“Just your social security number, an emergency contact number, an alternate email, a work reference, and the keys to your car, and that magazine is all yours.”
Is it just me (it usually is) or is it virtually impossible to walk into a store these days and just slap some cash or a credit card down for a lousy purchase and be about your business? I mean, from the minute you walk in the door: What can I help you with this morning? Do you know what you’re looking for? Can I be of assistance? Do you need a cart? Do you know about our Three-for-One sale? Are you OK? Are you doing all right?
What the hell? I’ve been in emergency rooms that weren’t this solicitous of my well-being. And then they follow you around like a child-labor lawyer at a Foxconn plant. So you start walking faster and faster to lose them, winding your way through aisles, labyrinthine-style (Serpentine! Serpentine!) — and before you know it, you’re on the street again and forgot what you came in for in the first place.
Let’s say you find what you’re looking for and make it to the cashier. Do you have our Shoppers Reward Card? Are you a member of the Bonus Club? Can I have your telephone number? Can I have your zip code? Would you like to donate a dollar to our Acme All-Purpose Children in Distress Charity? Please like us on our Facebook page. Apply for our credit card and you’ll get 2% off your purchase today.
I JUST WANT TO PAY FOR MY FRICKIN’ ALTOIDS!
And then comes the receipt, which is roughly the length of I-95 and consumes more paper than a New Delhi phone book.
Look, I know you’re just trying to make shopping in a store more personal and personable than shopping online, hoping that a smiling face and a helpful hand will beat the 20% I could have saved with the click of a button.
But you’re cheesing me off. It takes an enormous amount of motivation for me to leave the house in the first place. So please, when you see me coming, remove your personable personage from my field of vision. I can find what I’m looking for just fine. I don’t want to have all my contact information embedded in yet another database. I don’t want your solicitations clogging my mailbox, my inbox, or my shoebox.
I just want to pay for my Altoids.
Ellyn
October 20, 2012 at 12:03 PM
Another reason why the self-checkout lane is my favorite. I am the only one I have to speak with!
Sally Thomas
October 20, 2012 at 11:00 PM
Cashier behind register: “Welcome to Dollar General/Dollar Tree/Walgreens!”
Me: Me? You’re talking to me? Or to that person who came in a half-beat behind me? If I respond, will I look like a fool? If I act like I didn’t hear you, will you think I’m unfriendly? I don’t know why I would care that you might think I’m unfriendly, but I do care, but on the other hand, maybe you weren’t talking to me after all. And I realize that you get paid to make these social overtures, and that people are probably rude to you all day long, so I should be nice, but I really don’t even want to make eye contact. All I want is whatever I came into this store to buy, which was what, now?
Actually, I love the way the morning cashier at our Bi-Lo grocery store praises me for my accumulation of fuel perks. “Honey, you got seventy-eight cent off on your fuel perks today. That’s *good!*” It is satisfying to be affirmed in this way for having spent money in the store, for which I admit I do have some modest talent. It makes keeping up with the bonus card so worthwhile.
Anthony Sacramone
October 21, 2012 at 7:58 AM
At Whole Foods, which I have to travel to Pennsylvania to frequent, if you buy a “case” of yogurt, you get 10% off. Now a case is 12 of the same size and flavor. But you have to remind the cashier that you have, in fact, purchased a case, or he/she will have to count. And they don’t like to count. They like to scan. And you can’t just scan a case. You have to count and then key. And if they don’t count, but you bought a case, they have to erase. And in order to erase, they have to get a manager, who is usually busy getting someone to clean up the mess in Aisle 8, but who has the secret code, which all store managers have, that allows you to erase, which I learned today is just “7.”
Lars Walker
October 21, 2012 at 8:25 AM
You learned the secret code. Now they have to kill you.
Anthony Sacramone
October 21, 2012 at 9:13 AM
Ah, they’ll probably just change it. To “8.”
kerner
October 21, 2012 at 11:30 PM
Is it possible…just possible…that being from New York you just can’t get used to people being nice to you?
Anthony Sacramone
October 22, 2012 at 8:29 AM
No.