1st PSA for customers: It is not polite to slam a wine bottle down on your cashier's knuckles when she is grabbing an item off the belt to scan it. In the event that you do such a thing accidentally, politeness calls for a brief apology. Removing your headphones from your ears while checking out is also considered polite. Additionally, doing this might also help you focus your attention better so you do not go around accidentally bruising your cashier when unloading your handbasket. Just so you know....
2nd PSA for customers: Trash receptacles are provided all around the store and around the outside of the building. Please deposit your trash there. The following locations are not authorized trash receptacles: the floor (can I repeat this one a few times?? The floor is not a trash bin!! It isn't, I swear!), your cart, a table, a windowsill, a handbasket, the Valencia oranges display, the seafood bar, my register's belt, my hand, on top of your groceries on my belt, the display of cold drinks near the registers, the display of bottled water, the overflow of carts on the side of the building, the cheese sample display, the display of eggs for sale, the bushes near the building, the guacamole display, the coffee bar's milk/sugar/creamer table, the top of the bulk foods bins, the end of my bagging area, etc. I think I missed a few places, but I think that gives you an idea of appropriate/inappropriate places for garbage disposal. If you were confused, I hope this little PSA helped.
3rd PSA for customers: Don't complain about the cost of your container of salad bar/hot bar food at the registers. No one told you that you had to grab a pound and a half of food. That is a lot of food, so it will not cost mere pennies. If you're buying food made from organic ingredients prepared by excellent cooks (many with culinary school training and/or years of experience) who are making a living wage it will cost you more than Burger King fare. And it will be both tastier and a ton more healthy as well, so it's worth the higher cost. We have signs posted detailing the cost per pound of our salad bar and hot bar foods. Please note the price listed is not negotiable.
4th PSA for customers: When you show me your ID when purchasing alcohol I am not adding all your personal information into a database. Notice that I take two seconds to peruse your photo, date of birth, expiration date and make sure the card is valid, then I enter 6 digits into the database (your date of birth) and that is all I am entering. We are not compiling information for the government so they can keep tabs on you. I am merely complying with the state laws, so please do not take up five minutes of my time giving myself and my manager grief because I have to follow the local laws.
5th PSA for customers: Due to the economy we do not have a designated person who spends their entire day getting carts. The people you see outside cart wrangling are doing this in the few spare minutes they can snatch between rushes. Please be kind and place your cart in a cart return. We have four of them in the parking lot, so there should always be one somewhere near you. Please do not take the cart to the far end of parking lot, leave your cart next to your car, or make the cart go adventuring in the planters as retrieving these carts takes up time I really cannot spare.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
A Few Public Service Announcements
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5 comments:
PSA #1: What a dick.
PSA#2: Um, gross?
PSA#3: I'd like to add that there is an entire philosophy school of thought on Free Will. In other words, nobody makes you do anything. Including shopping at the $9.99 a pound hot bar.
PSA#4: Don't lie. You know you're scanning the ID with your bionic retina that secretly stores a photograph of the ID and the grocery receipt and later uploads it into the NSA's "Beer and Wine Buyers Database".
Alternately, PSA#4: To that individual, please refer to #3 above. Including buying beer and wine. If you're that paranoid, move to northern Idaho and make your own.
PSA#5: Same person as #1?
Re: PSA #1...yeah, I have a nice, dime sized purply brown bruise right where the gentleman in question banged his wine down on one of the bones in my knuckles. Still hurts. :(
PSA #5 is A LOT of people. We have a ton of nice regulars who see us dashing about grabbing carts so they're ultra nice & take their carts **all** the way back to the store (what angels!!! I thank them everytime I see them do it), but we also have people who treat us like we're a crap store.
Re: PSA #3....wow, hot bar prices are high in your area! We're $7.99 a pound for both salad and hot bar. Given that all the meat is vegetarian raised, free range, no antibiotics, etc., that is a HUGE bargain if you ask me. And salad bar is on special $5.99/lb on Mondays, so a lot of our regulars (i.e., the ice skaters, hckey players, gymnasts, etc.) stock up on the heavier stuff then, like the fancy noodle dishes and special cooked chicken and tofu and all.
