Tweet
Ok, I had a few noteable moments today at work (and I only worked 7 hours!).
Mrs. Put-Out
The opener for the day. I showed up to work this morning (almost noon) and was immediately assigned one of the regular belt registers. There were maybe two other registers open (not counting the self-checkouts), and right after I got there a whole mess of customers came in. Guess they saw me coming.
Anyway, I had a line about five people deep, and just as I'm finishing out one customer the CSM comes up and tells me to turn off my light so I can go cover for the Garden Center cashier's break. So I turn my light off, look up to mentally mark the last customer in line, and start in on finishing up with the four customers I still had (common courtesy, and Wal-Mart policy so far as I've noticed). Oh, if I only had a Lane Closed sign, not that ignorant customers pay attention to that any more than the status of the register light (unless it's blinking; then they avoid you like the plague because they assume your arm's fallen off or something and don't want to wait an extra five minutes).
About five seconds after I start ringing out the first of those four customers, a lady gets in line behind the last customer. I apologize to her and explain that I'm closed (pointing to my light), and have to explain this to the three or four customers who piled in behind her as well. The lady looks a bit put-out (unlike the other 3-4 customers, who all looked apologetic/chagrined/bland) and wandered off to another register that had just opened up. By now, there's about four registers open (and mine, which was closed), but they still had 5-deep lines.
About five minutes later, I'm ringing out customer #3 of the four. Yet another clueless customer gets in line, and before I even manage to explain the "lane closed" situation, I hear Mrs. Put-Out proclaim loudly from one of the other lines, "Well, NOW she's open!" as though I'd pretended to be closed to spite her. I managed to resist the urge to look over at her and shout, "No, Ma'am, I'm still closed and merely finishing out my line like when I told you I was closed in the first place!" and instead explained the lane closed situation.
Of course, three more people got in line after that before I finished with the last customer and booked it for the Garden Center. ::sigh:: Why can't people pay attention to register lights? There's a reason my line is so short!
---
As for the Questions, there were two. The first occurred during my cover in the Garden Center (which was dead, as usual. Welcome to Wal-Mart's No Man's Land).
Two ladies came in through the Garden Center entrance, which is all the way at the opposite end of the store from the main entrance, where the registers are (I work at a non-supercenter, so only one end of the store gets a bank of registers). The ladies look around like they're lost, so my salesfloor training kicks in and I ask if they need anything. One asks, "Can we walk through here to get to Wal-Mart?"
I gave her a blank look for a moment before responding, "Um, this is Wal-Mart."
The other lady looked a bit annoyed before actually explaining what they meant. They wanted to know if they could cut through the Garden Center to get to the rest of the store. Well of course you can do that. I've yet to be in a Wal-Mart where the Garden Center is completely closed off from the rest of the indoor salesfloor. I kept my own sarcastic annoyance in check, though, and politely explained that they could and how to get there (it's visible from the entrance, by the way).
The other question came while I was covering the self-checkouts during a busy stint right before my lunch. The lines on the self-checkouts and the three open registers were again five-deep, minimum, and one of the four self-checkouts was down due to a lockup and reboot (takes a while for them to come back up, assuming the CSM remembers to boot it back up in the first place, which she didn't, so that one register was unavailable for a good half hour at least). One customer came up to me while her husband held their place in line and asked the infamous, "Why don't you have more cashiers on registers here?" while looking like it's my fault.
Of course, the thoughts running through my head sound something like this: Ma'am, do you see this yellow tag on my name badge? That reads "Cashier," not "Manager." Like I have any say in how many registers are open at a given time. Did you not notice the signs on the entrance doors and at Customer Service and Layaway and on the CSM podium/bulletin board that proclaim "Now Hiring for Fifty Billion and a Half Open Positions in This Store"?
What I said, though, was that the rest of the cashiers on duty at that moment were probably on their lunch breaks, which they needed to take (state law and all). At least that shut her up, though it might have been the fact that I followed the comment up with a polite "Excuse me" and rushed off to pick up yet more abandoned merchandise and solve the next three register problems due to people not knowing how the bagging system works or due to age verifications and credit card signature comparisons and missing barcodes.
But hey, I got to finish the fun day of Musical Jobs by covering for the cashier who was covering for the door greeters who had called in that day, so I got the relatively easy job of standing by the door, smiling cheerfully, greeting folks, and handing out carts. And chasing down 30-something men who set off door alarms with DVDs rung through the self-checkouts.
