National ATM Week

There are three types of people who frequent supermarkets. There’s the obnoxious, rude, whiny, angry, demanding shopper, then there’s the happy shopper, and finally there are the tellers…those underpaid public servants who stand behind a counter all day and demand you give them money.

And I know why? I’ve been there and done that and had a nervous breakdown to prove it.

Every time you want to hit what you do or say, do it or tell a cashier. I learned this in school “How to be a cashier and live to tell about it”. Lesson number one was: the customer is always right. Well actually the store manager told me this when I started working at one of our local supermarkets. I think it was one of the ten commandments in the teller’s manual.

This is a good rule of thumb… or language. No matter what a customer says, be courteous and keep smiling. Sooner or later, they will take their purchase and leave. In the months I was employed there I developed permanent wrinkles on my face from smiling. To this day I can be grinning like an opossum and yet be angry enough to remove the polka dots from a clown suit.

Sometimes I would come home from work and look back on my day and realize that I had apologized for everything from the Civil War to the creaking of the Liberty Bell. My face ached and my teeth trembled from the effort it took to hold my tongue and not offer them cheese and bread to accompany their moans.

Nine out of ten shoppers will be nice and polite to store clerks, then number ten comes and if you say “How are you today?” they’ll tell you. They’ll go off on a tangent about how they had to wait in line for a full five minutes while the customer in front of them paid for their purchase with a check. Well, kiss my assets. Not all of us carry cash. They will complain that the merchandise is not arranged correctly in the store, that the store does not carry the XYZ brand of their favorite product, and that they almost feel like shopping elsewhere.

You stand there smiling and apologizing and thinking how much you wish they would go shopping elsewhere.

It wasn’t until later that I realized that these people showed the main signs of TAB. (Not to be confused with the old diet soda called Tab.) TAB stands for Type A Behavior. Six of the main symptoms are:

1. Impatience and hostility.

2. Beads of sweat on the forehead

3. Clenched teeth

4. Twitching eyelids

5. Dark circles under the eyes

6. Twitching of the corners of the mouth.

Did I just describe my high school math teacher?

Type A personalities are people who take everything seriously, don’t laugh often, and are always nervous and stressed. These are the type of people who are prone to heart attacks and strokes.

I began to wonder about people with this disposition. What made them so negative and bitter? I don’t think people are born that way. Most babies, if they are dry, fed and loved, are happy babies. I wondered what kind of life they led that made them so miserable.

And then one day something strange happened. I started to listen to the things they weren’t saying… I really listened and tried to understand why these people seemed to be angry. It wasn’t about the store, the service, or me…it was about them and their personal issues. After talking to them for a minute or so and showing genuine concern, I would usually find out that they had a sick family member, or had been up all night working, or had lost their job, or some other tragedy had occurred. in their life. .

Of course, this didn’t make me feel any better. I quit my cashier job after a few months. He was starting to show signs of TAB.

So, in honor of our brave men and women who gave their sanity for this great nation of shoppers, I’d like to designate this “Be Nice to Cashiers Week.”

And if you have a spouse who works as a cashier, be nice to them when you get home. Chances are, even though they’re smiling, they’ve had a bad day…