Today's blog is a wee bit late, which I apologize for. The late hours I'm being scheduled for have really been dragging me down, and a few, specific employees aren't helping. I'm determined to keep these posts coming, though. Today's story actually happened on Saturday, the 6th, and I hope I never have to experience this same situation again.
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~ The day before yesterday was an extremely busy day. With hoards of customers doing their last-minute Super Bowl shopping, the long lines refused to dwindle. Because of this, I ended up on a regular register for most of my shift. During this time, there is one customer experience which sticks out very predominately in my memory. While you're reading this, please keep in mind that I do my best to be very pleasant with my customers. I greet them, ask how their doing, and so forth before ringing them up and sending them off with a, "Have a nice day." When the store is busy, this can sometimes be very hard to do. The reason I'm making a point of mentioning this is to hopefully help you to understand why this particular experience rubbed me so wrongly.
I was checking out a younger couple, who were in their mid 20's, when the gentleman started up some light banter with me. He was really friendly and almost in too good of a mood for me to bear (which is relatively hard to do.) As he was going on about how busy it was and how he knew it could be hard to put up with such a busy day, he spoke one line that has scarred me for the rest of my life. I've heard this line before, but never from a customer, and most definitely not during such a hectic day. When he said it, in my mind I could see myself leaping over the check out counter, landing on the customer, and bashing his skull into the hard floor repeatedly. He's lucky that was just in my head, though. In actuality, I just smirked and kept on scanning the items that the woman he was with was handing me.
The accursed phrase he spoke was, "Well, a smile is the most important part of your uniform, after all."
That man could have been the president of the United States and I still would have wanted to inflict major, physical harm on him. Of all of the things I've had customers say to me, this is by far the most anger-inducing thing I've had the misfortune of hearing in all of the time that I've been a cashier. I really could care less about how innocent he intended the phrase to be. Under the circumstances I was in, he could have stabbed me in the arm with a butcher knife and it probably would have hurt less. At least then I could have had the chance to become numb from going into shock.
Unfortunately, the strictly mental assault did not have the trauma force required to induce the medical emergency I was yearning for. I finished ringing up the rest of their items as quickly as possible and sent them on their merry little way. Over all, the situation finally made me realize one thing I had never been able to understand: There is such a thing as being 'too nice.'
3 comments:
wow...I would have had to hold back from punching him in the mouth for that one.
gag me. you should have told him to do your job for a day. THEN see if he's smiling in his uniform or not.
I bet this man was probably not the smartest one on the block. You know you do your work good and not a 20 something year old "boy" can tell you that. Sometimes, when that happens to me, I want to ask: I am sorry, what do you mean by saying that? Then, they have a mouth full of water.
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