I just arrived home from work. It was kind of an odd day. One of our head cashiers, I will call her Mandy, had bad chest pains and had to leave to go to the ER. She’s the friend I worked with at Walmart who got me the job at Sprouts. She DID have a heart attack in early 2020 when we both worked at Walmart so, it was a real concern. However, I texted her a couple of hours ago to see if she was ok. She is; no heart attack, thank God. She’s young-just turned 40. But, like a lot of us, has been going through a lot of stress. I’m waiting to see if she’s ordered to stay home and rest.

It was also weird because I attract weirdness so, I suppose that really means my day was normal.

It was one of those days when certain rare events happen and they are so rare you don’t recall the exact procedures. Such as, when an item does not ring up at all either via scanning or keying in the UPC numbers. Then you have to do a generic entry. The item I had was from the butcher-some kind of beef. I it’s about the second time I had to do this do, I couldn’t recall exactly where to start. Do I go to the, “cashier” key and hit, “price modify?”That’s not right. Finally the other head cashier, who I will call, Wendy, said,”Go to department..,” “Oh, yeah, yeah, I got it. I remember,” I said as I trotted back to my register. I hit the “department,”key, the register brought up one all the department keys. I hit, “meat,” and then it let me put in the price. It was a royal pain at Walmart-many more steps.

These kinds of things happened daily, multiple times, at Walmart and the process was detailed because the company wants to lower shrink. Shrink is basically merchandise that’s missing but unaccounted for in the system. Sometimes it’s theft but, sometimes it’s human error. Shrink affects bonuses and Walmart is protective of bonus amounts. They were so strict that if you assigned the offending item to the incorrect category of department cashiers could and would get written up for it. Cause even assigning a toaster to the wrong subcategory of domestics could land you in trouble. My philosophy will always be, why the hell do we have to make customers wait and suffer for something that’s the fault of the store? It’s stupid. I suppose it’s because this crap happens enough at Walmart so that it makes a significant impact on shrink

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Like I’ve been saying for over four years, having worked at Walmart and Publix, Publix is a well oiled machine, Walmart, not so much.

Today’s little challenges at Sprouts were impacted by my muscle memory still being re-trained Sprouts and Walmart use the same computer hardware but, the keys are in slightly different places. So, my brain still wants hit, “enter,” to lock up my register cause that’s where the lock key was on the same keyboard at Walmart. It’s getting better and I’m picking up speed but, sometimes it’s still annoying.

I also had a couple of rude customers, which is really rare at Sprouts. I had a lady whose mask was sagging below her nose and I had to say, “ Ma’am, could you please pull your mask up over your nose?” She got snippy, “Well, I’m ALMOST out of here.” I wanted to pop her one. Of course she wasn’t, “almost out of here,” cause there was a problem with her card. I think she had to transfer money. Yes, it’s a pain to make customers behind her wait but, I think most of us are happy we have the technology to move funds from one account to another via our phones.

Then, I had a rude Instacart customer. Y’all familiar with Instacart? It’s a service that contracts with certain stores, usually grocers, that allows customers to order their groceries online. A shopper snags the order from Instacart’s order pool and shops. The order is paid via a credit card Instacart assigns to shoppers. This dude was getting two bottles of red wine. He looked 17. “ You have your ID?” “Oh, I have it confirmed here on my phone.” WHY does Instacart bother with that? There is no photo of the shopper and it is NOT a legal form of ID. A photo of your photo ID is NOT a legal form if ID. Everywhere I’ve cashiered that sells alcohol gives the discretion to the cashier. “Sorry, nope, not a legal ID. I can’t sell it to you.” “Well, it says right here that I’ve been confirmed as being born…blah,blah” I cut him off.” There’s no photo. I don’t know if that’s you. It’s not legal.” “Well, I want to talk to a manager if I don’t have this order I don’t get paid,” he rattled off the run-on sentence. I love it when customers want to talk to a manager over an alcohol sale because the manager will back up the cashier almost every time. And she did. “Sorry, no photo. It’s not a legal form of ID.” Then he mouthed off about it being in his car. So, I had to suspend the order and set it aside while he rummaged through his car.

I rang a couple of orders and he returned and mumbled something about forgetting his wallet. I had to recall the order, which is a slightly different process than at Walmart but, I figured it out. It was my first time recalling a suspended order. He paid and left-without the two bottles of wine. He was an ass. My favorite line from him was, “Well, it’s obvious I’m over twenty-one.” I laughed at him and said, “It’s not AT ALL obvious you are over twenty-one.” Dumbass.

I suppose it wasn’t a bad day for only getting three hours of sleep. Oh, plus, our week old paychecks arrived. I deposited mine on the way home.

I’m going to Publix for a couple of things then I’m going to give the Seminole County Court website another try. I think my best bet is to try to postpone it. I think that’s a new option. It’s not even that want to avoid it outright. The timing just sucks. I’m too busy with health issues: colon, uterus, vagina and knee-that was supposed to get looked at in January. That’s a different kind of tale. Too complicated for this platform.

I do hope I can successfully postpone my jury duty. It’s possible to move it six months out.