I started a job at Dollar General recently and already I have a list going of things I hate about working in retail:

-People coming in five minutes before closing and dicking around

-People coming in five minutes before closing and dicking around because they didn't listen to me when I told them we were closing in like five minutes

-People who are constantly on their cell phones while wandering about the store, just talk-talk-talkin' to no one about nothing, ESPECIALLY when they're talking while I'm ringing up their purchase or when they first walk in and then they don't goddamn hear me when I tell them WE'RE CLOSING IN FIVE FUCKING MINUTES!

-People who pay me in checks or hundred-dollar bills, or anything that takes me stupidly long amounts of time to process. Especially when they insist upon doing this while there's a line.

-Whenever people finally decide to go up to check out after I've stood there waiting for ten minutes and left to fix up the store. Then they get all huffy that there's not a cashier standing there under a holy light waiting to ring up that candy bar they've been pondering over for the past hour. By the way, yelling "HEY, IS THERE A CASHIER AROUND HERE?" to no one in particular is a jackass thing to do, I don't care what you think.

-People who bring things to buy and then, upon seeing the price, tell me to take it off. I need to pull in my supervisor in order to void items and it takes a while to do. I'm usually always working with this pregnant lady as my supervisor who takes a while to get around and is usually incredibly irritable, so I always feel like I'm slowly killing her by calling her to the front of the store.

-People who bitch about a discrepancy between the price of the item and the price marked on it. DG likes to dick around with its prices every now and then, and raise prices on arbitrary things. People like to go find the ONE item that still has the old 2.75 price tag on it and then whine when I tell them the ACTUAL price is three dollars.

-The fact that if an item rings up as one cent, we can't sell it and must, by policy, throw it away. Why can't I just freaking hand it to the customer and give them a gift or, hell, just sell it for one damn cent? There's no reason to just pitch it in full view of the customer, ESPECIALLY if it's still a good item. If it's destroyed or taken from our shelves either way, why not just give it away?

-The fact that in the eyes of the customer and the eyes of the company, it is - ALWAYS - the cashier's fault in the event of an error. Dollar General FROWNS UPON voided items, aborted transactions, and pretty much everything else you can do with a cash register except take people's money. If you void too many things, it isn't "They must be dealing with a lot of morons today", it's "This cashier must really suck at his job". If you abort a transaction, it isn't "I bet some asshole couldn't get it in his head that he can't use a certain credit card" it's "I bet this cashier is letting his friends buy items for free". If you give me a cancel button but you have my supervisor shoot me every time I use it, then why bother giving me a cancel button?
Another thing is that Dollar General apparently doesn't trust its employees any more than they'd trust their goldfish - during these seminar things that you have to go to if you decide to become a supervisor or manager (which I'm not doing after hearing this bullshit), they'll loudly and fervently denounce YOU and ALL THE EMPLOYEES as THIEVES and ROBBERS who STEAL FROM THIS COMPANY EVERY DAY. Okay, so those empty boxes we keep finding of pens or soda cans or hair gel, that's US stealing? You're sure it isn't some punk or some petty thief? That lady who made off with five boxes of Prilosec by dropping them to the floor and pretending to put them back - that was me stealing?

I have more stories and rants but this post is uncomfortably long as is so I'm going to wait on them.

I never used to be big on grammar and proper speaking, but after hearing a heapin' country helpin' of the absolute worst, it's started to really bother me. I don't mean simple mistakes where people can still understand you, I mean the "I haven't read a book in seventeen years that wasn't a TV guide" sort of grammar.

Char Aznable wrote:

And Bluey, you can't even take items off without a manager? I can't void transactions without a manager, but I can suspend them and then not recall them, which voids them when I sign off the register. I can't imagine not being able to remove items.

No, and like I said, it's painful. You need a "supervisor key" in the lock thingy in order to void items, abort an entire transaction, open the till without making a sale first, etc. The greatest thing about it is this - even IF I could do it myself, it raises red flags back in corporate. Like I mentioned before, voiding too many items or aborting too many transactions immediately signals the company that you're a crappy cashier and you blow at your job, even though, again like I mentioned, our store is full of dumbasses who walk up with some expensive item without an idea in their head of how much it costs and then demand it be taken off when it turns out to be more than a dollar.

You know what else raises red flags? PRICE INQUIRIES. It irritates the company when you use the register to check an item's price, especially when it's the customer asking you to check a price for you, and this is because - get this - all items should be clearly marked of their price. That's all well and good but when the company randomly dicks around with prices every month or so, you have to check and make sure items' prices are up-to-date... and you do that USING THE DAMN REGISTER! And even if items are marked, you get nature's finest over here bringing something to me and saying "How much is this?" Well, I dunno, Jackass McDouchebag, it has a giant tag on it that says two for ten dollars so I guess it's 7.50. And even the clearly-marked items come and bite me in the ass whenever a price gets bumped twenty-five cents higher and suddenly all the items have outdated tags on them and even if you scour the store for all of them and remove the tags, without a doubt SOMEONE is going to find the ONE you didn't get and throw it in your face and complain until you give them a quarter discount.

Since I can't hold it in anymore, here's one of my stories: three of us are working one evening and we're all doing something in different parts of the store. White trash couple wanders in and finally has enough of waiting for us to be at the counter (it takes them all of five seconds to lose patience), and the guy shouts out "HEY, IS THERE A CASHIER AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE?". I'm the resident cashier (apparently) so I'm sent up there to deal with them. I'm obviously already on edge because they're already out of patience and manners. They just have two items so it's easy to get them both scanned and totaled and I take their money (or they use a card or whatever it was). It goes fine so far and I'm happy that they're leaving. Then I notice the girl staring at her receipt and she starts, "Uh, just so you know - " (that's code for "Hey dumbass, guess what") "this soap is marked 2.75 and you charged me three dollars." Then she looks at me as if I'm going to fix it.

If you tell me about a price discrepancy AFTER the transaction is done, unless you have the Sands of fucking Time, there's nothing I can do. You have to RETURN the item for a REFUND, and then buy it AGAIN at which point I do a PRICE OVERRIDE. By the way, I need a supervisor for every step of this process. It's long and stupid and it's not worth a quarter. The till is still open at this point so I just do it the old-fashioned way. I stop listening to her, pull out a quarter, and place it on the counter (a little forcefully). "There you go. That's all I can do at this point." The girl looks at the quarter as if I put a pile of dog crap on her receipt and called it change. "Also, just so you know, it's not good to slam things on the counter." Then she haughtily walks out with the guy. I know it's impolite to slam things on the counter, but you know what else is impolite? Being a fucking bitch!

I never did get a good look at the detergent she bought. There might not have been a tag on it at all. Some other customer might've just left it in the wrong spot and she took the wrong price tag as fact. She might've just been outright lying, and all I can do is treat her like royalty because I have to honor that goddamn fallacy "The customer is always right." The most infuriating thing though is the fact that she was acting like she was trying to help me out. I know it SOUNDS like she was, but the look in her eyes, the tone of her voice - it wasn't help in any degree. I hate stupidity, I hate rude people, I hate lack of tact, but I think I hate people pretending to be polite or helpful most of all.