Shit that cashiers deal with (and some stories)

I'm a cashier at a big name grocery store. Most of our customers are actually pretty pleasant, although sometimes annoying. There are some customers that horrible people though, they make the job hell.

Every day. It's the dad joke of the retail world. They think they're hilarious every time.

There's a specific button for the debit card, and a specific button for each of the credit cards we accept. In most cases the customer just makes a mistake. Other times they change their mind about which card they use and don't bother to tell you. At least half the time, they will treat me like I'm the idiot though. Which is what really irks me.

This is super annoying. All prices are on our system and sales appear automatically. It's rare that the price comes up wrong. In most cases, if it comes up wrong, it's because the customer has the wrong item.

As far as I know, no grocery store is allowed to do this. If a box is open, we can't sell it. For the customers safety. It could be expired or tampered with.

It doesn't matter whether it's one cash open or all of them. Customers seem to think that being in line more than two minutes is unacceptable. No matter how busy the store is.

I don't understand why people take out their issues with the price on the cashier. There absolutely nothing that we can do about it. Sometimes I agree that it's an absolute ripoff. But it's not my problem.

At the store I work at. Customers can pay with their paycheques. We simply take the payment from the cheque, and give them the change in cash (the sum of the groceries needs to equal about 20% of the cheque). We can not cash cheques without a purchase. This specific customer wanted the latter. When we told him we don't cash cheques, he proceeded to yell at me, the supervisor, the front end manager, and then the store manager. He left empty handed.

This one really fucking pissed me off. The cash registers freeze up from time to time. Causing the cashier and customer to have to go to another register and start again. At worst it's a minor inconvenience.

The customer decided this was totally unacceptable and took it out on the supervisor, who is one of the sweetest, most hardworking people I know. She does anything for the cashiers to help them serves the customers better, and does anything she can to give the customer a good shopping experience. The customer started with the regular stuff, "this is unacceptable", "I'm never shopping here again", "worst service I've ever had". Then, this bitch made it personal, calling her a "stupid bitch", and "fucking retard". All before leaving without her groceries. 10 minutes later she breaks out in tears after the evening rush dies down a bit.

This one was a weird one. This woman was a known shoplifter, who had no apparent game plan going into this one. She walks into the store on a busy day, gets her stuff, and comes to my cash. She puts her items on my belt and asks to use the phone at my register, which only connects to other phones in the store. By this time the security guard knows she's there and is standing behind me after tailing her around the store. She then frantically searches for money. Only to pull out $5. She leaves to use the pay phone, I suspend her order and move on to the next customer. 15 minutes she returns, security still watching, pays the $5 and takes only the milk (didn't take her change). She loses her mind at the security guard as he passes him.

This one also pissed me off. I was just starting my shift when I overheard a customer say "what a faggot" about one cashier to the other cashier that was serving him. The cashier who was serving him, who has three children (all gay), gave him a nasty look but in the end just ignored him.

Those of you who are still reading this, thanks for reading. Truth be told I really like where I work. The people I work with are amazing. And we get some amazing, diverse customers, cute kids, and good memories. It'll be hard to leave when it comes time.