While standing at my register, I have heard thesis-length descriptions of hospital stays, children coming home from college, divorces, and theories of life. Just when I think I've heard it all, someone comes along and proves me wrong. After listening to a woman talk for almost ten minutes about how she needs discounts because her oldest child had moved out and the government was lowering her allotment of food stamps, a man in a wheelchair came up to my register and monopolized my ear for a good fifteen minutes by telling me about the time he had been 'gut shot' on the streets of Chicago while visiting his sister in the early seventies. Everyone has a story, and they all expect me to listen to them.
I was willing to chalk this up to my very approachable look until I spoke with another cashier at the grocery store the other day. The customer in front of me was taking his sweet old time paying, and I thought it was because he was an older gentleman who was just moving a bit slow. He was flirting with the cashier, as it turns out. She was giving him the cold shoulder, but he kept right on. At one point, she actually got up and walked away from the register for a few steps. When he finally left, she apologized to me and told me that he was a regular who insisted on coming to her register whenever he came in. She said that he tried to give her hugs and kisses, and was always making rude jokes to her, even when she asked him to stop.
My first thought was that this is now a matter for management. Then I got to thinking. If I was that cashier, I would still go to my manager. That behavior is, after all, harassing. However, her story makes me think that jockeying for the cashier's attention outside the normal premises of the transaction at hand seems to be a wider problem than I originally thought.
A part of me is frustrated by this behavior. I am, after all, a cashier, not your therapist. If I was a therapist, I'd be making a heck of a lot more money by talking to you than I am. I also have a line of people waiting to pay that I have to think about, and when your stories carry on forever and a day, it's rude to them. And as far as they can tell, I'm the one being rude to them, because I'm the one not rushing you and your story telling on.
But another part of me slows down and thinks about why this happens. What are we, as a society, doing to make these people seek attention from complete strangers? I understand that it's a neighborhood store and the employees should be friendly to the customers, but that obligation stops at helping customers find the right product for their project. Why do life stories come up?
The only answer I can come up with is that they're lonely. Not lonely in the sense that they live alone and just like to talk to people when they do get out and about. I'm talking about lonely in the sense that they feel like no one cares. It seems like these people are so desperate to feel like someone cares that they resort to the same course of action as petulant children: they act out. What if all of these rambling stories are really cries for help from a rather large segment of our society? What are we supposed to do about it? After all, we can't all sit down and have conversations with everyone who walks by - we'd go crazy trying, and we'd have no time for anything else, such as eating or sleeping. On a large scale, I'm not sure that we can actually do anything about it. I think it has to start on a personal level: letting people finish their sentences before you start talking, letting your mother tell you all the details of the conversation she had with the cat, acknowledging that you even heard another person speak.
Because, really, cashiers can't be expected to be social therapists.
No comments:
Post a Comment