Supermarket fun!

[Jester]

Okay, I have never worked in a supermarket, or for that much even in retail. My customer service work has been a vast majority of food service, with some entertainment (wedding DJ and magician) and call center (hotel) thrown in. But I read the supermarket-related comments in here with some amusement, as I read the others, but while I believe it happens intellectually, I didn't really believe it was as bad as some claim it to me, at least not REALLY believe it, though I didn't doubt the words of the members posting about it. (I have no doubt that some people who have never worked in food service might doubt some of MY stories as well!)

Part of my problem is I do about 95% of my grocery shopping late at night. So I see the store when the self-checkouts are closed, the place is mostly clean, the place is mostly empty, the delis and butchers are shut down, and the stockers are in, stocking the place--which means I also get to navigate around boxes and pallets of merchandise. But I don't see the supermarket the way most people do, due to my late night hours.

Last night, while doing my standard 1:00 am shopping, I became a true believer. Wandering down one aisle, I found a mostly consumed bottle of frappucino that some asshat customer had simply left sitting there. I brought it up to my friend B the cashier, and told him about it, and handed it to him to deal with. He thanked me, but rolled his eyes....obviously not a new experience for him. Later in my sojourn through the groceries, I came upon one aisle that had a lot of black stuff smeared on the floor. At first I wasn't sure what it was, and was thinking the worst, but it turned out to be chocolate cake. (I looked closely, I did NOT touch it or taste it, thank you very much!) And finally, when I wheeled my purchases out to the Jestermobile, I looked around the parking lot, and saw literally dozens of carts everywhere BUT the cart corral....in a parking lot that had maybe eight cars! What the hell is wrong with people? MY cart went right where it always does...in the corral. And it looked very very lonely there, I might add. (I briefly thought about putting the carts in the corral, and would have if it were a few, but there were a BUNCH, I was tired, and sorry, but it really ISN'T my job.)

So to all my brethren in the supermarkets and grocery stores, my apologies for not quite believing all the shit you put up with on a daily basis. I had to be shown the light. (It was in aisle 4, by the chocolate cake, actually.)

[Lace Neil Singer]

You are indeed welcome.

Yours, Lace, one of those supermarket workers of which you speak.

[Drakstern]

Hear hear!

I escaped from the supermarket, but those who still work there continue to have my undying sympathy. As do those in the restaurant industry, and tech support, and call centers, and... well, any job that's customer service related.

[draftermatt]

I too always wondered about it Jester.

I bought some Polish Sausage the other week that had a sticker on it for $1.00 off. Then watched as my checker scratched it out with black magic marker after he rung it up.

The reason? They've had too many people peel them off and try to re-use them.

[batmoody]

and the stockers are in, stocking the place--which means I also get to navigate around boxes and pallets of merchandise.

I'm glad you didn't complain about all the boxes and pallets. One of my (many) peeves when working those night stocking shifts, is customers who come down the aisle and bitch because there's stuff everywhere. I always just say, with a bit of a chuckle, and a smile, "Unfortunatley for both of us, these shelves don't fill themselves." These are the same people who would bitch if we didn't have anything on the shelf. Go figure.

[Rubystars]

.

The thing that bothers me, besides just people eating things and leaving the containers in the store without paying for them, are people who decide at some point in their shopping that they don't want something cold, and just leave it on a shelf somewhere.

When I do returns, I find warm, disgusting bags of lunchmeat, melting or melted ice cream, nasty warm cheese, and stinking rotten meat, because people decided they didn't want or couldn't afford these items and just dropped them wherever. Sometimes they even go further, and HIDE the items behind other items.

Sometimes they idiotically put frozen items, such as ice cream, in drink refrigerators, thinking that's the same thing as a freezer. Well, it's not, and melted ice cream still ends up all over the coke bottles.

The store has us do something called redlining, which means we stand down at the end of our registers and wave customers in. Well when it's a busy day, more often than not when I get through a long line of customers and then go down to the end to redline, I find a cold item that's now ruined that was just dumped on the display at the end of the register.

People often drink drinks and leave them in the store, open packages of candy or snacks and eat them partially and dump them, or eat almost a whole bag of grapes and then dump them somewhere.

[dragonflygrrl]

The thing that bothers me, besides just people eating things and leaving the containers in the store without paying for them, are people who decide at some point in their shopping that they don't want something cold, and just leave it on a shelf somewhere.

That makes me so angry when I see that! And I don't even work in a grocery store. It's just so wasteful. How hard is it to figure out how much lunchmeat you need before getting it cut? And then, having decided you don't want it, why stick it behind the chips in the snack aisle? I kid you not, the last time I grocery shopped I picked up a bag of chips and found ancient deli meat just kind of oozing on the shelf. Why? For the love of all that is not sucky, why? I felt awful stopping an employee and telling them about it, but I wasn't about to pick that up without gloves!

