Saturday, April 2, 2011

Not a good start to my day...

So the other day I walked into work, 5 minutes late
(no one cared that I was late, that's when I always show up.)
and got my drawer from the cash office. Then, I walked up front with my drawer.

So I got up front after being stopped a couple times by elderly people asking where some obscure kind of italian pastry was. When I got there, the supervisor tells me to go to register 3. Fair enough, I guess.
(Note, my supervisor is not a cute petite blonde. That's just what I felt like drawing.)
Now I finally get on my register, flip on my light, and announce, "I'll take the next person in line on register 3!"
Soon after, a couple in their mid-30's show up at my register with maybe 7 items.
The first one they hand me is a can of tomato sauce, so I turn on my scanner and ring that puppy.

 
Here we go...

      No beep? That ain't right... Let me try again.


          Come on register...
Please just scan for me...

So at this point I'm as infuriated with my uncooperative register as my customers are. Their item clearly has a working barcode, so I tried to scan it with the little scan gun thing. No luck. I could have put in the barcode's number manually...

HA! HAHAHA... Oh man, I actually fooled myself for a second there. Who am I kidding? I'm not that dutiful! So I took the easy way out and asked to be put on a different register. Now, surely, I would be able to get some work done.
Or not? There was no way that TWO registers could be broken, much less the two that they put me on. So I tried a few more times. No luck.
"What do I do now?" I asked my Supervisor. "This one isn't working either."
"No way, that one just got fixed!"
"Clearly the guy who was fixing the registers doesn't know what he's doing."

So she put me on the only working register that wasn't occupied. Register 1.

"That doesn't sound so bad!" you might think. "Register 1? You must feel damn important!"

You'd be wrong.
See that? It's a measurement marker. This register has a counter end that is 2 feet by 2 feet. I am not exaggerating. More than $50 of groceries and I'm out of space. And see those prong thingys? That's the bag-holder. There were no bags on the register when I got there, so I had to keep the customers (The SAME TWO from before) waiting even LONGER while I got bags.

And once that was done? I had to bag as I went. Which wasn't all that bad for the first two customers, but the third lady I rang...



She had a good $80 of just produce. That's like 40 pounds of fruit and vegetables. So it took me about 10 minutes to get her rung all the way through, and bag everything.

She was one of those customers that just stands there and watches the register boy do all the work. Didn't even look like she wanted to help at all. So of course I end up finishing her order, and just when I was done with her, just when I thought the madness was over...




This guy came in with a bag of oranges and paid me with two twenty-dollar bills stuck together. I, of course, assumed that it was one $20 and gave him the according change. Later, he comes back, really pissed off. Apparently I had charged him 22.50 for his bag of oranges, and then he proceeded to make up some bullshit about how my register actually showed $22.50 on the screen, (IT TOTALLY DIDN'T) and I told him I couldn't help him, and he went to customer service with it.

The next day I came in to work and found that the guy was right, my register was over by $20, so we had to call the guy and then he came and got his money. I almost got written up for it.

But yeah, there you have it. A sample of the crap that goes on where I work.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Part 2 of the Theory

I elaborate about black holes.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A theory I thought of not long ago.