I’m six hours deep into a late night shift at Giant, working the register, when an old lady approached me. “What’s this coupon good for, sir?” she said, eyes signaling her pure sincerity and curiosity. She handed me a small slip of paper, and I looked it over multiple times, confused. It’s a picture of a bird. “That’s just a picture of a bird, ma’am.” I told her. She thanked me, took her picture, and walked away.
I work at Giant Food Stores, a titan in the food store industry. Founded in 1953 by David Javitch, the store was originally a two-man run butcher shop. Giant, a grocery super store, carrying any food product you want. Some stores even have pharmacies, restaurants and a Starbucks to pick up some coffee before you shop. In addition to that, several services have been added. You can drop your kids off in the Treehouse daycare session, and we’ll watch your kids while you shop. Or don’t. Stay home, because now, with our new Peapod service, you don’t even have to come in! We’ll deliver the groceries straight to you. We’ve certainly come a long way from a butcher shop. Today, there are more than 180 stores.
I’ve worked at Giant for two years now, and I’ve found cashiering a much more difficult job than most people would believe it to be. I can still hear my dad telling me on the drive over to my first day of work, “It’s not gonna be that hard, bud. You’re just taking stuff and sliding it through the scanner,” a mentality I’d imagine most Giant shoppers share with my father. If cashiers run into any kind of technical issue on the machine, they’re immediately met with eye rolls and deep sighs to make you aware of the customer’s frustration.
I am always stationed to work in the section of Giant referred to as “the front end.” Our main job is to check out your items and make sure you leave the store happy. Managers stress constantly we’re the last impression the customer receives when they shop here, so we have to make that interaction with every person count. We have to make them want to return and shop again. There are multiple jobs available on the front end, the simplest being a bagger. Put the customer’s items in bags and tell them to have a nice day. Next is a cashier, ringing up the customer’s items and a self-checkout worker, who watches over customers to see if they check out their items correctly.
I once talked with a customer about working as a cashier. “I used to be a cashier too, but I had to quit,” she told me. After asking why, she explained she couldn’t “handle the rudeness of the customers.” She continued, “I’ve had keys thrown at me, I’ve been screamed at, I just couldn’t handle the stress people put me under.”
What most people aren’t aware of is how focused the cashier has to be at all times. A lot of cashiers operate on a system known as IPM—Items Scanned per Minute—where you’re judged on how fast you can scan items, so there’s always incentive to be nimble. It’s also good to be cautious of the candy bars in front of your lane; it’s highly likely someone will try to steal some candy. Hundreds of numbers for produce items must be memorized, as those items don’t scan. Each piece of produce comes with a specific PLU (price lookup) number that cashiers punch in. You can’t forget B.O.B either (bottom of the basket) to check for additional items a customer might have accidentally (or intentionally) forgotten to take from their cart.
Three months ago, I worked the checkout station. Out of nowhere, my computer just freaked out on me and shut off. This is the computer I needed to help any customers in trouble. The lane was packed, too. All six stations were filled with people, and immediately two of them needed help. I tried to rush over and help them, but there’s really not much I could do with my computer acting so wacky. All around me, I heard the people complaining and muttering to themselves as if I’m some kind of idiot who can’t do his job right. “C’mon!” a man shouted, signaling me away from the customer I’m helping to tend to him. A woman coughed multiple times to get my attention, but I remained helping the customer I helped first. “Deal with them one at a time, that’s the best way” is my manager’s advice in this situation, so I did. Eventually the computer switched back on, and it was business as usual.
“Yeah, PLUs and codes and stuff like that are annoying, but for me, it’s always the people that make me hate working retail,” commented Jake, an 18-year-old nearing one year of employment in Wal-Mart. “Sometimes, I feel like Charlie Brown, man. I’m doing all I can in there to be a good and polite guy, trying my best and all that; but it feels like everyone still hates me. No matter what I do, those people are always gonna move that football from me, man. Always.”
I worked a shift last week when a man approached with many boxes of cereal. I rang them up. “That’ll be—,” I managed to say, before being cut off. “No! These are buy one, get one free!” He scolds. I looked at the screen, totaled the order, and looked back to him. “Well, they’re not ringing up that way, sir. Let me get a coach for you.” He looked around, furious. “No! These are buy one, get one free!” he said, somehow even more firm than the last time. At this point, I’m rapidly hitting the button to call a checkout coach, Ashley, over to help me out. She strolled over and assessed the situation. “Yo, he’s saying these are buy one, get one, and they’re not ringing up that way,” I explained. “Yes! Buy one, get one!” the man explained, much louder. Ashley bolted to the aisle and checked the price, proving the man to be correct. She ran back, took the price off, and apologized for the wait. The man happily went about his day, the proud owner of what must have been at least 30 boxes of cereal.
Cashiers at my level would love to do what Ashley had just done, but, sometimes, due to lockout codes on registers, it is not within our possibility to do so. Cashiers aren’t allowed to simply take someone’s word on BOGO deals. Often, customers will pull tricks like that on cashiers to save a quick buck, handing you coupons for items they didn’t purchase in hopes you’ll just trust them, rather than search through their packed cart for the item. Or labeling produce with a smaller weight, then adding more produce in a bag, keeping the label for the smaller weight. Those moves alone cost the company immense shrink. So, if we also had to trust the word of people who tell us the prices they saw, we’d be in trouble.
“What I wish people would understand is that I feel bad for you too, man. I’m not a robot; I get how much this situation sucks. I don’t like being stuck here with you either, but this technical problem is bigger than both of us,” explained Jake.
Cashiers and retail workers are people too. When we’re having trouble and you get upset, we get that, we feel you, we understand you, but sometimes it would be nice to have some of that come back our way. Maybe every once in a while, if you see a cashier stressing out, or running into some technical difficulty, you could just relax and let that person have a second to figure things out. I know it’s frustrating as the customer to have to wait a couple of extra seconds so the cashier can replace the paper that ran out halfway through printing your receipt, or they have to call a coach over to verify the price on something. I can also assure you, if you’re cool in that situation, the cashier will love you. Most stories cashiers share with one another don’t involve the countless jerks who screamed at them about melons, but rather the one really nice person they met who was courteous to them when they ran into problems, and what a refreshing experience it was to meet them.
Clifford Kubiak is a senior at Capital Area School for the Arts Charter School (CASA).
