Hold On. I Have Change.
Today I was at the supermarket with my gal pal and we were buying some pie crust for our cookoff tonight. (I made my cauliflower and zucchini soup, quinoa vegetable salad, and hemp milk pudding and she made her delicious apple pie with whip cream and vanilla bean ice cream.) We only had 3 items, so we got into the express lane at Ralphs:
Cashier: Do you have a Ralphs’ card?
Me: No. I don’t have mine today. Can I use yours?
Cashier: Do you have a phone number?
Me: No. I don’t have card. Can I use yours?
Cashier: [Hesitates, but eventually uses hers.]
Cashier: That’ll be $8.97.
Me: OK. [I reach into my two pockets, one on each side of my cargo shorts, pull out two fistfuls of change and throw them onto the counter. A few coins fall down to the ground. By this time, there were 3 people in line behind me.] Let’s see…1, 2, 3, 4, 5,…[counting the pennies]…28, 29…
Cashier: [With this disgusted look on her face.] You know there’s a Coinstar over there.
Me: Yeah, but they charge a fee. Shoot…I lost count. 1, 2, 3, 4…
Customer in line behind me: Ahh jeez. [She was a Ralphs employee. Got irritated and grabbed her stuff and went to another line.]
Me: 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37…
Next customer in line behind me: Are you serious? [He wasn't all that excited about it either.]
Me: What? I have some extra change. 38, 39, 40…
But by this time, she canceled our transaction and began ringing up the customers behind me while I continued to count my change. Finally I finish.
Me: Here you go. $8.97. [Only had enough change for $3.97, so I added a $5 bill.] Do you need to count it?
Cashier: No. I trust you. [Finishes ringing me up.]
Me: Can I have my receipt?
Cashier: [Gives it to me with a not-so-happy look on her face.]
Me: Thanks. Have a nice day.
Total time for the interaction and holding up the express line: 4 minutes and 50 seconds
This experiment was kinda fun. The objective was to sit in and manage the tension/conflict from the cashier and customers behind me and be OK with it. All during this process, my gal pal is giggling here and there. I didn’t tell her ahead of time that I was going to do this, but she knew what I was up to as we were in the middle of it.
As she’s laughing, it starts making me smile and laugh on the inside. I’m standing there trying to count the change and not laugh at the same time because that would be releasing the tension, instead of staying cool and managing it by keeping a straight face and “staying in character.”
Because I had this chuckle on my face, I couldn’t make much eye contact with the cashier and had to keep looking down or else she probably would have gotten even more pissed at me. I would have loved to have been able to look at her more often though and be able to better sit with the tension/conflict.
You know, I don’t blame the cashier and the people behind you for getting irritated, although the cashier should have been more polite, even if you were holding up an express line. There is nothing that I detest more than someone who gets in the express line and does something to make it move slower than a regular line. I’m glad I wasn’t behind you, as I probably would have given you an earful. Have a good day !
Suzy – Where were you?!?! I needed someone like you at Ralphs to jack up the tension and voice your opinion!
Haha wow. Sounds like a fun experiment to try, maybe i’ll give it a shot sometime.
I’m not sure I could have done something like that just for an experiment. If that’s what I had available to pay for the items needed, so be it! But to inconvenience and irritate others on purpose? Hmmm …
Ya know it wouldn’t have really mattered that you were in the express lane. Most of the time the impatience is high for the slightest infraction of what is preceived as keeping the line moving (no matter which lane)and the smallest hiccup will get you stares, rolled eyes, whispers from behind and a cashier that is drumming their fingers.
I like what you’re doing here, but I do think this was more rude than anything else. It also would not have made me uncomfortable. If I was in a hurry, I would have simply paid for your items with my debit card or cash.
I like the experiment and you did great. You were calm and did not rush anything to release the tension. Awesome!
I did this once before at a dunkin donuts. I bought two large coffees In all penny’s. They were pretty pissed off but I needed those coffees and money is money.
I think what would have annoyed the clerk the most is that it must have come off to her as some kind of joke you were playing. You planned to do this, and your friend giggling in the background would make me believe you were doing this so satisfy some childish sense of humor. I used to have to change peoples pennies for bills all day working at a hotel and that didn’t bother me, but if someone tried to pay their night’s stay in quarters i’d be irritated because common courtesy dictates that you have appropriate size bills
I think I would have been irritated if I was in a rush and this happened to me. But really, the clerk should have been more polite.
I think anyone saying that ‘its rude’ is missing the point – he said it in his post – it’s a challenge for himself to be uncomfortable knowing that he’s creating bad feelings around him, and that he is being judged negatively. Most of us are afraid of being looked down or in a not so good light, and thus shy away from this and similar type of offending behaviors. In life, there will be times where your actions, on purpose or not, will create such responses. When you’re aware that that will be the result, are you going to shy away and not do it, or plow through it as a necessary evil?