Mrs. Put-Out
The opener for the day. I showed up to work this morning (almost noon) and was immediately assigned one of the regular belt registers. There were maybe two other registers open (not counting the self-checkouts), and right after I got there a whole mess of customers came in. Guess they saw me coming.
Anyway, I had a line about five people deep, and just as I'm finishing out one customer the CSM comes up and tells me to turn off my light so I can go cover for the Garden Center cashier's break. So I turn my light off, look up to mentally mark the last customer in line, and start in on finishing up with the four customers I still had (common courtesy, and Wal-Mart policy so far as I've noticed). Oh, if I only had a Lane Closed sign, not that ignorant customers pay attention to that any more than the status of the register light (unless it's blinking; then they avoid you like the plague because they assume your arm's fallen off or something and don't want to wait an extra five minutes).
About five seconds after I start ringing out the first of those four customers, a lady gets in line behind the last customer. I apologize to her and explain that I'm closed (pointing to my light), and have to explain this to the three or four customers who piled in behind her as well. The lady looks a bit put-out (unlike the other 3-4 customers, who all looked apologetic/chagrined/bland) and wandered off to another register that had just opened up. By now, there's about four registers open (and mine, which was closed), but they still had 5-deep lines.
About five minutes later, I'm ringing out customer #3 of the four. Yet another clueless customer gets in line, and before I even manage to explain the "lane closed" situation, I hear Mrs. Put-Out proclaim loudly from one of the other lines, "Well, NOW she's open!" as though I'd pretended to be closed to spite her. I managed to resist the urge to look over at her and shout, "No, Ma'am, I'm still closed and merely finishing out my line like when I told you I was closed in the first place!" and instead explained the lane closed situation.
Of course, three more people got in line after that before I finished with the last customer and booked it for the Garden Center. ::sigh:: Why can't people pay attention to register lights? There's a reason my line is so short!
---
As for the Questions, there were two. The first occurred during my cover in the Garden Center (which was dead, as usual. Welcome to Wal-Mart's No Man's Land).
Two ladies came in through the Garden Center entrance, which is all the way at the opposite end of the store from the main entrance, where the registers are (I work at a non-supercenter, so only one end of the store gets a bank of registers). The ladies look around like they're lost, so my salesfloor training kicks in and I ask if they need anything. One asks, "Can we walk through here to get to Wal-Mart?"
I gave her a blank look for a moment before responding, "Um, this is Wal-Mart."
The other lady looked a bit annoyed before actually explaining what they meant. They wanted to know if they could cut through the Garden Center to get to the rest of the store. Well of course you can do that. I've yet to be in a Wal-Mart where the Garden Center is completely closed off from the rest of the indoor salesfloor. I kept my own sarcastic annoyance in check, though, and politely explained that they could and how to get there (it's visible from the entrance, by the way).
The other question came while I was covering the self-checkouts during a busy stint right before my lunch. The lines on the self-checkouts and the three open registers were again five-deep, minimum, and one of the four self-checkouts was down due to a lockup and reboot (takes a while for them to come back up, assuming the CSM remembers to boot it back up in the first place, which she didn't, so that one register was unavailable for a good half hour at least). One customer came up to me while her husband held their place in line and asked the infamous, "Why don't you have more cashiers on registers here?" while looking like it's my fault.
Of course, the thoughts running through my head sound something like this: Ma'am, do you see this yellow tag on my name badge? That reads "Cashier," not "Manager." Like I have any say in how many registers are open at a given time. Did you not notice the signs on the entrance doors and at Customer Service and Layaway and on the CSM podium/bulletin board that proclaim "Now Hiring for Fifty Billion and a Half Open Positions in This Store"?
What I said, though, was that the rest of the cashiers on duty at that moment were probably on their lunch breaks, which they needed to take (state law and all). At least that shut her up, though it might have been the fact that I followed the comment up with a polite "Excuse me" and rushed off to pick up yet more abandoned merchandise and solve the next three register problems due to people not knowing how the bagging system works or due to age verifications and credit card signature comparisons and missing barcodes.
But hey, I got to finish the fun day of Musical Jobs by covering for the cashier who was covering for the door greeters who had called in that day, so I got the relatively easy job of standing by the door, smiling cheerfully, greeting folks, and handing out carts. And chasing down 30-something men who set off door alarms with DVDs rung through the self-checkouts.
People can be so self-absorbed and thoughtless it's beyond belief at times--unless you deal with the public on a daily basis, then you know how bad it can be. 
Comment