Awesome day

Well the last two days were great.

Jagushes got in from Texas on Monday, and spent the last two nights at Augusta's house. Yesterday night, Augusta and her family picked me up, and we went to Mama's Pizza for dinner, where we met the four Jagushes, as well as Maxine and the Aichems. Last night was a lot of fun, then, but today was a blast. Augusta picked me up again somewhere between ten and eleven this morning (I wasn't really paying attention; I was still a bit out of it), and took me back to her house for a grand old party with everyone who was at dinner last night plus Maxine's mother, sister, and brother, and about a dozen other people that I've never really met before. We played a lot of video games, and chatted, and hung out, and ate, and just generally hung out.

Video gaming took place on Augusta and Wes' Xbox 360, and included Soul Calibur II (Gabe is crazy as Voldo), Halo 3 (which I can finally play well with the two thumbsticks on a controller setup), and Unreal Tournament 3 (which I've never played before, but will now have to get the PC version of). Everybody got involved; relentless matches in Soul Calibur, team games with a 100-kill limit in Unreal Tournament, and crazy controller-swapping in Halo. It was a lot like one of the LGN parties, really, and just... a ton of fun.

It was great to see Gabe and Adrian and Julian again, too... I didn't realize how much I missed them. I wish they still lived around here, instead of halfway across the country. Hanging out with everybody all together was just really awesome. The three of them are so much more... mature? Something like that. I guess just older. But all three of them are fun to talk to and game with and just hang out with. I hope they plan on more trips back "home" in the future, because if they don't, I might just do it for them!

So yeah. Great day. I'd have liked to have seen the Jagushes off tomorrow morning before they leave the Anderson household, but unfortunately, it's not going to work out. I said goodbye to them all tonight, though, and I'm hoping to keep in a little better touch with them than I have in the past.

Tomorrow's my last day in a row off before another weekend of work, so I might do something with Augusta, who also has off from work, after Gabe and company leave tomorrow morning, but other than that, I've got nothing planned. Right now, I'm exhausted, so I'm going to vent off my last little bit of energy and then head for bed.

Daily excitement

Well yesterday turned out to be quite interesting.

Mr. Braden picked me up at 1:30 PM, as planned, and drove me to work. The drive there was uneventful, but once we got to the Shop Rite parking lot, the first thing I noticed was that there were two cop cars parked out front. Once I got inside, I also saw a few policemen by the time clocks. Not too long after I started my shift and got to my post at the register, two ambulances pulled up, one of which shortly drove off again with someone, blaring the siren and everything. Turns out some guy died in the restroom. Not only that, but from what I heard later, the cops were after him (I know not why). I'm sure I'll be hearing more about this later. I hope I will be, anyway; I'm pretty interested in the circumstances surrounding all this.

Augusta picked me up after work, and she had an interesting story of her own to tell. Apparently, somebody broke into the library the night before last; broke a few glass doors to get in and stole their cash box (without taking the key that was in the drawer right next to it and which, she tells me, contains a relatively minimal amount of money. Since whoever it was left the paintings (some worth thousands of dollars) and the computers (this one should be obvious) untouched, I have to ask myself just how much of an amature this was. The doors they busted were worth more than what they actually stole. I mean, for crying out loud, who breaks into a library?! If you're gonna commit a crime like that, why not pick somewhere that's likely to have something worth stealing? Good lord.

I'm glad this isn't something that happened while Augusta was actually there working, though. Although if breaking into a library is laughable, I think holding one up would actually make me die of hysterics.

So today's a day. Augusta's driving me to work, because Dad decided he wants to stay at the lake longer. While I'm not complaining about getting to spend another car ride chatting with her, I do feel bad about making her drive me around, especially at such short notice - my parents didn't call me and tell me to look for another ride until 9:30 PM last night. I gave Augusta $20 for gas, though, and she doesn't seem too upset about it, so hey.

