Thursday, May 20, 2010

Today as I was cashiering a Russian woman probably in her late 50's came into my line. As normal, I greeted her with a friendly smile and a "how are you today." She may have said hello, but what followed was not friendly. When I finished ringing her up, I asked if she wanted one bag or two. She gave me a filthy look and said, "two". I grabbed the largest size bag we had and started to open it. Out of nowhere the lady I was helping loudly snarled at me and said, "I want bag with handles!" "Sorry" I replied, "we don't have any with handles, just the paper." "why not?!" She snapped back (At this point I was pretty annoyed) "we just don't" I said, "If you like, we have reusable bags that have handles for sale." She had no reply for me. The end of that transaction I handed her the receipt and she quickly snatched it out of my hand. I walked away.
A few minutes later I looked outside, and saw the same woman loading her groceries into her car. However, instead of just picking up the bags and setting them into her trunk, she was taking every single item out of the paper bags and putting them into reusable Trader Joe's bags. Upon seeing this I lost it. As I watched her I said to a fellow employee, "Hey Richard, see that woman out there? She is taking all of her groceries out of her paper bags and putting them into reusables. How much you want to bet that she will leave the paper bags in the cart, and leave the car in the parking lot?" Of course I didn't get much of a response from Rich because he was with a customer himself. But sure enough, just as I had called it the woman left the paper bags in the cart, and pushed the cart to the side. I immediately went outside to retrieve the cart, and as I grabbed the cart I raised my hand in a wave and said, "HAVE A GREAT DAY!" Granted she looked a bit confused because she probably knew that she was being an incredibly intense hag.
What I just don't understand is why in God's name did she have such a damn fit because I didn't even have any bags with handles, when she could have just declined the bags all together and simply have said, "No worries, I have bags in the car" She would have done the same amount of work, and she wouldn't have wasted any bags to begin with. If anyone out there understands this method, please enlighten me.

1 comment:

Sandra said...

Hahaha, love this story!