Like items through the checkstand....(language)

[SecurityWench]

....so go the grocery days of our lives.

Heh. Well, what I mean by that is some stories from today and a few days ago have a soap-opera esque type to them. At least one of them does. And I'll save that for last.

First, let me regail you with the tale of....

The Tahini Lady

Yesterday I was working as a bagger, and one of my fellow check-mongers flags me down and asks, 'Hey, can you go see if we have any Tahini?' Thanks to an episode of The Simpsons, I know Tahini is a type of sauce/paste. (Ain't TV grand?)

So, I skip off to the deli, thinking it would be near the hummus, but nothing was there. I go back to say to the lady I couldn't find it. "Well, where did you look?"

"The deli."

"....I remember seeing it by the peanut butter, I think." This time, a different bagger (K, sweetest girl you will ever meet in your life, happy as a clam) goes with her to try and find it. Nothing.

She comes over to the service desk and asks to speak to a manager. The manager says, "Well, I can page the grocery manager and see if he knows." And then....she says what literally made my brain screech to a halt.

"Don't you have a computer you can type into to see if you have it?"

.....buh? What is this magical computer o' grocery items? Do other stores have it? Do you have to send in 10,000 cereal box tops to get one? Does not compute. The manager (and I can see she's just as flabbergasted as I am) "Uh....no, ma'am, we don't have that."

Lady gets angry. "Well, why not?? I just want some tahini!"

Manager pages grocery manager. While we're waiting, I, being the helpful sort, ask, "Ma'am, did you check Central Market? They might have it." (Central Market is a sister company of my store. Organic, imports, and the like.)

She turns to me and goes, "I shouldn't HAVE to go to Central Market. I've been shopping at this HEB for years! You should have what I want!"

....and yet this is the first time any of us have seen you in here, and the manager you're speaking to has worked here five years. But I digress.

Grocery manager comes by, and I had to go back to my duties at that point, but I kept sneaking glances at them. I can tell that he's trying to reason with her when she still can't grasp the fact that we might not have the item she wants, and she's STILL going on about why we should have the magical computer o' grocery items!

Me and K were hard-pressed to keep our mouths shut about her until she was out of the store, which took a while. By the time she finally left, it was time for me to go home.

I mean....it's just sauce! I've never had it, maybe it's good enough to harass people for, but....seriously?

HEB - We Know Drama

I am working the express checkstand. (This is how a lot of my stories begin, I've found.) Two women come through buying assorted frozen items, as well as candy and soda. They take out a Lonestar card. And oddly enough, this story is not about an item not being approved. Which is different, especially for me.

The two women are friendly, chatting, she types in the PIN, I look to the screen, I get the error message that means 'insufficient funds.' With Lonestar cards, I can hit the enter button and get a receipt that prints how much the card has left on it. (Convenient, no?)

I print it out, take a look, and say, "Your total is $12.97. It appears that you have a total of $5.61 on your card. We can put the remainder of it towards your order and have you pay the difference if you like."

The lady doesn't respond, and gets a look on her face. And this wasn't your typical 'I didn't keep track of my expenses' shock, this was 'omgholyshitreally???' shock. She finally finds her voice and goes, "HOW MUCH DID HE SPEND ON MY CARD??"

At this point I'm hopelessly confused and she whips out a cell phone. Two rings, and then....."WHAT THE FUCK?? HOW MUCH DID YOU GUYS SPEND ON MY DAMN CARD? I HAD $200 ON THAT FUCKING CARD! I TOLD YOU NO MORE THAN $50? DID I NOT?? DID I NOT SAY THAT??"

Everyone in line, including me has looks on their faces now. She went over to the cigarette case to continue her shrieking, and the friend she was with sighs and says to me, "She gave the card to her teenage son to buy some snacks. And if you know him, it's like giving your account number to a Nigerian leader who has $5 million dollars to give you. It's happened before. Sorry about this. Here I'll pay for it."

I thanked her for explaining and helping keep my line moving, but they hung around for a while. From what I gathered, teenage son decided to bring his friends along not to the grocery store, but to a fast food joint that accepted Lonestar. And thanks to having munchies from a certain substance....they didn't exactly stay on their budget.

That was an interesting experience to say the least. And it happened early in the morning, too, so....certainly helped wake me up!

[Magpie]

Ok, I might be missing something here, but I've never made anything with tahini that I wasn't using the blender for already. Just throw the whole sesame seeds in, honestly.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

I'd wager it should be over in the Chinese/Asian food section next to the Curry sauce.

[bean]

Tahini is actually, like the SC said, right by the peanut butter in a lot of stores, including mine. But good call on checking near the hummus since it's one of the main ingredients. I believe we also carry one that's refrigerated, and it's typically kept in the section of the dairy case dedicated to vegetarian stuff (tofu and the like).

Magic computer? Yeah, we do have a PC at the service desk, but it's mostly used for recording spoilage, checking email, pulling up weather reports, stuff like that. We have a database of stuff we can GET from various suppliers - but there's apparently no easily accessible database of what's currently on the shelves (I don't think we even keep track, electronically, of what's on the shelf, our inventories are simply for cost tracking).

