I have no idea why the woman in line behind me said this.

We were in line late one night at a large chain store getting a few groceries. Just this weekend.

The lines were horrible. Some guy at the next station ahead of us (there are two rows of registers, like they have in Target) yelled that he was open. I dashed down there pushing the cart and some young woman came in between the first and second rows of registers, sideways from another row and said she got there first. Then we stopped and my honey said "you can go first".
Well, they decided to get behind us.

We started grumbling about the lack of checkers. My honey and I were saying "God forbid they should hire enough checkers to handle the customers. Gotta keep that bottom line looking good for Corporate America by not spending money for checkers. They couldn't think of the customers and accommodate them properly" etc.

Anyway, my honey went ahead while I was unloading the cart onto the conveyor belt. This young woman customer and her greasy tall male companion were there behind us. A friend we were with was directly behind us in line with his own stuff, saying nothing. He's also pretty tall.

I heard her say fairly loudly, "Sir, you should keep your opinions to yourself". My honey didn't hear her and moved forward to write the check.

I should have turned around and asked this witch (j.g.) what her problem was. We told the checker we weren't mad at him, that the managers or the company should hire more checkers, and he was probably worth twice as much as they paid him. He was grinning the whole time. We were not mad at him.

I have no idea why this woman said that, as we were not criticizing her, nor were we criticizing the checkers.

All I could figure out was that since this was in a very conservative rural area, that she was some kind of fundie sheep who doesn't think anyone should complain about anything. I was going to ask her if she was a Corporate Executive of Gigaworldstore, Inc. or something, because we were complaining about the corporate management. Or ask her if she had ever heard of the Constitution of the United States or the Bill of Rights or the First Amendment.

:shrug: :wtf:

I'm baffled. Is this what right-wing America acts like because they can't win a rational argument or what?

to herself if that is the
way she felt?
I think she was probably just an asshole.

I'm always sure to use the clerks who are checking out the items, even if I only have a couple of items. I will actually stand in line behind someone who is obviously buying groceries for a whole week just so I don't rob the other employees in those self check out lines. Support American labor, dammit!

I fucking refuse to use self-checkers. The day will come soon enough that we have robot overlords. In the meantime, I'll stick with actual humans.

I'm not all that keen on doing free labor for their corporations.

$3 to wait in line and renew your plates with a human rather than by mail. Ridiculous. Not that I want to wait in line at the DMV, I'd prefer to do it by mail but I think it's sick to charge a fee to have a human transaction -- which sounds dirty but you know what I mean

ETA: I suppose that will be the way stores will start doing it too; charge us more to have an actual human checker instead of doing it ourselves. I watched Idiocracy over the weekend and I can't help but think that it's pretty much dead on how our future is going to be if we don't turn shit around.

A shame that it is the truth about NOW rather than some probable future

It was funny but also a kick in the gut because it's like your worst nightmare come true. But absolutely you've got to see it.

And I loved it! It is pure genius! And so funny that I can't help laughing when I try to describe it.

Not because of the possible future it depicts, but because that's the way we are right now. Our world is crumbling around us. There are fools and idiots in power. Fools and idiots who can in no way whatsoever solve the problems they were ostensibly elected to solve. We've got brain-dead "shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never" cops enforcing a carnival fun-house mirror version of the law. We are destroying our environment as fast as we possibly can. Profit mongers are standing in the way of any and all progress that might diminish their haul by so much as a penny. We entertain ourselves with stupid, insipid, immoral, amoral, lurid, oversexed, violent and ghoulish trash. People with even a modicum of intelligence are figures of ridicule, and the worst insult you can be tagged with is "gay". People are mean, stupid, petty, selfish, single-minded and gun-crazed.

"Idiocracy" is not 500 years from now...it's NOW.

:rant:

Sorry. End of rant.

I REFUSE to go in Kroger after 9 pm, because they get rid of the live checkers.
You are supposed to put your stuff in bags on a big flat scale, and then if you run outta room, and take the bags off to put in your bag, the supervisor dude comes over and says "I didn't explain it to you properly". And the machine barks at you.

Yeah, riiiiight. Not enough room to put your stuff down and bag it in the first place.



:banghead:

I have been known to leave my basket and go to another store if there are long lines. I know it is rude, but I have complained before about this policy. I can understand it after 11pm or so, but being a working stiff myself, I have varied hours.

and maybe it will carry your bags to your car ;)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5349770802105160028&pr=goog-sl

No use being nostalgic about this sort of thing.

