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Spencer Best

I, Grocer

Edith Matthews

That is the name that remains faintly etched in ink on the screen of the customer-friendlycredit card acceptor of register number seven. It was mistakenly engraved there by an elderlywoman who purchased 2.14 pounds of bananas and an economy-sized box of Q-tips. It is thevery reason we have small, laminated signs by all ten acceptors that now politely (and boldly)state:

Please do not use pen to sign.

I will be the first to admit that I judge customers who opt to check out at my register. Iglance at their carts, and I glance at them, and then I immediately form an opinion. For instance,I would have been genuinely polite to Q-tip-and-bananas lady if she hadn't used her own ink pento sign on the electronic line. Clean ears and lots of potassium: What's not to like? However,many customers do not enjoy the same benefits of my judgment system. Take red pepper guy for example. I loathe red pepper guy. He paid $1.99 for a $0.99 green pepper that happens to be red.He will take this red pepper home (usually in the company of a yellow pepper as well) to hisfancy mansion with seal-skin rugs and baby-bunny-fur couches and create a chipotle sauce thatwill include these peppers. He'll serve it to his children who will complain about the "funnyspice" in the sauce, so he will apologize and buy them ponies to make them feel better. I hate red pepper guy.It isn't enough to just judge, though. As a cashier, I feel it is my duty to punish or rewardthose who come before me. If you aren't already aware, no produce in a grocery store has aconvenient bar code to scan. Each item has a four-digit numerical code that must be manuallyentered at the register for it to acknowledge the item. The scanner acts as a scale as well, so for bananas, I place them on the scanner/scale, press "4011" into the touch pad, and hit enter. Theregister multiplies the weight by the price per pound, and voila! For produce that is priced by theindividual item, the screen simply prompts me to enter the desired quantity. This power I haveover weight and quantity allows me to implement my reward/penalty system.For someone purchasing a bag of five green peppers, I will typically type "4065" into mycomputer and then "4" for desired quantity. I love people that don't sell out to the subjectively prettier appearance of the more brightly colored peppers. I envision these people working tiring blue collar jobs to support their families. They come home and make rich, delicious, beef stewsfor their children. They deserve a free pepper. These people are okay in my book.On the other hand, key-throwing guy does not receive free produce. Our store has thesediscount cards people can "apply" for and use to save money (requirement for acceptedapplications:

be able to write your name

). The card has a small hole punctured near the corner that allows it to be hooked onto the customer's keychain. This card can be scanned at the beginning, middle, or end of the transaction and will retroactively check previously scanneditems for any potential savings. Occasionally, though, a customer is fearful enough of beingscammed out of his savings that he will

toss

his keys onto the scanner. This does not get our brief customer/cashier relationship off to a great start.In fact, not only does key-throwing guy receive no free produce, but he is further

Spencer Best

penalized by what I call the Asshole Tax. Unlike federal and state taxes, Asshole Tax is afluctuating, subjectively used tax regulated by me, not a governmental body. It does not actuallyappear on the receipt, but I assure you that it does indeed exist. When I drag a bag of Fuji applesonto the scale, I press "4131" as I normally would. Just before hitting enter, though, I exert a verysmall amount of pressure on the corner of the scale with my thumb. This adds about a tenth of a pound onto the weight, increasing the cost by anywhere between ten and thirty cents. In my year of working at this store, I have yet to be caught eliciting the Asshole Tax. It is my small yet pleasing way of ticketing those who do not follow the common sense rules of cashier/customer etiquette.Rule number one takes priority over all other rules:

