A few winning customer experiences...

I don't know what got into the drinking water yesterday, but the darling customer base of my fine grocery store was in a mood.  Like, severely cranky and uptight, more so than usual.  I think maybe it was the onset of, ahem, "San Francisco summer", which is pretty much some of the crappiest weather we get all year aside from the rainy winter months.  I'm willing to buy into seasonal depression as a possible culprit, but really people, just pop some zanax and calm down.  As a grocery clerk, I am not out to get you, I swear.  


Here are some examples of yesterday's follies:

• Switching register drawers takes a minute.  Unfortunate, but true.  As a lowly part-timer, I have to rely on management to open the register.  Apparently, this process was taking a little too long for one older gentlemen, who started yelling at me to "hurry up" and that he "hasn't got all day".  I love irate senior citizens, they are some of my favorite angry customers, mostly because they rarely have a realistic sense of what's going on and they can't hear very well.  I decided to just play up the sappy kindness, because in my experience, that only really pisses them off more.  What a delight.
• A man wanted to pay for his purchase with a credit card that wouldn't scan.  He told me I would have to enter it manually, and that our system never takes it.  Fair enough.  I would gladly enter the card manually, but we just recently changed our policy and require a physical print of the card and a form of ID.  Well, that just wouldn't do at all.  "I do this every time I'm here!"  The man spat, "If you guys just fixed your system, I wouldn't have to deal with this all the time!  You guys need to get your act together!"  Keep in mind, his card expires this month.  
• I was giving a customer his change, and I forgot twenty cents. These things happen.  It's an express lane, I move fast, and sometimes I move too fast.  But instead of just casually accepting the mistake for what it was, this guy actually SNAPS HIS FINGERS IN MY FACE and says "Hello!"...nuff said.  

All in all, a fascinating day at ye old grocery store.  But you know what, these pale in comparison to some of the other customer experiences I've had, so really I should be grateful that it wasn't any worse.