Am I not worthy to speak to you because I make minimum wage, or what?

[Despina83]

ARGH, as a cashier, it annoys me SO much when people refuse to anknowledhe me when I speak to them. And the sad thing is, it's not all that rare of an occurence. It happens many, many times in one shift. I'll greet the customer and they'll either ignore me or just look at me. Okay, then. Personally, I can't imagine ignoring a worker who greets me, but that's just me. And then, when I thank them and say have a good day, they just grab their bag and walk away or they just look at me silently and walk off. WTF? And what gets my goat is when you say thanks and they say in a bored voice "Yep" and then ignore you when you follow with, "have a good day". Yep? Okay, I don't personally give a shit whether or not you come to this store and make a purchase, it means nothing to me. I hate this place. But I thank you anyway because I have to. But then you say "yep", like you've done me a huge favor, and then not only don't thank ME but ignore my "have a good day" completely...?? THIS is how the civil conversation is supposed to take place between us:

Me: "Thanks!"
Customer: "Thanks! or "Thank YOU!"
Me: "Have a good day!"
Customer: "You too!" or "you do the same" or "thank you" or "thanks" NOT "uh huh."

Come on, work with me, people!!! But for God's sake don't totally ignore me when I speak to you as though you think I'm dirt on the bottom of your shoe! Show a little class and manners. Common decency. I'm not your damn slave. You're not doing me a favor by coming through my lane. Frankly, a lot of times I wish you'd stay out of it. If I greet you, I expect some sort of greeting in return. I will thank you for your purchase, but I expect a thank you from YOU as well because that's what you DO when people do things for you.

[tigger222]

I can always tell when they aren't paying attention to what I say this happens more times than not sometimes:
Me:How are you today?
SC:Yes.
Me:Excuse me?
SC:Yes I found everything alright.
Me:Ok but that wasn't the question.
SC:It wasn't? What is it that you asked me?
Me:How are you today?
SC:Oh I'm fine.

[Nelsonette]

Urgh, that pisses me off so much. Working a minimum wage job does not mean you aren't a person who deserves common freaking courtesy!

What I really hate is when they come up to the register, and they're talking on their cellphones!
And then they refuse to do anything but stand there, talking! If I try to tell them how much the bill is, they get PISSED at me.
argh!

PhoneCustomer: *walks up to till, talking on cell, hands me receipt to scan*

Me: *scans receipt, then tries to tell customer total*

PC: Ex-CUSE me, but I am ON THE PHONE. *proceeds to give me an evil glare, then ignore me for five effing mintues while a line builds up behind them as they blather on their cell about their damn kids soccer game or whatever*

After the third time that started happening to me, I started to just cancel their order out, and hand the receipt back to them, and wave up the next person in line. They usually come stand up next to the talky person and hand me their receipt and so on, I cash them out, etc, "how was your food" "have a nice day" etc. Person on phone gets mortally offended.

PC: Hey! I was here FIRST!

M: Yes, you were. Unlike you, however, the person next in line was ready to pay their bill. If you aren't ready to pay, please feel free to sit in the waiting area over there *gesture*.

PC: BUT I WAS HERE FIRST. WHY AREN'T YOU WAITING ON ME?!

M: I have a line of people, and like I said, they are ready to pay. I'm going to give my attention to people who aren't so rude and self-centered that they think their personal conversation is more important than keeping the business going quickly.

PC: RANTRANTMANAGERRAVERAVE

Me *calls up manager*

PC: *yells at manager about insubordinate employees and blahblahblah*

Manager: Ma'am, you were holding up the line.

PC: Your employee was rude to me! I want free food and she should get fired!

Me: *stare of shock*

M: No, you were rude not only to her, but to the rest of the customers in this store. It is store policy that people who are ready to pay are given precedence over others. I am not going to comp your meal.

>.> I think I'm in love with my manager Bryant. He doesn't take anyone's crap.

[Food Lady]

I run into this EVERY SHIFT I'm on the front lanes. They don't even look at me. But as we all know, we're just the robots that ring stuff up. If they don't respomd to your 1st sentence, decide that all the heavy items need to go in one bag and the greeting card in another by itself.

[One-Fang]

Customers? I run into this with regular people. I don't do "how are you". I really don't. Mostly because I don't care, but also partly because I know it's only a figure of speech, nobody's interested in how I actually am when they ask, and I'm not going to ask people a question implying I care when I don't.

So anyway, conversations tend to go like this:

Them: Hi Fang, how are you?
Me: Hi, fine thanks.
Them: I'm good, thanks! So .... blah blah blah....

You're good? Nice. Didn't ask for that.

[MsFabulous]

I'm with you One-Fang.
We don't have any mandatory lines about "how are you" or whatever where I work (thankyou merciful lord), so I'll ONLY be making chit chat with you if you are nice to ME and make me feel empathy toward you. But every shift there's at least 3 conversations that go,
Me: Hi!
Them: Oh I'm good thanks.
Me: Um... ok then...

I've had two people ever realise that they just answered a question that I didn't ask. They were so embarassed

[Stormraven]

It's been stated before, but not everyone who's like that is ignoring you because you're beneath them. They may just not be very talkative, they may be painfully shy.