[Jester]

I'm glad you didn't complain about all the boxes and pallets. One of my (many) peeves when working those night stocking shifts, is customers who come down the aisle and bitch because there's stuff everywhere. I always just say, with a bit of a chuckle, and a smile, "Unfortunatley for both of us, these shelves don't fill themselves." These are the same people who would bitch if we didn't have anything on the shelf. Go figure.

Hell, I know that I am going to deal with the pallets and boxes at that time of night. I also won't have to deal with screaming children or too many other patrons. Complain? About the store doing what it is supposed to be doing? Hell no. Besides, more often than not, the stockers will know a lot better where something is than most of the cashier staff! (Assuming you can find the ones that speak English, of course.)

My only complaint is when I go there and they are buffing the floor of the area I need to get to, and it is roped off so I can't get to said item.... Grrr.

My only SC-esque thing I do at the supermarket is, in the produce aisle, I inevitably much a snap pea or mushroom or some other random loose item. I can't help it! But I DO buy stuff, often those items, and I don't leave my non-purchases laying around, especially perishables.

[Becks]

The thing that bothers me, besides just people eating things and leaving the containers in the store without paying for them, are people who decide at some point in their shopping that they don't want something cold, and just leave it on a shelf somewhere.

A few months back, I posted an experience that was quite similar to what I'm about to relate. I was not surprised that it happened again.

I was going about my salad bar routine when I noticed a box of sliced garlic bread sitting by some produce. O...K...

(The last time I found a runaway box of sliced garlic bread, it was only a few aisles away from the frozen section, and was still cold...but not frozen.)

This box was WARM. So warm, in fact, that no scent of garlic could be detected (unless my cold was so much worse yesterday than I knew at the time).

The produce and frozen aisles are on opposite sides of the store from each other. What kind of comes in and does such a thing???

[Lace Neil Singer]

The same kind of dickhead who did this really disgusting thing with coleslaw; they left it behind some baked beans cans to fester away. I found it while putting things back, it had degenerated to the point that I feared it might have mutated into some kind of coleslaw monster. I put a plastic bag around my hand, picked it up and got rid of it.

[symposes]

I wonder how much shrink is caused by people leaving perishiables hidden behind non-perishibles, compared to employee theft...

[Bliss]

The thing that bothers me, besides just people eating things and leaving the containers in the store without paying for them, are people who decide at some point in their shopping that they don't want something cold, and just leave it on a shelf somewhere.

This makes me actually so FURIOUS that I want to punch and stab people, mainly because I'm very empathic with all life (or try to be, except for some humans) and what I invariably think is "So do you realize that an animal was killed to bring you this food, and now this animal was slaughtered, maybe painfully, for no reason at all but for a simple whim?" You know, many many MANY times I think that such as working "teaches" some people the worth of money the same way people should be forced to kill, clean and eat an animal once after reaching adulthood, so they can learn the worth of food and of life.

sigh

[Kogarashi]

Today I found a Milk Chug (one of those single-serving-size bottles of milk for drinking) sitting on top of a drink cooler in one of the checkout aisles. The Chug was warm. Seriously, folks, at least do us the attempt of putting it in the cooler (even if it's a frozen item, as it'll still keep longer that way) rather than right on top of it! ::grumble::

The store has us do something called redlining, which means we stand down at the end of our registers and wave customers in. Well when it's a busy day, more often than not when I get through a long line of customers and then go down to the end to redline, I find a cold item that's now ruined that was just dumped on the display at the end of the register.

Ah, redlining. On busy days, it always surprises me (and it shouldn't) when I finally get a chance to zone (clean up) my register lane after a huge press of customers and find a massive pile of items dumped at the end of the belt, stuffed in among the magazines and candy, and shelved every which way on the rest of the purchases. As though it's too much work to hand the item to me and say, "I didn't want this after all." I've even had customers tuck items in the magazine rack while I've been watching, and I make it a point to tell them, "If you don't want that, I can take care of that." Usually, they look a bit sheepish and hand it to me. A few have looked downright annoyed that I actually called them on it. Seriously, who honestly believes that the magazine rack is an appropriate place to stuff unwanted underwear, cereal boxes, lipstick tubes, and fluffy slippers?

[Jester]

Seriously, who honestly believes that the magazine rack is an appropriate place to stuff unwanted underwear, cereal boxes, lipstick tubes, and fluffy slippers?

Right. Underwear goes in the freezer, cereal boxes go with automotive, lipstic tubes should be at the deli with the cheese, and fluffy slippers obviously go in dairy.

[thegiraffe]

Jester, you're a smartass.