It's about people losing jobs because of the self-checker. :shrug:

This is like using a typewriter to save the typewriter worker jobs. It's nostalgia.

I'd ask you, please use the self-checkout.

It's easier for us. Plus the self-checkouts usually have an employee watching them, so someone is getting paid for running them.

Plus is makes our lines shorter, and people less grumpy.

Besides, what do you do about the problem I mentioned?
Those scales do NOT have ENOUGH ROOM to put all your groceries on it before you check out, if you have half a cart full.

Just so I can be all confused and require assistance from the live person standing around at customer service. Whenever I use one I act as if it is my first time. Takes twice as long for them to get me out of the store than if I'd just gone to a live person register. And I always exclaim loudly "This is such a pain. I am never doing this again. Can't they just hire more humans?"

Just doing my small part to annoy people at the store. :-) And make machines part of the problem. Am I evil?

So I use the cashier checkouts whenever possible.

But I use the machines at the movie theater to avoid the long lines.

That corporate america is screwing her over and everyone else. She was a customer too.
She wasn't a manager. She wouldn't know protected speech if it bit her in the ass.

Any other answers?

Or just wanted to carp at somebody.

she should have kept her opinions to herself..I have noticed how lean the supply of checkers are at Walmart here..I have seen people walk away from their carts full of stuff because of the long wait.

Carly

I had a friend who decided to go the "born again" route. They take the commandment "Thou shalt not take the Lord God's name in vain" very seriously when they're in public.

I had to laugh after this friend told me how deeply her heart was pierced whenever she heard someone say God or Jesus as a swear word. As I was leaving her house that night, and walking toward my car, I heard something clatter inside, and clearly heard her spout, "God dammit!" :rofl:

She doesn't know what real swearing sounds like, obviously.

Christ on a motorized, solid-state pogo stick.

:rofl:

I'd feel honored. :rofl:

My response to her servile statement is, "Why?"

I feel that way sometimes, imagining myself to be eight feel tall and 600 lbs. My mouth opens and things come out that could get me beaten to a pulp, but I do it anyway. Go figure.

that's a good indicator the store is going out of business or is failing.

They probably hired as much as they can hire. Even if you complained to the manager, there's nothing he can do. He probably wants more cashiers too, but can't hire them.

Citizens shouldn't tell how they feel out loud in crowds :eyes:

It sounds like you were complaining about the service, and her perception was that you were being rude, and maybe even a little demanding in expecting that people should be there to serve you immediately without you having to wait for anything - especially as they were clearly in the process of opening additional lines as this was going on. She might have thought also that it was a little crazy for you to be racing with your cart trying to beat other people to the newly opened register. It was nice of her to let you go ahead of her, anyway.

I don't think that has anything to do with how "greasy" her companion was (not sure why his appearance is your business), or why it's related to her religious beliefs, or why you are including the height of her companion in this. I admit I'm somewhat intrigued by the details you chose to include, though.

"A friend we were with was directly behind us in line with his own stuff, saying nothing. He's also pretty tall. "

Anyway, it doesn't sound like she was being a witch (sexist language noted). She let you go ahead of her, she was expressing an opinion that maybe you shouldn't be loudly complaining about the service. It'd be kind of funny if she was off somewhere today complaining about the fundie witch ahead of her in line who was running with her cart to get ahead of people and complaining about the store not opening new lines - as they were opening new lines. ;)

lounge, people are almost willing to automatically assume the poster is in the right, or has the higher moral ground, because she/he is from DU.

And we stopped and discussed it for a few seconds. I explained that already.

I pointed out the height of my friend and her companion, because I'm small, and older than this woman was, and if we had gotten in an altercation, I probably would be overpowered. That's why.

And we had ALREADY been waiting in the previous line for a long time -- the folks ahead of us in the previous line had two to three carts FULL of stuff they were checking out.


As far as why she said that, I vote for a previous poster's theory of Stockholm Syndrome -- having to bond with her awful employers, because she probably has a crummy job like most people do these days. I am assuming that nearly all employers are exploiting every worker in every way they can, so she is warning others from speaking out, or they will get in trouble. Even though she wasn't an employee.


I think we're turning into pre-WW II Germany or Stalin's Russia. Don't comment about ANYTHING -- express NO opinions other than complete support of the State -- be a good little German or they'll ship you off and you'll never be seen again.