As for the lone star card - our registers do the same, if there's not enough money on them, you shove a piece of paper into the check printer and it prints out a balance statement. Why our registers don't do it on the receipt printer is beyond me, even though both printers reside in the same unit and use 1 cable for both, pretty typical grocery store printer. A LOT of people - I'd say more than half - always try to select EBT Cash instead of Electronic Foodstamps when they swipe the lonestar card too... EBT Cash is definitely an option, and a handful of people have it enabled, but if I try to run a foodstamp transaction as EBT Cash, my register locks up and I have to get a manager over. If there's not a line, I'll quietly tell the customer why it's not working. If there is a line, I'll politely mention they chose the wrong option, have them slide their card again, and show them which option to choose without mentioning out loud "Yeah choose the foodstamps button". I'm sure people would get a bit miffed with me if I blurted out "HEY HE'S USING FOODSTAMPS! EVERYONE GATHER ROUND!".

How the hell did they find a fast food place that took a foodstamp card though? Lonestar cards specifically prohibit prepared foods - salads, hot food, and the like, along with alcohol, snack foods, and soft drinks. Oddly, they still cover everything in our bakery though. If I had to guess, they probably hit up a corner store that took Lonestar and cleaned them out - most of the time their registers don't handle it and it's done on a 3rd party credit card machine.

[Bloodsoul]

There's a Space Balls quote in here somewhere. I just know it.

[SG15Z]

Hm, I think we can search for an item by name but it isn't easy, and you can only search by what it's typed up as for the POS receipts. Which means you have to hope it was abbreviated. In other words Kroger doesn't have magical computer either. Graned we can do a lot of things on our computers, but not that. Corporate probably could though.

Now if you have a UPC then I can figure out not only if we carry it but where it is. But I'd have to get someone with access to an RF gun and has a login to it cause I don't.

[ArcticChicken]

What is this magical computer o' grocery items? Do other stores have it?

Wegmans, at least the one in my hometown, actually does have something like that. You can't check what's in stock, and you can't look by brand, but you can see what aisle a thing is in.

[Moggie]

Wench, most of the HEB's that have it carry it near the Asian food section or the Kosher stuff. Often, my local HEB doesn't have it, but I've found I can sub in sesame oil fairly well if I'm just making hummus.

Central Market, Whole Foods, and Wheatville Co-op all carry it too, just in case.

[grokit]

Magic computer? Yeah, we do have a PC at the service desk, but it's mostly used for recording spoilage, checking email, pulling up weather reports, stuff like that. We have a database of stuff we can GET from various suppliers - but there's apparently no easily accessible database of what's currently on the shelves (I don't think we even keep track, electronically, of what's on the shelf, our inventories are simply for cost tracking).

Is this a small shop you work in? I'm not familiar with the inner voodoo workings of your average shop, but I'd hate to know how much work has to be done to keep track of products, their stock and all the rest without it being on computer somewhere. And if it's on computer somewhere then some sort of access could be made for the service desk.

But expecting logic can be a bit much!

[draftermatt]

I wish all stores had a computer that shows location of things.

I know at the hardware store o' blue it'd come in handy when given an order where the product description is so vague you have to read it out loud to try and decipher it.

[tollbaby]

Most stores also have an ethnic food aisle or section. That's usually where I get my tahini (and I buy it in BIG jars so it lasts a while... but then, I only make hummus every once in a blue moon - it's required for family parties and such, but a batch makes way too much for little ole me on my own).

[fireheart]

How the hell did they find a fast food place that took a foodstamp card though? Lonestar cards specifically prohibit prepared foods - salads, hot food, and the like, along with alcohol, snack foods, and soft drinks. Oddly, they still cover everything in our bakery though. If I had to guess, they probably hit up a corner store that took Lonestar and cleaned them out - most of the time their registers don't handle it and it's done on a 3rd party credit card machine.

Maybe they hit a Subway? It's not exactly hot food....

[Ashaela]

Oddly, they still cover everything in our bakery though.

That always annoyed me when I worked at Here-Everyone's-Bitter. I'm here fresh out of college, working my tail off, taking all the crap from every customer with a chip on his or her shoulder and getting no support (or even respect) from management; trying to pay for my school loans, my first car, rent and everything else and barely having enough to squeak by....

And here comes a Lonestar customer with birthday cakes, donuts, ice cream, bags of chips.... All the goodies I couldn't afford because I was absolutely broke, and they weren't paying for it themselves. Sometimes it really makes you wonder about your life choices....

[BaristaTrav]

I know what store you work for and Tahini is, oddly enough, tough to come by. Central Market does have it in fact (at least here in S.A.). But she can make it herself with sesame seeds, olive oil, and lemon juice.

[BrenDAnn]

be glad the EBT cards there ban soft drinks & junk food. Here in the good ol' Hawkeye state, people can buy all the junk food & pop they want on their EBT cards. That includes our fountain pop, and donuts from our case. 2/3 of EBT customers I have are getting pop, candy, etc etc...It kinda ticks me off, but, not much I can do as long as they're following the rules!