERING flatbeds (our flatbed carts) worth of stuff. Okay, I figure, this guy is my last guy for the day. No biggie. I switch off my light and ask for his membership card.

"Here you go, and it's tax-exempt, please."

Uh oh, I think, this may take longer than I thought. Especially since I can see he's got A LOT of unique SKUs in his order, which will slow things down. Our system is set up so if you're purchasing something tax-exempt, you have to press the Tax Exempt button on the register before EACH SKU you scan. Businesses like convenience stores or vending machine vendors are buying multiples of several SKUs, so what looks like a big order may in fact be smaller than you think. (Or at least takes less time to ring up.)

At the time, as well, all tax-exempt orders had to be rung on these carbon papers, so if you got someone with A LOT of unique SKUs, you might have to use multiple carbons. (202 forms, we called them, and we still sometimes call tax-exempt orders "202s" today. Or at least I do, signaling to the FLS that I have a 2, 0, 2 with my fingers.) Nowadays, we don't use the carbons anymore, as the register prints out a separate copy of their order with the form at the bottom for them to fill out. (And I still get this one guy who complains EVERY TIME because he's got all these old carbons we gave him at home that he filled out already that he can't use anymore.)

What's more, this MSer calls over a manager and talks with him, and so while I'm busy ringing up his order, he's unloading it and stacking it onto empty wooden pallets, stopping me so I can ring [item X] up before [item B] so he can stack it on THIS pallet instead of THAT one. And there's little ol' Jay 2K Winger, still only four months into the job, confused as hell.

The guy came to my line about twenty minutes before the end of my shift. I ended up leaving twenty minutes late because of him.