Why on earth would violence have broken out? You were really sizing up who you could or couldn't take, in a grocery line? Over something like this?

It sounds like she may have just gotten fed up listening to a couple of people with an attitude complaining that the store wasn't serving them fast enough. From your OP, it doesn't sound like you were overly concerning with employee rights. The concern seems to be about you, and your expectation that you shouldn't have to wait in line. "They couldn't think of the customers and accommodate them properly" And you sound a little annoyed that she rushed to get to that line, even though you did the same.

She didn't seem to be warning anyone against speaking out "against the state" from what you relayed here, more likely just wishing you didn't feel the need to share your ill tempers with the rest of the people there - nobody really likes listening to other people's bitterness, you know? And a lot of people do think it's rude to complain about the service you are getting in front of the people who are giving you that service. Even if you qualified it afterwards.

If you are comparing this to Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany or Stockholm Syndrome, you might be overreacting a bit (and having your own issues with other people expressing their opinion).

I was in Russia during the cold war. (not under Stalin, heh.) In the largest dept store, we waited on one line, and when we got to the front, we could tell the salesperson what we wanted. They would give us a slip of paper with the price. Then we went to a second line. When we made it to the front of that, we could hand over the slip of paper and pay. Then we had to go back to the first line again, and wait on that. At the front of that line (for the second time), we showed a receipt that we'd paid. And the salesperson would hand over the item we were buying. Unlike a department store here, each department there was sort of its own separate store, so you had to do that for each separate category of item you wanted. The system kept a lot of people employed, that's one thing I can say for it.

Second experience this reminds me of: doing relief work in NOLA. There was a woman who came to the distribution center one day, and was hoping for onions. I told her we'd had a load of them delivered, but they were so moldy we were embarrassed to put any out; we thought it would be insulting, like we were trying to serve them garbage. She asked if she could see them and sort through them , because the nearest store with onions was a half hour away, and they were marked up so high there she couldn't afford them. So we went out back, I pulled out a pocket knife, and we sat down by a giant pile of rotting onions, with flies swarming around it, and started cutting the tops off onions so she could see which ones only had to have the outer layers removed, but were still edible once you got past the moldy parts.

Anymore, if I am in a line that is moving slow, I try to remember that I am in a privileged place in the world - anything I need, I basically have access to. If I have to wait 20 minutes in a line for a cart full of groceries, I remember that I've lived in places where there wasn't a grocery store, and we had to create meals out of things that were donated and spoiling. And even at that, I was privileged, because that's more than a lot of people have.

We live in a society that elevates shopping almost to the level of a religion, fetishizes it, to quote one of my friends, and so we get very angry and personally insulted when that that experience isn't as efficient and pleasurable for us as humanly possible. It's sort of our right, our entitlement as Americans, to go into a store, find it well stocked, and get whatever we want right now, no waiting.

If you step out of that culture for a bit and return to it, we look - as a society - somewhat greedy and demanding. It's not a good look.

I can't "take anyone down". Large people are intimidating to me, and always will be. I had no idea if this woman was going to escalate her comments or not.

I WAS concerned about employee rights. YOU didn't hear what I told the checker. I was not mad at the checker. Staffing decisions are not his decision. He just works there.

I don't think waiting for a long time, when there are plenty of other people lining up with carts full of stuff, is a good idea for the company. They could lose customers that way.

However, in the U.S., meeting the needs of the customer is usually unfashionable and takes red tape.

I have no idea why grocery stores put 20 or 25 checker stations across the front and only open a very few of them, and the lines are building up. In fact, the manager probably has HIS supervisors regulating exactly how many people he can hire per shift, and there is no allowance for fluctuations in traffic. They could easily find out what their peak times are for the store, from their sales database, and anticipate that. They are not known for customer service and possibly learning from the complaints of customers.

I was NOT standing there demanding to be waited on first. There were quite a few people, maybe a hundred waiting in about three lines.

And if you think I'm one of these materialistic Americans that shops for entertainment, and stuff I don't need, think again.

I do not enjoy shopping, and I rarely buy clothes. I still have clothes in my closet from 1983, and I'm female.

I was just trying to get a few groceries, for gawd's sake.

You know, where people who have been abducted bond with their captors? I think that for some blue collar people, they're so grateful to still have a job (any job - anywhere) that they come to depend emotionally upon the same corporations that are treating them so badly.

Alternative Explanation: The woman is just a flaming idiot.

...never overlook the obvious explanation!