Do not interrupt my IPM flow

. IPM isan acronym standing for items per minute. Our entire chain of grocery stores nation-wide usesthis method to track and rank cashiers based on their efficiencies and speeds. Each of our register computers keeps a running time of each customer transaction. At the end, it divides the number of items purchased by the total time of the transaction. These are compiled and averaged for eachcashier. Each week, our manager prints out and posts all twenty-eight cashiers’ current IPMrating sorted in order of fastest to slowest. Our store's cumulative IPM rating is 28.5, so anarbitrary item at an arbitrary register at an arbitrary time gets scanned about once every twoseconds. My current IPM rating happens to be 44.8. I am not only the fastest and most efficientcashier at our store, but on a national level I sit right around eighth place (out of about twothousand cashiers). Now, this would be of absolutely no concern to me if it wasn't for the $50 they have beengiving me each month (for the past eight months in a row) for being the fastest cashier. Thismonthly prize causes an inconceivable amount of competitive warfare to ensue among cashiers.Lately, JAMERSON, S. has been working her way up the IPM ranks to second place store-wide.(That’s how the name appears on the posted IPM rankings sheet. I know very few of mycoworkers by name because they are sore losers.) Last week, she broke 40 IPM. I was concernedthat I may have to step up my game until I saw this week's report. I maintained my 44.8, whileshe dropped to 39.6. While that may not seem like a large drop, a 0.4 IPM decrease in a singleweek that is computed over the course of an entire year is a very substantial loss. The cause for such a loss was obvious: A double-checker, one of the most feared IPM-killers known tocashiers.A double-checker is a customer you never see coming. She can take the form of a sweetold lady or a Volvo-driving soccer mom. I have never encountered a male double-checker, but Ihave heard stories of their existence. Anyway, she'll likely be exceptionally polite at first. Shemay even be a contender for a free green pepper. Then you will punch in "4085" - the code for the bag of romaine lettuce she planned on buying. You'll set it on the conveyor belt towards the bagging area and never think twice about it. Three cans of cat food later, she'll look up at thescreen displaying what she has purchased thus far, and say, "I thought that lettuce was $1.59 per pound."Your heart will sink to the bottom of your stomach because you can already see what isabout to happen. You

know

that romaine lettuce is $1.79 per pound. You

know

she saw the signnext to it advertising iceberg lettuce for $1.59 per pound. This was not iceberg lettuce, so youquickly (yet politely!) explain this to her."Oh, are you sure?"You are more sure of this than you are of the fact that your shift ends in three hours,fourteen minutes, and thirty seconds. Twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-eight seconds…

Spencer Best

“Yes, ma’am."Subconsciously, you are already scanning the rest of the cat food at lightning speed to tryand make up for what is about to happen."Well, if it isn't too much trouble, could you have someone double check that for me please?"It is more trouble than she could ever comprehend, but you bite your tongue, smile, and page the front end manager. After several minutes of awkward silence and a clog of people building up in line, the manager eventually waddles over to your register. You quickly explainthe situation, and he goes over to double check. You watch the seconds tick off the clock andrealize six items divided by six minutes is 1 IPM. A single item per minute. Several moreminutes later, he reports back with the same information that you already explained. Usually sheapologizes for the delay, but occasionally she will say:"Oh, well I don't want it then. That's too much for lettuce.”--About a month ago, an unusual set of events transpired over the course of a single week that ended up costing me my job. First, I met S. JAMERSON.At the end of my shift one day, the produce manager set a half-bushel of oranges down inthe break room with a sign that read “25 cents each.” Different departments in the storeoccasionally do this when they have an excessive amount of a particular item that is near itsexpiration date. I fumbled around in my pocket until I felt three quarters and several smaller coins. Then I picked out three of the largest oranges and proceeded to a register on my way out.In retrospect, I’m not even sure why I bought the oranges. The layer of enamel on my teeth isexceptionally thin, and the dentist said I should avoid acidic foods. I did not heed his warning,though.Anyway, I walked up to a register that only had one person in front of me. It was an oldman carrying one of those baskets instead of a shopping carting. He unloaded his items particularly slowly, and I was already growing impatient. The cashier was a bizarre looking girl.She had this tiny stud in her nose piercing that irritatingly twinkled whenever the light caught itin a certain way. She wore these wide-rimmed black glasses that, instead of bringing attention toher unusually blue eyes, brought attention to her ability to pick out stupid looking glasses. Theold man unloaded his final item: A whole, precooked, rotisserie chicken. These chickens are oneof the most difficult-to-scan items in the whole store. They’re packaged in these oblong plasticcontainers that are notorious for leaking chicken juice everywhere, including the bar code thatmust be scanned. Usually, the cashier tries to scan it five or six times, tries to wipe the juice off the bar code, tries to scan it a few more times, and then finally gives up and has to page throughseveral sub-menus of the computer screen before locating it and entering it manually. Asunattractive eyeglasses cashier started scanning it in vain, I felt sorry for her and decided to scorea few karma points.You see, I noticed this problem only a few weeks after I started working at the store. Itold the head of the deli department about it, and he gave me one of the bar codes they use on thechickens. I just glued it to a small piece of cardboard and kept it in my pocket while at work.When a juicy chicken showed up, I just scanned the clean bar code instead. No problem.Anyway, when she started going through the computer menus looking for the chicken, Itook the bar code out of my wallet and passed it over her scanner. She looked up at the computer screen to see that I saved her at least 0.005 IPM for the week, and then she looked at me.“Don’t do that,” she said.