I guess you never know what kinds of things will happen each day, especially when you expect the day to be great. Today is Matt’s, my brother, birthday. I couldn’t wait to get done with work because I was going to bring home some ice cream and a six pack of wine coolers he likes.

Today it rained again and then stopped as soon as I got to work, which is good that I didn’t have to work in the rain, but the humidity was torture on my lungs. So I half-and-halfed getting buggies and bagging today since we had Justin and Mike there too. (I work at a grocery store as a bagger/buggy boy, by the way. We’re called Courtesy Clerks at our store.)

I mostly bagged for a lady who normally works the night shift, but they have been calling her in every day. She was really cool and I was glad to meet her. Anyway, a lady had a crapload of groceries and wanted paper bags. (Paper bags take longer to bag than plastic, by the way) So I did what I could but she was still getting groceries out of her cart and my little counter thing was getting full. Eventually she got done and I was able to put some stuff in her cart (and eventually got a second cart to put the rest of the groceries in). Well, while she was paying, the guy behind her called out something to me. I didn’t pay attention to it but I thought he was just joking around or something. So the lady paid and we still had a lot of groceries to bag. The cashier and I kept working on it when the guy said something again, this time I heard him, “Hey get a move on, you jerk!” The cashier looked at him and said, “Hey that was unnecessary, he’s doing the best he can.” I didn’t really acknowledge the guy or anything, I looked over at him for a second and saw he was glaring at me.

We finished the buggies and started out the door when I heard him say something else. I later found out that he had called the customer a jerk, and the cashier told him to get out of her line. In fact, I later found out that his wife was so embarrassed about it that she walked out of the store (not sure if she drove off or anything though).

So I helped the lady put her bags into her car and we talked about it. She said, “It amazes me how rude people can be.” I said, “It’s okay.”, and she replied, “Well I can’t see it being okay.” I said, “Well, I meant that it didn’t affect me or anything. If he had said something to my cashier I would have stood up for her though.”

The customer ended up giving me a tip and I went back in and let my manager know about the situation. He said, “That’s intolerable.”

I really don’t care much about it now, but I wanted to post it so that I could go back and look at it. I made sure the title was something I might recognise.

I’ve been told that I “should be ashamed of myself” for our store having high prices. I’ve been treated like a badguy for some reason or another (women with children/babies seem to act like I’m a threat to them, and act like they’re protecting their young when I walk by). This is the first time I’ve ever been called a genuine insult at my job, though.