Now let's see if anything else newsworthy happens at work today...

Top ten ways to annoy a cashier: bonus ways II

#14 - Lack of division: This one's fairly simple: on the conveyor belt, we have divider bars for you to place between the items of your own order and those of another person. The idea is that it shows the cashier where to stop; where one order ends and another begins. But you'd be amazed at how many people simply don't bother - they think that leaving some space between their order and the person in front of them is enough. Newsflash, people: it's an automatic belt. If there's nothing in the way, it'll roll your stuff right up to the front, and we cashiers don't always notice that there wasn't something there before. All sorts of confusion can ensue, often involving us having to void off items that belonged in somebody else's order and ending up needing to call for an override. And that's no fun for anybody.

#13 - Bags, not rags: Like most grocery stores these days, Shop Rite offers a small refund for each bag you bring in and reuse - two cents for each paper or plastic bag, and five cents for every cloth or canvas bag you use. Generally, I like the canvas-type bags - if made well, they hold themselves up better, are more durable, can have more packed into them more easily, and are just generally better than the old plastic bags. However, some people, whether out of a desire to avoid using plastic bags for environmental or durability purposes, or simply for the five-cents-per-bag refund incentive, bring in bags that were simply not made for grocery packing. Deep, heavy cloth book bags with no defined bottom fold that don't hold themselves up at all and are impossible to pack neatly or efficiently. Beach bags made of net that small items tend to slip out of. Now if you're going to pack your own groceries, hey, pick your poison. Be my guest. But if you expect us to bag your groceries for you, it'd be nice if it's with a bag that's not a total pain in the ass. Mind you, we'll pack without complaining either way - it's our job, after all - but that's one way to make it a little easier.

On the note of bags, let me take this opportunity to say that the reusable bags sold by A&P suck in comparison to the one Shop Rite sells - the A&P bags are made of a thick, stiff canvas material which, aside from holding dirt easily and generally being easy to make filthy, tends to mold to its creases when folded, and will keep trying to fold itself back up as we're trying to pack with them. Shop Rite bags, on the other hand, are just as durable, but hold up easily, unfold without trouble, and even have a little hook to hang them on the bagging rack with t stop them from falling over or anything. And they're also cleaner.

Buy my employer's product.

So Dad's gone again. He left last night after I got home from work. He'll be coming back again tomorrow morning in time for me to take the car to work (again), but today, I've got the house to myself. My neighbor's giving me a ride to work in a couple hours, and Augusta'll be picking me up tonight. She wants to watch Vantage Point (which she's borrowed from the library where she works) tonight at her house, so I guess that's my plan for the day. Should be nice - it'll be good seeing her and relaxing a little bit in the middle of my working spree - I worked Thursday and yesterday, I work today, and I work tomorrow and Monday as well. Then I get another three days off, during which the Jagush brothers and their mom will be visiting from Texas. I get to see Gabe's new short hair in person, and he gets to see my new long hair. Heh.

Top ten ways to annoy a cashier: bonus ways

So at work today, I thought of a couple more ways to annoy a cashier that weren't on my original list of ten. Here they are:

#12 - "Here, rub this raw, bloody meat all over your hands:" Nobody really enjoys getting uncooked meat juices all over themselves. And for whatever reason, such meats are often poorly wrapped in plastic so that the blood can get eeeeverywhere. So it makes sense that, when buying "leaky meats," customers often put them in plastic bags. This is all well and good, except when they decide to put several packages of meat in one little plastic bag. Besides just being messy, this means that I, the cashier, have to reach into the bag and pull each package out individually to scan it. If you don't want to touch it, what makes you think I do? Just bag the damn things individually, and then, since the bags are clear, I'll never have to touch 'em. Nothing grosses me out more than having beef and chicken blood all over my hands. Sure, I've got disinfectant, but that's not quite the same as a good, genuine hand-washing.

