I'm gonna whine and you should feel sorry for me...

[MelindaJoy77]

Customer in a motorized scooter comes up to my register and hasn't put anything on the belt yet. We'll call her Whiny Lady. While I have complete understanding for people who are injured/disabled/whatever, this lady came across as the "woe is me" type who thinks that everyone should feel sorry for her.

WL: You'll have to put my stuff up there because I just had shoulder surgery and I can't lift anything and *whinewhinewhine*

Me(in my sweetest fake nice voice): Okay sure!

So I put her stuff up and before I can start ringing it up, she's waving a gift card in my face.

Me: Are you paying with this?
WL: Yes! (with a "duh, stupid cashier" look on her face)
Me: Okay I just have to ring up the items first (fake smile, fake smile, fake smile)

I ring up her items, total it, bag them, put them in her cart, doing my thing.

WL: So how much is that?
Me: Well it was $23.75
WL: I have $23.75 left on my card?
Me: No (checking the receipt for the card balance) there's $6.36 left on the card (fake smile as I hand it back to her)
WL: (seems annoyed) Well what can I buy for six dollars? How much are your eggs right now?
Me: (trying to think because damn I haven't memorized every price in the store) Well I know the five dozen is eight dollars, I believe the dozen and a half are three dollars right now -
WL: Well how about two packs of the dozen and a half large eggs? Can you call someone to bring them up here for me?
Me: (faking my nice is really difficult at this point but luckily I don't have a line so I volunteer) I can go get them for you, I'll be right back

I shut my light off and haul ass alllllll the way to the back of the store and bring up the eggs for her. I'm surprised she didn't ask me if I checked them for cracks (I did) and I'm surprised she didn't tell me to be careful bagging them (I always am).

I ring the eggs up and run the gift card again and it leaves forty cents on the card.

WL: (annoyed, whiny, arglebargle) Gosh that's the problem with those gift cards it seems like you can never spend them to the dollar!

My thoughts: Well there's an easy solution to that, which is to know how much is on there, total up your purchases as you go, adding in tax on applicable items using a calculator, and spending just a tiny bit over the total of the card so that it's all used up and you only have to use a dollar or so in cash. But I digress, maybe I'm just weird that way.

WL: And you can't get cash back from them.
Me: Well no, we don't do that here at the register but you might be able to take it to customer service and they can cash the forty cents for you. (Actually I don't think they do that, but I was trying to be helpful and get this lady away from me because I was really running out of patience)

WL: Oh, I need a carry out, can you call someone to help me?

Me: (My brain is about to explode. I still don't have anyone in line behind her but I'm so fed up with this lady that I'm not about to volunteer myself again. She could have mentioned this at the beginning of the transaction but that didn't occur to her I guess) I'll go find a manager who can call someone, I'll be right back.

I don't understand why people think we can just call someone for anything and everything. We don't have phones at our registers. We can punch in a generic code, but it does take some time because our CSMs are usually busy doing other stuff. So I happen to catch a CSM at customer service and I explain to him that the lady needs a carry out, and I don't really want to do it myself because she's kind of bothering me. So he says he'll do it, he'll be to the register in just a minute.

So I go back to the lady and explain it'll be just a minute. At this point I had already turned my light back on and there is someone else behind Whiny Lady. The customer behind thinks I'm talking to her and says something like "Oh are you open? Should we go to another line?" (Idk WHY since I didn't look at her because it's usually the eye contact that lets someone know you're talking to them, isn't it???) I look at the second customer and tell her "Oh no, just waiting for a carry out for this customer right here"

WL: Gosh all the employees in here look (down, irritable, rude? Not sure what word she used) It must be because of their pay or something.

CSM comes up and gets her moving along and takes care of her. I thank him. I'm thinking.....yeah, we're all pissed because our pay kind of sucks but mostly it's because of customers like you.

Really, it is exhausting dealing with these people all day long. I've gotten better at faking my happy, but that doesn't mean they still don't irritate the heck out of me at times. I still haven't managed to invite an SC to come and do my job for eight hours and then tell me how they feel about it.

Luckily as my CSM comes back from doing the carry out, he has me shut my light off and go to lunch. Thank God!

[eltf177]

This is a "customer" who's more trouble than she's worth...

[Monterey Jack]

WL: I have $23.75 left on my card?
Me: No (checking the receipt for the card balance) there's $6.36 left on the card (fake smile as I hand it back to her)
WL: (seems annoyed) Well what can I buy for six dollars?

Here's a novel idea...why not just save the gift card for the next time you come in? It's not like there's a law stating you have to use it all in one transaction.

