I’ll wait.
Hired in my junior year, P&C Foods took up a lot of my free time. A smaller grocery store chain, it was much cooler for people to drive the extra 15 minutes to get to the ever-popular Wegmans, rather than shop at our humble, over-priced P&C. Even so, I enjoyed my work for the year and a half before I left for college. I vowed never to go back.
Christmas break found me poor. In P&C, I found paychecks. I went back.
Summer break found me poorer. I vowed never to go back.
And so we ended my run at the P&C 103 with the following Christmas break. I worked two weeks, became sick and tired (literally), vowing never to step foot in the door with my navy blue polo again.
It’s been a year, but I am, once again, broke. So I meandered to Manlius, looking for gainful employment. And gainful I found. But I’ve found the same old problems with the grocery store life, just a different crowd.
This blog will probably devote a lot of time to my grocery store pet peeves, though this will cover the first.
At P&C, we have questions that are imperative to ask. Do you have your wild card, did you find what you are looking for. As human beings, we extend the common courtesy to ask how your day is, acting as peasants for your every need, want and whimper.
That being said, get off of your cell phone. No, I don’t care about what Laura wore to the Christmas party. I don’t care to hear about your cheating husband. Or your grandfather’s nasty rash. I care about getting your money for your overpriced goods, and tending to the next customer so management is compelled to sign my paychecks. That is what I care about. So unless that cell phone connected to your ear is going to a) cure cancer or b) sign my paycheck, I would suggest you listen to me when you get to the forefront of the register.
If you don’t automatically decide that your frivolous conversation is not more important than manners, I have crafted a foolproof plan. I wait to ring the groceries. And I wait. And then I wait some more.
Eventually, the customer looks at me. And I tell them politely that I will wait until they are ready. I don’t want to interrupt their conversation with my unimportant babble about saving money, after all.
They always hang up their expensive phone, put it in their furry pockets and hand me their diamond-rimmed keychains where their Wild Card rests. Did I mention I work in the uppity part of central New York?
