Supermarket Shitheads

Inspired by my own s****y job at a grocery store.

       Carrie’s alarm went off at 6 o’clock AM and she cringed at the sound. It was never easy to wake up in the dark with the knowledge that she was going to spend the entire day inside the grocery store. What’s worse is that it was Sunday, the busiest day of the week. She hated her job, but still she silenced the alarm and wriggled past her boyfriend and out of bed. He grunted slightly before rolling over and beginning to snore. She shuffled into the kitchen for her morning coffee, and groaned as she realized she’d never turned it on.

            “Oh, God damn it,” she murmured, pinching the bridge of her nose, “It’s going to be one of those days…” She decided instead to get dressed and have a bowl of cereal. She would get coffee on her way to work. She made her way back into the bedroom and picked up a pair of pants from the floor. These look clean enough, she thought. She could care less what the jackass customers thought anyway, and her manager never cared if she looked a little rough once in a while. As she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she daydreamed about just up and quitting. I could do it, she thought, I could just walk in there and tell them all to go f**k themselves. She smiled, knowing that though the idea was incredibly tempting, she wouldn’t.

            When she stepped outside, the sun was just starting to come up, and Carrie was surprised at how sharply the cold air made its way into her lungs. She walked down the road to her car, started it up, and sighed one last time before putting it in drive and taking herself towards another nine-hour day in supermarket hell.

            She arrived fifteen minutes before the store officially opened, there was already a man waiting outside the door. There was always someone waiting for the doors to officially open, like they were going to miss out on some great deal if they didn’t get in the second it opened. Carrie smiled briefly at him before pushing the door open, making sure it shut fully behind her.

            “For God’s sake, we’re open for sixteen hours a day, do you really have to show up at 6:45 in the goddamn morning? The store isn’t going anywhere,” Carrie muttered under her breath. The day had barely started and she was already in a bad mood. It was going to be a long, long day.

…..

            “Good morning, Carrie!” Danette, the assistant front-end manager, had just arrived and was as chirpy as ever. Her attitude drove Carrie up the wall. She’d once told Carrie that in order to be successful, one had to always pretend like one was on a stage, because one never knew who might be watching. Though Carrie found this to be ridiculous advice, it definitely explained why Danette had a permanent bright-pink-lipsticked smile plastered across her face. Carrie found the best way to deal with Danette’s superficiality was to respond in the same way. Besides, if she acted like her normal, sarcastic self at 8 o’clock in the morning, it would prompt Danette to stick around and ask what was wrong. And no one wanted that.

            “Gooood Morning, Dani!!” Carrie said extra cheerily, grinning so big her cheeks hurt. Danette grinned right back and continued on her way to the manager’s office, her long blond ponytail swishing back and forth across her back. Carrie snarled as she disappeared around the corner and turned to the cashier she was working with.

            “I hate that damn woman,” she rolled her eyes.

            “I’m pretty sure everyone does,” replied Patrick. “At least you’re a supervisor, so she assumes you know what you’re doing most of the time. She won’t quick nit-picking me about menial things.” Carrie nodded, and went back to organizing her day sheet. It wasn’t very busy yet, and she was enjoying the quiet before everything got hectic. ‘The calm before the storm’ she liked to call it. It was still fairly early on a Sunday for people to be out shopping quite yet, and she almost enjoyed it when it was slow. Almost.

…..

            “I just think it’s ridiculous that I have to wait in line for so long, when I just want to get a lottery ticket, I don’t want to wait behind all these people who have groceries and want to cash their checks. It’s just absolutely ridiculous!”

            “Yes, ma’am, I do understand your frustration. Unfortunately, this is how we are required to run the customer service desk now. We have to send all of the customers through one register,” Carrie explained the new method to the frustrated old lady. She had this conversation with at least three people every day. The lady demanded that Carrie call a manager she could talk to, and Carrie obliged, knowing full well that the Danette would tell her exactly what Carrie just had. It was ‘standard practice’ to do things the new way, and Danette held following ‘standard practice’ above all else. Carrie reassured the woman that the manger would be with her in just a moment, and walked away to take a deep breath.

…..

“Hey, Carrie?” Doug, the store manager, poked his head into the break room where Carrie was eating lunch, “Herman is here,” he smiled weakly at her.

            “I’m on my lunch, Doug,” she replied.

            “Yeah, but he’s asking for you. You know we gotta give him what he wants or he throws a fit.”