#11 - Don't bring me into it: Every parent has their own way of disciplining their children, and I respect that, but what I don't like is when they try to bring me into the equation as a tool of fear to keep their kids under control. "Don't do that! You'd better stop or the man will yell at you!" Look, lady, not only does it NOT MATTER if your kids touches the conveyer belt, but I don't want them to be afraid of me! Leave me out of it! This seems to be a common strategy, however; it's often coupled with "you'd better do what I say or the police will come and take you away. They're coming right now!" I don't know about you, but it sickens me a little every time I hear a harried parent telling that to their little three-year-old kid who needs a nap.

Anyway, as far as the rest of my life, I've been having quite a nice summer so far. Went to the shore with Augusta and her family on Tuesday, which was a lot of fun. I managed to get a sunburn on my right foot, but nowhere else. Go figure. Better than my usual, which is every inch of my goddamn body. The Aichems came as well - I haven't really seen them in a long time, but we all had fun talking at dinner and generally socializing. Saw some mole crabs, too, which totally thrilled Augusta. She's so damn cute sometimes.

And speaking of my job, which we sort of were, I've officially tendered my resignation - my last day will be August 3rd, and then I'm taking the remainder of the month off to just sort of relax before going to Rowan on September 1st. At some point (probably the 4th of August, right after I quit), Augusta and I are going to head up to the lake together for a while. My second cousin Wojtek (VOY-tech) is visiting the U.S. from Poland and staying with us - or more specifically, with Mom and David up at the lake. He was only here (as in at our house in New Jersey) for one night (along with Aaron and Andrew) before they left again. So I hope he's having a good time. It sounds like he is. Dad and I have been pretty much home alone for the better part of the last month, but we're having a good time with it - watching movies and eating out, and so forth. And speaking of movies...

I saw Wall-E with Augusta on Monday, and I have to say... I don't care if you're a ten-year-old girl or a 52-year-old biker punk, this movie is too goddamn cute to pass up. It was honestly the first Pixar movie I've really enjoyed in years. It was great. See it now. Your inner teddy bear will thank you.

Top ten ways to annoy a cashier

In my time working as a cashier at Shop Rite, I've generally dealt with good people. Every once in a while, though, you run into that trouble customer, or even just a normally okay person who just doesn't get it. Here's a list of the top ten most aggrevating traits and habits for a customer to have. If you're reading this list, keep it in mind. Be kind to us register-running folk.

#10 - The take-charge type: We cashiers typically have a pattern that we follow for each person we check for, which helps us to get through the order smoothly without forgetting any of the basic procedures or otherwise slipping up. But once in a while, you find that customer who, although most likely trying to be helpful, manages to completely trip you up. This happens when people do things such as reaching around the console separating the customer from the cashier to swipe their discount card over your scanner, or grabbing bags off the rack while you're still filling them. This is doubly irritating because not only does it break the flow of the order, but it's almost offensive, in its own way. To use a metaphor, if cashiering is like driving a remote-controlled car, then these types of behavior is the equivalent of trying to yank the remote out of our hands. Not cool. Sometimes, it transcends mere irritation to cause actual problems - when people reach to try to scan their coupons themselves in the middle of an order, for instance, which causes all sorts of trouble with the computer. Just hand the coupons to us, please, and we'll get them for you after totaling the order; that's how it's supposed to be done.

#9 - Unaware rushers: By this, I mean when people are in such a hurry to get out of the store that they're not even paying attention to what's going on around them. Allow me to relate a story that personifies this: last weekend, I checked for a man with maybe three bags worth of items. He didn't have a cart, and he payed with a check, so after the order was completed, he spent a moment figuring his balance before collecting up his bags and leaving. Meanwhile, I moved on to take the order of an old lady who was only buying a couple loaves of bread. After I finished bagging the bread and totaling the order, I turned around to sort the coupons she had earned from the Catalina coupon printer while she counted out the money she owed me. While we were both looking other places, the first customer finally gathered up his bags, and was paying so little attention to what he was picking up that he managed to grab the lady's bag of groceries in addition to his own and walked off. After she paid (and after he was long gone, rushing as he was), we realized what must have happened, and I had to send her to customer service with her reciept to get what she paid for. This is just one example - other times, I've had people leave bags full of their OWN groceries on the belt and had to chase them down, or run off before I can give them their change. It holds everybody up when you do stuff like this, so don't just go grabbing everything in sight or running off without making sure you have everything.