And, re: PSA #4...my mom's older brother moved to northern ID and was a bit "out there" by my family's standards (which is saying a lot as it is "entirely normal" to be super self sufficent, a bit dstrusting of police & governent, have at least 3 months worth of stored food, freeze/can your garden & farmer's market excess, etc., so we're already a bit "odd") and, you know, even *he* wasn't anywhere near that paranoid. The lady's 60 something year old mom was soooo embarassed by her daughter's behavior.
Alright. I promise I have started putting my carts all the way back in the store since I read your first cart post. And I admit to taking a few deep breaths when having my salad/hot bar food checked out, not complaining, just like "Wow. I had no idea what I put in that container weighed that much."
Now let me say something.
I was at whole foods not long ago, looking at the tortillas, which are somewhat near the checkout. I noticed a deli bag full of ground beef in the, very uncold, bread rack.
A woman in an apron walked by and I said "Excuse me!" and then, assuming she couldn't here me since most people can't, I raised my voice slightly and said "Miss! Excuse me." She turned around, steaming slightly and strained a "YES?"
"I'm sorry but I think there is a pound of beef in the bread area."
"A pound of beef in the bread area (pissed off sounding)? WELL, if you would let me go ahead and make *my* purchase, I will *most definitely* grab it on my way back (now sounding sarcastic and rude)."
Seriously, I was trying to be helpful. I didn't really think a pound of unrefrigerated raw meat sitting around looked good for the store. Customer service hello? If you're on your break and you want to walk thru the store and not be questioned, maybe take your apron off? Totally rude!!!
Ruthie: I get out and out *complaints* about the cost of the food on the salad and hotbar. I don't mind the "wow, it weighed that much?" responses, but those who think that paying $9 for well over a pound of awesome, well prepared fancy food gives them a right to bitch and moan at me piss me off.
And, on behalf of those in my field in your area, I thank you for putting your cart back!
On the apron front....my theory is you should take your apron ALL THE WAY OFF. Always, no matter what. I have coworkers, however, who think that undoing the neck strap and having the front dangle down (or one side of the front dangling down) is an automatic sign that they're off he clock. Doesn't look like that to me, if I were a customer I'd think that if there is an apron on in any way/shape/form it means they're on the clock, therefore I take mine all the way off. Management says it's OK to do this, but to me it's unclear to the customer, therefore wrong for me.
Plus, I think it looks trashy to have one apron string dangling down, the apron pulled over to the side, and a big old t-shirt covered boob sticking out at everyone. We don't need to see that!
Additionally, not an excuse, but I will mention that some of my coworkers might be wearing an inappropriate shirt (like one manager has a "social workers do it in the field" shirt) and they don't take the apron off at all, even when on break, because it might offend someone, and all the 5 million regulars know our faces by now, so apron off does not mean anonymous. I think it's all crazy, personally. Take your apron off and it's a sign you're off the clock.
That said, if I was Meg the Cashier shopping as a customer and not on the clock and saw spoiled out food like that I have in the past, and would in the future, still take it up to customer service to be written off and thrown out. It's a safety hazard (meat juice could potentially leak into the bread...eww!), could cause us to have to write off not just the meat but the whole bin of bread if the meat leaked costing us tons of $$, plus it makes the store look bad. Really bad. Like it makes us look like we don't watch over the front end and aren't doing our hourly Gleason walks to look for that sort of stuff and pick it up.
We would lose a lot of points on our mystery shop for that sort of inattention to detail (and that girl would get a big fat ZERO on her mystery shop and have to spend a very boring hour being retrained).
Oh my goodness. I would love to have a store that had a salad - hot bar in it! NO such luck here. Not even in our Wally World 30 miles away.
Anyway I always put my cart up or I take my few bags out and the cart never goes outside. The cart never goes out in the rain - thats not nice. Getting a cart that is dripping wet and getting the flour bag wet - yuck!
I agree on the others things also, the being polite. MInding your manners in the checkout line. Take out the earphones!! So oyu may hear that your salad bar item is more then $5.
The number one thing I don't like at stores is when they look at you and say you want to do what? When I am wanting them to use my reuseable bags. They act like its a big deal. Or too much work to place them on the bag rack and use them.urge
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