Have you ever been in line at the grocery store behind that one person who angrily demands to see a manager because of something totally ridiculous, i.e., the strawberries scanning as $2.75 instead of $2.50? Then, the manager or supervisor does come over, and the person is suddenly super polite to that higher-up worker when they check and confirm that the strawberries are indeed $2.75. The cashier stands there, continuing to ring the transaction politely, internally wanting to pull her hair out all the while for being treated like an imbecile. This is the very common reality of many people who work in any retail situation--putting up with disrespectful jerks who feel above those working minimum wage jobs. Rude people exist everywhere, and if everyone could experience the ill-mannered, entitled behavior of many shoppers, I'm convinced our world would not be as stand-offish as it often is.
Cashiers often work between seven and nine hour shifts--sometimes even longer than that to cover shifts of people who suddenly call off. They're on their feet for the majority of these shifts, with a 15 or 30 minute break to sit down, take a breath, and shake the robotic, auto-pilot feeling one acquires after a nonstop stream of customers and $200+ purchases, one after the other.
In grocery stores, countless codes for produce are jammed into a person's head, and if a cashier goes to grab a banana to throw in their lunch bag before work, the code 4011 has already flashed in their head about 3 or 4 times as they run out the door. So, the next time you go to the store and think about telling the cashier the price per pound as he stops to think for a moment, he most likely already knows, and he'll just end up politely explaining to you that there are specific codes that you must type in for every individual fruit or vegetable.
In a department store, sometimes the sale items have specific bar code numbers (aka, SKUs) and it will take more than three seconds to type that in correctly, to that rude customer's dismay. That cashier is probably more than likely already uncomfortable as you very obviously glare at her as she folds your $55 imported sweater from India.
By the end of a shift, a cashier is usually exhausted from bagging and ringing up thousands and thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. They will often go home and raise their aching feet on pillows after a particularly grueling shift. And still, after being treated like incompetent dummies, these people continue to serve us because their hard work is what pays for their children's meals, or their own college tuition, or their bills piling up on the counter--which is why I firmly believe if everyone experienced what retail workers put up with on the daily, our world would be a much kinder place. So, the next time you go to yell at a cashier or fail to say thank you, think about what kind of person you'd like to be spoken about to their families and friends as they return to their home lives after work. You could be the person who makes their day or the one who breaks it.
