Cashier killin'.

I worked at Kohl's for almost 5 years on and off.  Y'all know this.  And while you all know my hate for many, many aspects of the job, I really think everyone should work in the service industry for some period of time: it makes you nicer.  Be a waitress, be a cashier, work in customer service, whatever.  Do something that makes it abundantly clear how you come across to people, so you can adjust and make the world a better place.

People are rude, it happens.  Rude people exist, and they've decided what's going wrong in their lives is completely up to you and your desire to keep them down, or if they haven't, they're gonna make your life miserable anyway.  My worst experience with this type of person was actually when I was in line, not working, and she had a little something extra going for her: she was completely lovely to me, and chewed out the cashier like the girl was a duck and she was a rumor about Patrick Verona.  Everything but the beak and feet.

This happened when I was grocery shopping back at Brown in March or April.  I was behind Nondescript 40-Something who was struggling with her groceries.  I offered to help her, to be nice and also to, you know, speed up the line.  She turned around and said, "Oh no, sweetie, thank you!  I'm just clumsy right now."  Fair enough, I'll wait.

In the next moment, everything changed.  She went from normal, sweet lady (she looked like a Paula...) to Angry Lion Denied A Wildebeest.  ALDAW turned around after I offered to help, grew out her canines (maybe not) and snapped, "Is there a reason this is taking so long?"  I swear I looked at the back of her head for Voldemort.

The cashier apologized, and instead of separating the groceries like she had been doing to keep cold things together and fragile things together, she began throwing things randomly into bags to keep up.  ALDAW either looked away or decided she didn't need to supervise for a moment, turned around and snapped "Why would you do that?! You need to SEPARATE things!"

The manager finally saw what was going on, and came over to help bag things, and ALDAW mentioned the poor cashier's "incomptence" to the manager, and also insulted her hiring practices by stating that she didn't know where the manager found her cashiers.  She stood there like a 13-year-old being told she couldn't wear shiny lipgloss because it gives the boys the wrong idea, paid, and then stomped off to find another victim, presumably.  She also requested a carrying service to her car. 

When my turn came, I apologized to the cashier, and not that she needed to hear it from me to know it was true, but I told her that the ALDAW was being ridiculous, and that you just sometimes get people you can't please.  There are just people who turn into a pissier version of the Hulk because they had a bad morning/week/year/life and they take it out on the lowest rung.

What made me actually angry instead of just resigned was the fact that she was openly kind to me, and full-on Fenrir Greyback at the wrong time of the month to the girl behind the register.  That's unacceptable.  You're nice to people who are in your spot, waiting on line, but you've decided that since this girl is just a cashier, you can verbally abuse her?  She knows how to do her job, trust me.  Not only are you rude, you're awful as well.  I've overheard people at my job stating that "they really hire dummies here" and I'm lucky enough to have the trump card of "I'm in college/going to law school."  But even if that weren't true, I'm still doing my job competently, and most people in retail are.  Just because it's a simple job doesn't mean you know how to do it, and it doesn't mean the person doing it is capable of nothing more.

We try to do our retail jobs, the least you can do is do your job being a decent human being.