[mathnerd]

I can't remember what store it was, but I was quite pleasantly surprised one day when the cashier offered to give me the change from my not quite empty gift card. She explained that any amount under $1 could be given back in cash. I thought that was pretty awesome, but that's definitely not the normal policy for most stores.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I always hate people like that, especially since I have a bad back myself so when I was on checkouts, I'd end up having to call for assistance. Cue whinging from customer cuz another member of staff didn't magically pop out of the air instantly, and usually a remark of "Why don't you do it? Lazy." And I'd then have to explain that I have a bad back and am not going to risk putting it out hauling several crates of beer across the till.

Note that most of these sucky customers always as well demanded someone take their heavy shit out to their car and put it in the boot... when they managed to get it into their trolley and up on the belt by themselves.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I always hate people like that, especially since I have a bad back myself so when I was on checkouts, I'd end up having to call for assistance. Cue whinging from customer cuz another member of staff didn't magically pop out of the air instantly, and usually a remark of "Why don't you do it? Lazy." And I'd then have to explain that I have a bad back and am not going to risk putting it out hauling several crates of beer across the till.

Try hopping on a register to help out b/c the lines are backed up out the wazoo and you've got one arm in a sling.

Luckily in that little store I worked at then, the regulars knew they had two choices when it came to the heavier stuff(big bags of pet food, cases of beer etc):

a) get the crap out of their carts themselves

b) wait for a bagger to come do it for them.

IE, don't piss off the bitch who handles the price changes every week who's trying to help you get checked out b/c you had to come up front at the same time that everybody and their DOG wanted to go.

But they did, on the other hand, have to know: what happened to your arm?

Simple answer: muscle spams in my arm and tendonitis in my shoulder - waiting to see if this gets better b/f the doctor decides to send me to a orthopedic specialist.

Luckily I only had to wear that damn thing for ten days but that was a miserable ten days.

But yeah, a year later at a different store I had one guy get upset b/c I couldn't get his 12 pks out of the cart for him and had to call for a bagger.

Sorry pal, I'm on lifting restrictions pending diagnosis (dr. was waiting on results of a 2nd MRI to see if my slipped cervical disc had gotten worse so in the meanwhile he had me on lifting nothing over 10 lbs restrictions temporarily) so it's either you can wait on a bagger or you can get them up here for me.

IIRC I had to call a manager for that one b/c he started accusing me of being rude and/or lazy to handle that one.

Unfortunately jerks like that only think of themselves and don't see that other people around them exist, let alone have the same issues as they can have.

[Shyla]

How did she get the stuff into her cart? Most people who can put a can of soup into a cart can take it out. I have trouble getting things out of the big carts because I'm too short but I figure it out. I cannot lift the 35 packs of water off the shelf or into a car or a cart so I send my niece. Can I get an employee to do the whole thing for me?

[Seshat]

Heavy things are usually on the lower shelves, and when I shop in my scooter, I just park beside the heavy stuff and kind of pull/drop the item onto the footwell of the scooter.

Then, yes, I need help at the checkout to get it to where it can be scanned; or the checkout operator needs to use a portable scanner. And Toth or Bast hauls it inside for me.

(I don't want to ever live alone. I honestly don't know how I'd manage!)

[strawbabies]

Couldn't she just have put the balance of the card toward her purchase total and paid $17.39?

[Seanette]

Couldn't she just have put the balance of the card toward her purchase total and paid $17.39?

You're expecting reason from SCs again.

[Food Lady]

Sorry pal, I'm on lifting restrictions pending diagnosis (dr. was waiting on results of a 2nd MRI to see if my slipped cervical disc had gotten worse so in the meanwhile he had me on lifting nothing over 10 lbs restrictions temporarily) so it's either you can wait on a bagger or you can get them up here for me.

IIRC I had to call a manager for that one b/c he started accusing me of being rude and/or lazy to handle that one.

I have similar issues and I have had a similar situation. I didn't call a manager, but I will say that I told two of them I should not have to discuss my medical issues with customers, and they totally agreed. All a customer needs to know is that I'm on restriction. It's none of his/her business why!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Couple months ago, I got paged to do a carryout for somebody. The cashier said she had a customer needing her stuff taken out to her car.

So I figured fine, elderly customer + large, bulky item(s). I got up to the registers and was given this woman's cart, which contained a couple packs of toilet paper plus a small bag of other items.

Again, I tried not to judge. For all I knew, this woman had some kind of disability and it was an ordeal for her to make her way around the store selecting her stuff.

I took the cart outside. The woman rolled up in a huge-ass SUV and got out of it with no apparent difficulty.

Then for my trouble, she asked me "Are you interested in politics?" Sorrycan'ttalkgottago.

Back inside the store, I found out from the cashier that the woman didn't ask for a carryout as much as tell us to do one for her ("You're going to take this stuff out to my car for me, right?") Which means this was just entitlement.