Ladies and Gentlemen

I'm a cashier. The most prestigious job? No. But it's a job, and it pays the bills until I finish college. I get painfully bored throughout the day. It is a dull, soul sucking job and the unbelievable rude, condescending, arrogant, stupid, or just plain crazy people I meet every day never ceases to amaze me.

I work at a store where we have to memorize all the sales every week and type in all the prices and discounts manually (like how they did it in the middle ages). You may be wondering at this point why the title of this post is "Ladies and Gentlemen" instead of "Why your cashier secretly hates you". Well that, my friends, is because every time I get called a name, yelled or snapped at, or a childlike tantrum is thrown at my register, I lock that away in the good ole' memory bank. And I've noticed a pattern...

Tell me if I'm wrong, but as an overall population, women find men dumb and men find women crazy/ impossible to understand. Of course we can think of tons of exceptions, but let's think big picture here, ok people? I'm here to tell you, as a woman, that based on my experiences men are right. Women are f***ing nuts. They're rude, they're dumb, they're manipulative, downright awful to work with. Now, I have had some lovely ladies come through my line, chatting it up, great people, but every single time I've had a terrible customer that makes me want to stab them, it's a woman.

Allow me to draw you a mental picture of what usually happens. Picture an end cap (the short side on the end of an isle that you walk by to get to the next isle). The top half will have different kinds of glue for making jewelry. The bottom half will have buckets of rhinestones. There is a sign, roughly in the middle that says " 50% OFF ACRYLIC GEMS". A huge red and white sign with pt 400 bold, black font. A woman will bring up 10 tubes of glue and you type in the price (and they force you to say it out loud). As soon as "10 at $2.99 in jewelry" crosses my lips and I go to reach for the next item, the woman will snarkily announce "no, those were on sale!" And you say, no, those are not on sale. She'll argue, saying there was a sign "RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM!!!!!!" So you show her the ad. She still insists you are wrong and stupid in an angry voice. So, while speaking in as soothing of tones that you can muster, you tell her to show you the sign. She walks you back to it and you read it, pointing at each word (as you would to a small child learning to read) "50. percent. off. acrylic. gems. Which are right here, under the sign. It says absolutely nothing about glue." So instead of admitting she's wrong (hey, aren't guys the ones who can never admit they're wrong?) she'll go on to tell you how YOU are a deceitful person, and this company is designed to cheat people out of money, blah blah blah. And of course, won't buy the glue. She may even chuck her whole cart at you, while reminding you how evil you are, and storm out. And this happens usually at least once a day.

Now onto guys. A guy will walk by that same end cap, pick up some glue, and when he gets to the register and I ring it up he will do one of two things. 1. Not care that it isn't on sale, and say nothing. Or 2. Ask "hey, was this on sale?" to which I will reply "no" and he'll either say "that's ok, I still need it" or "oh, ok, nevermind, I think I'll pass." And then we'll part ways on pleasant terms. I can only think of one occasion where a man has given me a hard time about something being on sale....and he was right. Which brings me to my next point.

"The customer is always right." The motto of retail since forever. Whoever coined that term deserves to be tarred and feathered. THE CUSTOMER IS NEVER FREAKING RIGHT. EVER. Ok, well a solid 97% of the time the customer is wrong or another employee forgot to take down a sign (but I can count the number of times that has happened on one hand).

I don't know why it turns out this way, but it is what I have experienced in the thousands of people I've helped in my job as a cashier. I sympathize with men a lot more than I used to, as I can only imagine what it is like for the poor soul who lives with wome of these bee-otches. And why my ideal customer is a 20 something guy. They're never crazy like women, obnoxious like teen boys, or slow and confused like older guys. They also know how to work debit cards (you would think it requires a PhD according to some people) and are the best looking. Check mate.

And for a quick PSA: On the not of debit/credit cards. I would like to take a brief moment to educate you. There are 2 ways in which machines ask for cards. Vertically (in which you stand the card up and slide the magnetic strip usually to the left, but occasionally to the right) or horizontally, in which you NEVER NEVER EVER NEVER FOREVER NEVER EVER NEVER will slide it with your signature/magnetic strip up. There is not a single machine in America that does it that way. NOT ONE. SO LEARN HOW TO SLIDE A FREAKING CARD. When you TELL your cashier your credit card is nearly maxed out and it's your 5th one (yes, people do tell me a lot about their personal finances) I expect you to know how to use it by now. Just remember, if for some reason you can't ever remember how to slide a card, there is a picture, right there on the machine (or sometimes a friendly note) that tells you.