            “Fine,” Carrie groaned. She hated Herman. In fact, everyone hated Herman. He was an old, electric-wheel-chair-bound, germ-phobic man who was rude about everything. He always bought about ten packages of paper towels, and he always had to inspect the packages thoroughly to make there were no holes anywhere. The worst part was that he wanted someone to accompany him to the paper towel aisle, just in case he couldn’t find enough hole-free packages and needed some to be removed from a pallet out back. When he was done picking through the packages, whoever was helping him would have to load them up into a cart and roll them up front while Herman finished his shopping. When he was finally done, he would zoom up to the front end and announce that he was ready to check out. This meant the unlucky individual would have to drop whatever he or she was doing, and immediately take care of him. He got incredibly impatient if he had to wait, even if he could see that it was incredibly busy. No one liked to deal with him, but somehow Carrie was the best as pretending that she didn’t mind, and it meant Herman always asked after her when he came to shop.

“Hi, Herman. How are you?” Carrie forced a smile.

“Well, I’m a little irritated. I’ve been waiting quite a long time for some help, here. How come it took you so long?”

“I was eating lunch, I apologize,” Carrie explained. F*****g prick, she murmured under her breath, “What can I do for you today?”

“Well, I’m here for some paper towels, of course, but when I looked down the aisle it looks like you don’t have what I need. I would like to go out back and look through your pallet. You don’t have enough out here, which is a little ridiculous, I called a week ago to make sure they were here,” Herman’s voice got a little shaky as his mood got worse.

“Ok. Let me just ask a manager and make sure there is a pallet you can look through,” said Carrie, already starting to get a headache. She sent Doug out back with Herman, and then went up front to supervise while she waited for Herman to be ready.

Sure enough, Herman showed up at a perfectly inconvenient time. Carrie had been called over to a register to help a cashier figure something out, and Herman zipped up behind her as she was trying to explain something to the customer.

“Excuse me, I’m ready to check out now,” Herman started.

“I’ll be with you in just a moment, Herman. Why don’t you head to register five, okay? I’ll be right there,” she responded.

“But I’m ready to check out NOW. I already waited earlier. I don’t have all day, you know.”

“I’ll be just a minute Herman. Register five,” Carrie repeated. She finished up with the customer, wished him a good day, and turned to the cashier, “That’s it,” she said, “I can’t deal with Herman anymore.” The cashier looked a little confused as she walked away.

“Sorry Herman. These are all your paper towels here?” she pointed to the large cart parked next to the register. Herman nodded and began loading the rest of his groceries onto the belt as he explained how it was going to rain, and he needed everything double-bagged. Carrie snapped. She grabbed a pen off the register and stabbed a hole through the top of a package of paper towels.

“HEY!” Herman yelled, “Don’t do that! You can’t poke holes in those packages!”

“I’m going to do whatever I want, Herman,” Carrie smiled and stabbed another package with the pen, “because you are a rude, cranky, a*****e of an old man who needs to learn that he is not the only customer I deal with during the day. You are not special just because you are in that stupid wheelchair, or because you have some weird phobia of germs,” Carrie was on a roll. People had begun staring at her, but thankfully none of the managers had appeared yet. She stabbed another package as she continued.

“You’re just a hassle for everyone who works here. We hate you, Herman. We hate dealing with you. We talk about you behind your back and we make jokes about your ridiculous requests. If you were to never ever return to this store again, no one would miss you. In fact, I think from now on you should shop elsewhere,” She grinned, stabbed the last of the packages, and threw the pen on the register.

She walked calmly across the front end of the store, removed her name tag, and threw it on Doug’s desk as she entered his office.

“Hey. I quit,” she announced.

“Wait, woah, Carrie….what happened?” Doug looked concerned.

“You’ll see. Herman should be requesting a manager in a moment or two. I’m going to go get my jacket and leave. I’m done,” she took a deep breath and turned around. As she walked towards the break room, she could hear Herman yelling and Danette trying to calm him down. She chuckled a little to herself.

            She left through the back door, and when she got into her car, she started laughing. She couldn’t believe what she’d just done, and she’d never felt more invigorated.

 

Author's Note

I'm a little rough with proper punctuation for dialogue, any advice on that would be great. And of course, comments on the actual are excellent!

Reviews

[Jack Shellfish]

Great characterization, snappy dialogue and a story that many people can relate to. At some point or other most of us have dreamt of telling our boss, an awkward customer or an a*****e colleague to take a jog into oncoming traffic. If I could offer any constructive criticism, it'd be to redraft your story with some little descriptive details that would bring the supermarket environment to life. Also with your dialogue, "She won't quick nit-picking me about menial things." why not say what the menial thing is that Dannette nit-picks over like, "She won't quick nit-picking me about the way I cash up at night." or "She won't quick nit-picking me about saying good morning to customers, instead of good morning and welcome to Quick-E Mart". Whatever little details you add will help to flesh out the supermarket. Not really criticisms, only suggestions :-)

Great story though, and a funny one too!

[LeeLee Ryder]

Good start ... Good characters & very universal... What's next for Carrie?

[Regan Meade]

Oh my god! This was hilarious and I could relate to it 100%. You have a great voice and the dialogue was good. I hope you continue writing. :)