At some point during the long holiday weekend some of us went to Wal-Mart. Fireworks were popping outside. Store employees were blaring at people to shop fast and get out--the store would be closing in another hour. Obviously they wanted to go out and watch the fireworks rather than watch the cash registers. At any given time only one employee was actually tending a cash register.
As usual I placed one item at a time on the counter and watched to see that Chatty Cathy scanned each item only once. As often happens, Chatty Cathy found this terribly distracting and intimidating.
These yappy cashiers always claim that they feel a need for reassurance that they are human, and that that's why they chatter like monkeys. Learning to work in silent dignity like a human being might help them feel more secure in their species identity. Their body shapes look human to me, but they need to work on specifically human skills like being able to concentrate on their job instead of fretting about the little status displays that are of such concern to dogs and monkeys.
Though clearly not Highly Sensory-Perceptive, "Cathy" was able to see that I was intentionally withholding eye contact and watching the cash register. A smarter or nicer girl would have taken this as a tactfully silent reminder to her to focus on her job and not try to play the chatter-cheat game--distracting the customer from "mistakes" in her own favor. Cathy compulsively displayed the lack of a healthy sense of shame by persistently chattering, even running around the end of the counter and having to be told to stay in her place. Blessed with enough sadism to enjoy watching how badly extroverts can humiliate themselves before they just shut up and act like human beings, I watched the cash register more closely, expecting to catch Cathy trying to cheat me anyway.
A fully human mind can accept that, when people sign contracts to work as employees in big chain stores, they are entering an unequal relationship with the stores' customers. Their emotional feelings, and particularly their self-esteem, are of no importance to the customers. We think it's good that they are employed, we prefer letting them add up purchases and make change to letting machines do it, but their social lives are of no interest to us. They need to conduct their social lives on their own time. Finding people who care about their feelings is up to them. As customers we care about finding what we want to buy, paying for it without being cheated, and taking it home.
But something goes wrong in the fetal brains of people like Cathy. Lacking clear senses of who they are and what they're meant to be doing, their consciousness beats about in what seems to be continual fear that other people are going to attack them. Their social status displays are bids for control of situations in which they need, instead, to work through their fear of not having control. They badly need to learn to deal with the fact that other people are not interested in them. They tremble visibly with frustration when customers break up the bad thought pattern many stores allow them to form while working as cashiers, "I can manipulate this person into making conversation with me as if I were the person's equal, while at the same time cheating the person out of money; I don't have to feel afraid of this person because I'm so clever--enough to cheat the person even if I don't need and don't take home the money."
It is indeed unfortunate for humankind that people with that kind of brains are born. In any case, this thought pattern needs to be broken up. If Chatty Cathy can be helped, it will be by replacing it with a more helpful thought pattern like, "I can live with the fact that this person is completely uninterested in me. I can find my own friends on my own time."
Cathy's hands trembled and her voice rose as she continued to try to force the distracting conversation and I continued not to open one. In her anxiety Cathy forgot to count the items she'd scanned and, in fact, cheated Wal-Mart. I had made it really easy for her by buying canned goods in bulk--half a dozen of each kind--and, finding empty boxes on the shelves, packing twenty-four cans in two boxes. Cathy scanned only twenty-three cans...and the can she failed to scan was the most expensive item that she had undoubtedly planned to scan twice.
Well, everyone wanted to go out and watch the fireworks, including the wheelchair shopper waiting behind me. I figured I'd take the receipt home and explain Cathy's problem to store management at their web site.
What a pity Wal-Mart has chosen to add more annoying cookies to walmart.com this summer. The site worked for me in May but this morning it didn't work.
Oh, well, I could always tag Wal-Mart on Twitter. I typed "x.com" into the browser bar. X has added cookies that kept it from working, too.
Attention Wal-Mart. Attention X.com. I have not changed any settings since the last time I used your sites. Either you have added new cookies that violate previous contractual restrictions, or your sites are generating that message because the sites are too cluttered to get through the storm-damaged local server. You need to strip your sites down, remove invasive cookies and memory-hogging screen clutter, and keep your sites accessible to people from communities that value privacy. Try cleaning up the graphics, making sure nothing moves, blinks, or pops.
Anyway...When we unexpectedly take home more than we have paid for from a locally owned business, of course, we go back to the store, explain the situation, and pay the manager what we owe.
When it's a big chain store...many people would say, "Never mind! It's free money!"
This morning I think I'll just post it on the web site and see whether any Wal-Mart managers care about their stores' image enough to thank me for explaining the situation. If they do, I'll send them the receipt and the $1.82.
No comments:
Post a Comment