Or maybe, like myself, they just don't like small talk. I'll acknowledge people, either by nodding or the like, and I'll answer questions that bear on what I'm doing, but that's it.

[BlaqueKatt]

I'll greet the customer and they'll either ignore me or just look at me.

I think this is why I shocked the SM at the green wall the other day-I actually asked how he was doing -we had a nice if brief convo about the weather-and he remembers me now.....

[Despina83]

I have a hard time buying the whole painfully shy thing because I myself am painfully, excruciatingly shy. I have social anxiety problems. And I always return a greeting. So I'm not going to believe that so many of these people are worse than me in the shyness department (if they were worse than me, they probably wouldn't even be out in public) and are incapable of saying hi back.

I don't mind people on cell phones because then I don't have to talk to them and they're not staring me down, scrutinizing either every last detail of my face or intently watching me bag. It does, however, bother me when they don't bother to say hi or thanks. But it reminds me of the time I had a woman yacking on her cell phone who was ignoring me. So when I handed her her change and receipt I didn't bother saying anything. Then she looked at me and said to her friend: "These mutha fuckas here at Target are so freakin' rude!!!"

It burns me up that people complain that I'm not friendly when a good deal of people just totally ignore my greetings completely. When do I get to file complaints on them to their bosses??

[BookstoreEscapee]

It burns me up that people complain that I'm not friendly when a good deal of people just totally ignore my greetings completely. When do I get to file complaints on them to their bosses??

You should be able to do a quick little report card that prints out on their receipt.

__Customer greeted the cashier in some socially-acceptable fashion
__Customer was not on the phone
__Customer had payment ready
__Customer said Thank you, or some other social nicety

I didn't mind people on the phone so much if it didn't hold up the transaction. Yeah, I found it rude but if they at least paid enough attention to finish the transaction and be on their way, I just rolled my eyes and moved on (after cheerily saying "Have a nice day!" to their back, of course ). It was the ones who would stand there and talk, and ignore the fact that they were at my counter for a reason who really pissed me off.

[HawaiianShirts]

Ah, the non-listeners. I was always able to laugh about them later on, but right then and there, I usually wanted to smack them.

Me: Hi! Anything I can help you find today?
Them: Yeah. *continues examining products on shelves*
Me: All right. What are you looking for?
Them: No thanks.
Me: ... Okay. Let me know if you need any help, then.
Them: I'm fine.
Me: *starts to walk away*
Them: Hey, can you show me where X Item is?

PC: Your employee was rude to me! I want free food and she should get fired!

If I'm ever in a store or restaurant where I hear any of this employee should be fired for "being rude" or "poor customer service" crap, unless the employee just punched the customer in the face, I swear I'm going to go postal.

Well, not quite. I'm not going to kill anybody. But the complaining customer who wants someone (who is probably living paycheck-to-paycheck) to lose his or her job over some tiny perceived injustice is going to get a long, loud, angry rant from me.

[MageAkyla]

I find the worst part about them completely ignoring you is then they get those stupid customer surveys where they are asked questions including:

Did someone greet you while you in the store: We get so many no's even though we do our best to greet everyone but I've personally found people just staring through you and walking past.

Did you find everything you were looking for: The usual is a negative response cause apparently we are completely invisible and impossible to find unless they are determined to bitch us out or else just won't acknowledge that you may just know where something in the store where you work is located.

And others, but my biggest pet peeve is getting negative feedback of the workers because said store doesn't carry the item they want, sometimes because it doesn't make any sense for our store to carry it!

But really we all know most people won't even do those surveys on their receipts unless they really do want to bitch about something.

[Despina83]

Who needs the guest surveys? When five people in one four hour shift want to complain about me being "unfriendly", they just march over to the supervisor. Yeah, I'm still bitter about that day. But come on...I'M the unfriendly one? That's incredible. What a bunch of knuckleheads.

[Miss Fatale]

When I was in high school, I had several friends who worked fast food. One said how being a cashier made him realize how jerky he could be, and that because of his experience, he always greeted and thanks cashiers, etc. I had always tried to be nice, but I made a real effort after that to always say, "Hi, How are you? Thanks."

I've found that often someone stuck doing a crummy job is happy to be asked how they are, even if they reply with "Fine." And sometimes hearing them be cheery brightens my day. I don't care much for Subway, but the workers are always so cheerful that sometimes I buy a sandwich just for that -- discount therapy.

[Nelsonette]

If I'm ever in a store or restaurant where I hear any of this employee should be fired for "being rude" or "poor customer service" crap, unless the employee just punched the customer in the face, I swear I'm going to go postal.

Well, not quite. I'm not going to kill anybody. But the complaining customer who wants someone (who is probably living paycheck-to-paycheck) to lose his or her job over some tiny perceived injustice is going to get a long, loud, angry rant from me.

If you ever did that where I work, I'd climb over the counter and give you a hug tight enough to crack a couple ribs.

I really can not afford to get fired because some twit decided I was rude. The money I make from this job is going towards paying out-of-pocket medical expenses, saving for a new car, and money for college, since I'm not sure if I'll be getting that brightflight scholarship or not.

Hell, the only reason I can afford to by myself food is because I make a semi-decent amount of tips and use those as grocery/snack food money. To have some jerkwad try to take away my income is just....arrrrggggh.