Retail Speak
Doctors and lawyers have their own professional jargons, and it seems to me that retail store employees do as well. When they want you to step forward to the register, they rarely just say “next!” Instead they suck in a lung-full of air and call out, “Will the subsequent guest please make their way directly forward to register six under the green sign on the far right, please!” The sheer number of syllables is supposed to sound polite and professional, but instead it just feels scary. You’re never sure if you’re the one being addressed. “Am I subsequent?” you wonder. And when you finally make it to the register, the cashier barks out cryptic questions and commands: “Who was helping you today?” “Don’t you know that if you buy five pairs of socks, you get the sixth free?” “Credit or debit?” “Press the green button!”
All of this is bad enough, but yesterday I was innocently buying catfood and had a brief exchange with my young, female Petco cashier that, I think, takes the prize for weirdness. I can’t make any sense of it, but maybe you can.
Cashier: Will the following guest please step down!
Jane [placing cans of catfood on the counter]: Hello.
Cashier [smiling]: Hi, how are you today?
Jane: Fine, thanks.
Cashier: Your total comes to $9.89. Do you have a Petco card?
Jane: Well, not yet...
Cashier: Okay, let me just give you this application form. You can fill it out and ret—
Jane: Well, I actually have that form at home. I just haven’t filled it out yet. I’ll bring it in next time.
Cashier: [smiling and shaking her head] I’m gonna strangle you! You better bring it next time!
Jane: [gathering bags hurriedly] Ha, ha! Right!
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Help! Is this something people actually say to each other? Am I too old and uncool to get it?
3 comments:
I have been making purchases in retail establishments for many years now and never once have I been threatened with bodily harm. I would suspect that your young cashier was merely having some fun with the usual norms for such verbal transactions: freestyling, if you will.
I would keep a hand on your derringer for the time being, however, as from experience I've found that people who channel Rod Roddy and offer to shut off your windpipe as an incentive to save forty cents on cat food rarely, if ever, fail to make good on their promises.
That does go too far. If you had informed her manager, she would have been "retrained."
In other news, I think (speaking as a former retail employee myself) part of the reason retail employees give very specific orders is that customers are often pushy and absolutely ignore signage. I found, working at the registers, that many times, simply saying, "Next," would result in multiple people stepping up from different directions, some not necessarily even wanting to make purchases. This almost always ended in customer-to-customer showdowns, and if you haven't established any sort of authority, you're powerless before the whirlwind of affrontedness, and somehow end up taking all the blame.
Of course, there are cases of cashiers taking this to the extreme (your story--case in point).
Your problem is that you're more asute and intelligent than most consumers, and therefore don't require the "guidence/herding" that many people do.
Off-topic, but I figured this would be of interest to many of your readers: contribute to the first National Headache Foundation Support Group sponsored poetry/prose collection booklet.
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