There are times like these that I lose all hope for the next generation:
I was returning home late one night, and stopped into a "major grocery store" to pick up something to eat for dinner, as well as the basic supplies of milk, bread, Diet Coke and Keebler cookies. I didn't need much - it all fit nicely in a small hand basket - and I figured that I could be out of here fairly quickly.
Well, it turns out that there were only two people on checkout that night. The first lane - a "full service" lane - had three people backed up in it, while a pimply-faced scrawny teen with nose piercings was losing a battle with the register. It seemed that the register decided that things were too quiet, so it proceeded to eat it's own register tape, happily tearing it to shreds and winding it over all moving parts within a three foot radius.
The clueless lad was first calling over the paging system for some help, but no one came to his rescue. He was poking at it with a screwdriver, and even trying to stick scissors in it (of course, still plugged in and operational)
I looked around for another open lane, only to discover that the second cashier was supervising the self-checkout lanes. As I took a step towards the self checkout, the other three people (a teen girl, an older boy, and a middle-aged guy) suddenly see what I see, and we all stampede to the self checkout.
Only two registers were open, and there were four of us, so out of the goodness of my heart I let the two young kids go first - one on each lane.
The boy had 3 large bags of potato chips, half a dozen TV dinners, a bag of peanut M&M's and a six-pack of Mountain Dew Code Red - or as I see it, another late-night stoner going out for a quick snack.
In the other lane the girl had a more sensible selection, comprising of three loaves of Italian bread, various plastic bags of fresh fruit and veggies, and some soy milk. Why she needed to buy this at 1:30am was still a mystery to me, but hey, you do what you have to do.
While the older guy and I wait patiently for these kids to ring up their own orders, we see that BOTH of them are having troubles with various items not being picked up by the barcode scanner. It was almost laughable - she swiped the first loaf of bread, and it worked fine. The second loaf had a creased barcode, and for some reason, wasn't working at all. She passed it over the scanner over and over again, and each time it failed, making her more and more puzzled.
The stoner had the same problem with the bag of chips. First one worked, second one failed.
It became a game - how long would it take for either brain surgeon to realize that they could just pick up the first bag, and scan it multiple times to account for the remainder in the order?
After a few minutes of unabashed parallel stupidity, I realized that this was going down as a tie - neither one was EVER going to get it right. I was hoping that a manager would show up, and as I looked around, never saw one - but I did see a poster of "manager of the year" - it was some no-neck troglodyte named "Randy" who really needed to get his shirts tailored better.
Well, at this time of the morning, between hunger and exhaustion and a complete lack of compassion for the mentally challenged, my evil little mind figured out a way to get things moving faster. I walked over to the young girl, leaned over and said "You do know that it's a state law that says if a scanner fails to read your item after five tries, you get it for free, right?" And I said it loud enough for the stoner to hear me as well.
"Really?", she said
"Would I lie to you?", I answered, without answering her.
"I don't think so. I can't get this bread to scan", she offered
"Then I guess you get it for free", I said, and with that, she tossed that loaf into her bag, and continued scanning.
The stoner turned to me and said "These chips won't scan, either. Does that mean I get them for free as well?"
"Hey, the law is the law!", I replied.
Well, it seemed that store clerk #2, a somewhat emo-looking boy who looked like he was one step away from trying to dance with a freight train overhead me, then came walking quickly up, all serious and angry. "I heard what you told these customers - and I've never heard about that state law before!"
It was time for me to either go big or go home - and I wasn't ready for bed just yet. "Excuse me, but how long have you worked here?", I demanded.
"Four months", he answered, trying to be tough. I laughed in his face, "Noob! I've been doing retail for over 20 years! Who do you think trained Randy? He may have been employee of the month, but everything he learned, he learned from me. I knew about that scanning rule for years - why were you never taught it? Was Randy your boss?"
"No", he answered, "but I wish he was - I heard he was a real good guy."
"Yeah, he was", I said, "so, now do you believe me? Or do you want these customers to come back and complain that they had problems checking out - and you wouldn't obey the state sales laws? Depending on the sales, you could be slapped with a fine, or spend a little time in the county lockup. Your choice", I said, very convincingly.
He looked around, then at the young customers and said "you heard the rules - if it's not scanning, you get it for free!"
Sure enough, each kid had picked up a bit of "free" food because of the temperamental scanners - and the second cashier was so proud of himself that he did the same thing that "Randy would have done".
No one questioned me, and everyone believed what I said as true. I left there, paying for everything and making a mental note that I should never go back there again.
The funniest part is one I can only speculate on - the next day was Monday - how many customers would be getting "free items" on the self checkout today - before the REAL supervisor put a stop to things....
Mwuhuhuhuhehehehehe...
So many kids - so little brains!