#8 - "I'll just set this down here:" Another thing that cashiers have their own system for: where to put the coupons before scanning them. We can't take coupons until the very end of the order, after we've totaled it, but if you wait until then to hand them to us, it's easy to forget. So what we normally do is take your coupons at the start of the order, and set them down somewhere that we've trained ourselves to look before taking payment so that we remember to run them through. The problem comes in when somebody doesn't actually hand them to us or even mention that they have coupons at all, and instead just sets them somewhere that they deem appropriate while we're not looking and assumes we'll find them. I always set coupons next to the card payment console, and that is the only place that I'll see them. If you go sticking them on top of the coupon printer or something, you can, I'm sorry to say, kiss your discounts goodbye, because I'm not gonna notice them until I'm handing you your reciept, if indeed I ever find them at all. There's a way for you to make this even more irritating, too: proceed to blame it on us when you never mention your coupons and then we don't get them run through.

#7 - Chronic rebaggers: I like to do my best to bag my customers' groceries as neatly and efficently as possible. I try to put all the frozen foods together, keep the meats separate, make sure all the bags are neat enough to stand on their own, and so forth. But of course, even when you follow those general rules, there are people who would rather have their groceries packed differently from usual; people with bad backs want light bags, people who have to climb up stairs to get into their house want heavier bags, but fewer of them. Some people want certain things separated that most people don't bother with. Everybody has preferences - and I don't mind accomodating them at all! Just let me know how you want your stuff packed, and I'm happy to oblige. However, that key part - let me know - is often forgotten. It's rather insulting to see people out of the corner of your eye rebagging everything as you send it down the belt, rather than telling you how they'd like it done differently. "Why," you ask yourself, "am I bothering to bag this at all if they're going to re-do all of it themselves? Why not just let them bag to begin with?" And then there are the ones who DO decide to tell you how they want it done, only they wait until after the fact. "Actually, could you take these out, put that there, this one can hold more, pass me that..." Look, people, if you want to bag your own groceries, just say so. Don't make me waste my time when I could be moving you on out of the line and getting to my other customers.

#6 - Forgetful in line: I don't know about you, but I don't much like waiting in line behind... nobody. But it happens all the time - people get in line, load their groceries on the belt, and then... "Ah! I forgot something or other! I'll be right back." Now, usually people are considerate enough to do this either when they have a huge order and plenty of time, or nobody in line behind them, but what you have to realize when you're doing this is that even if there's nobody behind you at the time, there's going to be by the time you're back, and I'm the one who has to explain why they're having to stand around waiting while you finish getting the rest of your groceries. And sometimes people AREN'T considerate, and they run off when I've got like three items left and six people in line behind them - typically, they disappear before I can say "actually, could you make that a separate order...?" Don't do this, please. Before you get in line, ask yourself if you've got everything. Get it on the belt ALL AT ONCE - don't be running around finishing up in the middle of your order. Other people don't want to have to wait for you.

