Lazy Shoppers
Working at a grocery store (as I do) one begins to see certain observable patterns in human behavior. From these observations, one can make certain generalizations about the human race. Perhaps the most prevalent of these generalizations I personally have made during my illustrious grocery career is that people, in general, can be lazy, inconsiderate creatures.
There are several areas where this becomes readily apparent to anyone who takes the time to stop and watch people. The first is the front end. What does the typical customer do when they enter the grocery store? Normally, if they are planning on buying anything more than a pop and a candy bar, chances are they grab a shopping kart as they enter the building. But what does the typical human do when for some strange reason there are no karts available near the entrance? Logic dictates that one would simply turn around, go out the door and fetch one of the karts outside near the entrance. But, logic is apparently suspended within the confines of a grocery store because many times the kartless shopper will just wait near the entrance until some intrepid courtesy clerk comes gallantly through the door pushing a line of carts right into their waiting arms. Or, on those rare occasions when no courtesy clerk appears, many people will walk up to the checkstand and ask the checker to get someone to bring in carts. Thereby expending as little energy as possible. The question that comes to mind is: Why? Why would a person want to wait for an indeterminate length of time hoping that someone will come by and notice their plight? Why not just go through the door, walk five feet, and get a kart from outside? The answer is laziness, pure and simple. That’s all there is to it.
Another area in which the laziness of the human race becomes apparent is the bottle return. In most stores today there are container redemption machines available, so no human contact is necessary for the redemption of a bottle deposit. However, the store I work at hasn’t been remodeled since the 1970s and has very little in the way of modern conveniences of that nature (roughly translated, that means that we ain’t got no damn bottle machines). Therefore, employees like myself are empowered to handle the counting and sorting of said beverage containers.
The first container-related indicator of human laziness comes with the customer’s trip from the front door back to the entrance to the beverage container reclamation facility (bottle room). Many customers come in with one or two medium sized plastic bags full of cans. Now, I’ve lifted these bags before, many times in fact, and not once have I found them to be overly heavy or difficult to carry. So, this leads me to wonder why so many customers feel the need to place these oftentimes filth-covered bags into a shopping cart for the trip to the back door. Is it because of a strong electro-magnetic field within the store that causes aluminum cans to gain great weight when one crosses the threshold of the entrance? Sources say no.
Or, the thing that really gets me, when people manage to carry their cans all the way to the store in a plastic bag, only to dump them into a cart when they arrive. Why? What is wrong with just carrying them to the back in the bag they brought with them? This is also a very unsanitary practice. I wonder if these people ever stop to think about the risk they are putting other customers at. People put food in those carts. I’ve seen the kind of stuff that comes in with those bags of cans, and believe me, it isn’t pretty (or sanitary for that matter). I often marvel that there isn’t a health ordinance against this.
Yet another example of a laziness indicator comes when the courtesy clerk has finished counting the cans, and returns the kart to the customer along with their bottle slip. The customer then turns around and walks toward the front, WITHOUT THEIR KART! What is so hard about returning the kart to the front end? They managed to push it all the way to the back (and all by themseleves, too). I often wonder if it is due to a temporary lapse of vision which renders them unable to see the large metal mass occupying the 3-foot expanse between them and the clerk holding the slip at the end of their outstretched arm. Or perhaps they believe that there is a tribe of dwarves living in the bottle room and they return the karts, or maybe they think that there is a magical kart transporter in the back room and the clerk just pushes the kart onto it and says "abracadabra, alakazam, this kart will now be at the fifth checkstand." Well, there isn’t. The only way to get those karts back up front is for someone to push it up there. I realize that it is part of the job, but it really is a matter of common courtesy. The clerk is doing them a service by counting their cans, and the person repays them by creating more work for them to do. Hardly seems fair, does it?
I am sure many people will read this and counter by saying "hey, getting karts in and counting cans is part of your job." and to those people I would like to say I know, and I am as happy to perform those aspects of my job as I am to perform any other, that’s not why I am writing this. I just wanted to share some of my observations with you, the reader so that you might begin to see similar aspects of human nature in your daily life. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am a bitter, cynical, pissed-off grocery store employee, I promise….
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I hate this guy, get me outta here!
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