#5 - When in Rome, do as the Romans do: I'm pretty sure some people will get ticked off at me for saying this, but it has to be said: if you can't speak enough English to get you through a simple conversation, don't talk to me. I once had somebody who was having a problem with their Price Plus discount card. Now, if I could have communicated with him at all, I most likely could have solved the problem, but he barely spoke a word of English, and what words he did speak were buried in such a thick accent that I couldn't understand them at all. I had to call over a front end manager, and when SHE couldn't understand what he wanted either, we had to take him right out of the line (which he had been holding up for a good ten or fifteen minutes, by this point) and send him to customer service to finish his order. Honestly, I have no disrespect for foreigners, and I know first hand how difficult it can be to make your way through something as simple as making a purchase in another country if you don't know the language, but you need to know when to give up. This guy held the line up for so long over what probably amounted to a discount of no more than a dollar or so. Another thing: normally, I like to make some light conversation with my customers while I'm scanning and bagging their groceries. Something else that I really dislike is when they DO speak English, they say "hello" to me, and then start rapidly conversing with somebody else with them in a totally different language. I guess that's more their business though. And speaking of getting the cold shoulder...

#4 - Get off the damn phone!: When you get in line, and I say hello, it'd be nice if I got a response and some eye contact, but do you know how many people honestly can't be bothered to get off their cell phones for three seconds while they're buying groceries? They just keep gabbing away, and when I finish their order, it sometimes takes some work to get their attention so that they can pay. I had one woman last week who basically stood in place doing nothing for a good two or three minutes after set her up for a credit card payment because she was so distracted talking on her cell phone - thankfully, there was nobody waiting in line behind her, but it was still quite irritating. To be fair, not all cell phone owners act this way - some people are polite enough to say that they're in the store checking out and that they'll call back shortly. But the vast majority just act like the world around them isn't worth their attention.

#3 - Clueless as far as produce: Having worked in the produce department before I became a cashier, I have a fairly solid grasp on the identification of most fruits and vegetables I come across. However, there are still some I don't recognize, and some others that I have a clue about, but can't identify for certain without confirmation. Usually produce items have tags on them with their PLU (Price Look-Up) number, so this is irrelevant. Sometimes the tags are missing, though, and that's when we have a problem. "Are these snow peas?" "Uh, I dunno... maybe... spider peas?" (Tip: there are no such things as "spider peas") Turned out they were snow peas, but if you don't even know what they are, why are you buying them? Same problem with the different types of onions and tomatoes - Vidalia and Red onions I recognize; Canadian vineripe and plum tomatoes, too, but everything else I like to double-check to avoid charging the wrong amount for the wrong type of onion or tomato. But most people buying them don't even know what they are! A similar annoyance is the sometimes-ambiguous labeling of the PLU items from the bakery department, but that's not the customer's fault, so hey.

#2 - All your fruits in one basket: Another produce-related issue. When you know something is sold by weight, don't take six different things and double-bag them all together and then tie it up. I don't want to have to shred through six layers of bag to separate everything out. Either use separate bags, or, if you want to conserve a little, no bags at all. I assume you're going to wash it before you eat it anyway - I HOPE you are, in any case - so what does it matter? Saves everybody time and effort, and if I'm going to have to rip through the bag anyway, it doesn't really need to be there to begin with.

#1 - Honest jerks: As I said at the start of this post, most people I deal with are good people. Most people. But there are some who are simply no good. A story I often relate to friends is the one of a guy who came in on a Saturday night about five or ten minutes before closing and came up to the register with a bag of donuts from the bakery department. Since it was the end of the night, they were getting a little stale - and he decided that this entitled him to a discount. I told him that that wasn't up to me, and directed him to the head front-end manager - she told him that no, she could not offer him a discount on the stale donuts. Then he really started pitching a fit. "These are stale donuts! Are you going to sell these to people? People eat these!" (keep in mind that he asked to get these cheaper KNOWING that they were stale). "Yes," said my manager. "Yes we are." He was left dumbstruck for a moment as she walked off, and then spent the rest of the order being surly and badmouthing my manager ("what a smartass. She's a smartass, you know"). He said that at Dunkin' Donuts, they would give him the donuts cheaper at the end of the night if they were stale. He had come in here LOOKING for stale donuts so that he could try for a discount, and then acted like we were trying to poison him or something when we didn't give him one. What an ass.