Mad Cashier

2009-08-20T23:18:00.006-05:00

I am the sharp dressed shit-shoveler with the sexy stoneface. Welcome to my real world and join the rampage. Did I ever tell you how much I hate you and your shopping order? You may have wronged me or smiled and never crossed me. Maybe I didn't like the way you look. Most likely, we've never met and I damn sure like it that way. This is the Mad Cashier reminding you that humanity is contemptable and it's dragging down us all. Allow me to elucidate with this joyfully fulminating litany of hatred.

I took my meds and left the knife at home, what more do you want? I'm capable of being happy and jovial, but y'all won't let me drink on the job. That's me in the hat bagging groceries for the tasteless and the hopeless. Surely some of them are great people and keen minds, but I don't give a damn. I keep checking my Timex and popping pills because I can't stand you, them, or anybody.

Management counsels me about my people skills, but nobody knows which screws I've got loose. I've got a natural stoneface; people think I'm pissed even when I'm feeling good. I didn't mean to suggest that you screw off but I'm glad you did. Maybe I need therapy, but you should get liposuction and a clue.

At my first retail job I became born again disgruntled, infamous for angering customers and known by the closing shift as a master fulminator. Some people think I should be more positive, but I know how foolish that would be. Sure I'm a pessimist, but they must be living in a dreamworld rather than reality.

I'm well-adjusted in my own way, particularly when I'm fighting through acid reflux to chug down a magnum. You know what else brings me joy? Petting kittens and telling humanity to kiss my crazy white ass.

Intoxication is the spice of life and vitriol is all I know. I've been laying down invective since 2001, punch-typing the truth to loud music while I'm getting drunk. I write for a limited audience because this is what I am and I don't care who doesn't like it. Candor doesn't appeal to most, but they're just collateral damage.

I'm not special, either. I'm one of many lurking in broad daylight and seeing only darkness. You never know who might be one or what we're thinking. Case in point; I haven't been fired or committed recently. I might have bagged your order yesterday or sold you a quarter pounder back in 2000. No, I didn't spit in your food like a coward. I smashed your fries and destroyed your sandwich.

Maybe I was the psychotic ex-Green Beret grill cook who did time for felony assualt. He was a cool guy who shared good weed and claimed to have brutalized some customers at Burger King. I could be the wholesome, pig-tailed girl next door ... who plans to screw your virgin son and daughter while you're pretending at church and then burn your vanilla house down. Chill out, I'm no arsonist. I'm a vandal.

Damn right, I should never work with the general public. Pull your head out of your happy place, we don't all get the dream job. I got beat down by a man in the mouse suit at Chuck E Cheese when I was a little kid. He should never have worked with children. The difference between him and me is that nobody ever got hurt when I flipped out. If we all had it made, there would be nobody to sell you groceries. So what if I scared a few customers and employees?

I'm living it up at the poverty line. Guess what, I'm not a shiftless pothead and I'm not on the dole. A distinguished gentleman I work with spends his money on weed rather than food. Nevertheless, he'd have a full fridge if the lazy bastard could be bothered to get more food stamps. Genuine losers surround and sicken me. A poor worker can stand proud, but only scum leads the low life with his hand out. From Main Street to Wall Street, we're ruled and served by scum from every echelon.

Cashiering nearly got my head blown off. I was all alone with a masked gunman and his lookout, but my working life has seen worse days. An average day in the fast food maelstrom pushed me closer to insanity. So what if violent crime gave me a little PTSD? It was a calm, deep night and the salt of the earth didn't aggravate me. I've burned in Hell and haven't feared death since I worked at Jack in the Box. We called the cops on dopeheads every week at that grease trap.

It doesn't end when I clock out. Drivers and passengers have thrown drinks and cussed at me just for walking down the street, but never accepted my invitation to get out of the car. Some little suburban bitch ran a red light when I caught up with him. Kiss this, Rowlett, Texas.

Am I sober or are you just horrifically insufferable? People always want me to explain myself. Why do I always wear an ivy dress? I like hats, dumb ass.

Why did you assail me with pleasantries? I don't care how life is treating you, either. “Doin' good” I always respond. I could have been suicidal that day. We're all inveterate liars.

People speak for no reason and pretend to care when they don't have to. Fine, engage in velvet gloved mutual masturbation, but don't expect me to join in. Why suffer the exhaustion of mindless happy talk when dismissiveness will suffice? I'm not the prick, I try to mind my own business and keep getting accosted. My street clothes are dress clothes but my only fashion statement is that white lapel pin flipping you the bird.

Hell yes, I meant it. You pushed me too far and I'm going for broke. Don't like it? Yeah, and it would take a team of psychologists to determine why I might give goddamn. Nevertheless, I hope this rant finds you well and God bless. A parting thought and my final offer—kiss my crazy white ass.

2008-12-03T03:31:00.003-06:00

A dream come true is a delusion to be medicated. I went to the asylum in cuffs. My dream was to break free from cashiering and hence society by becoming a night stocker. Grandeur is a state of mind and socializing is slavery. After many rejections spanning several years, I was made one of grocery's elite.

Many times we climb the mountain and find nothing at the apex. Annoyance is inescapable and we're always free to live in our own world. Escape isn't a reality: the world won't be through with us until we succumb to it.

Imagine freedom from small talk and faking smiles. I dropped out of civilization, living where thought is unadulterated. As I walked past people talking and spectating aimlessly, I wondered what asinine world they lived in. What's the point of inviting people to a party when you've already got booze? Simply incomprehensible. Intense drudgery followed by daylight in my leisure was the price. Boredom doesn't kill, it rapes.

I dazzled them in dairy and was recruited by night crew in October, 2007. The driving force behind the three-man crew was our boss, a kind homeless man. He stocked like a maniac with a body wrecked from 40 years of manual labor. He led us to success and we had some laughs — until he got fired for moving freight out the back door. The crew disintegrated without his leadership.

New hires disappoint under the baton of an idiot. Upon being fired this week, the deaf new hire sporting a battle flag belt buckle shouted a diatribe featuring the racial slur that has become an American fetish. Good riddance, I hated the way he looked. Third shift's jackass in charge, renowned for stocking like an incontinent drunk, successfully campaigned to have me banished for my slow and inconsistent performance. After one year on nights, I was back amongst the customer slime. Demons never die.

Courtesy clerk is the ultimate joke job, skillfully performed by the prepubescent and mentally retarded alike. As if bagging groceries wasn't simple enough, the teen slackers even get to sleep in their cars. The night was mine once more on the shift I know best. My first shift started at 3 pm and I was back to a 6 am bedtime. The night can take me anywhere.

My hands fly as the fire in my mind screams for a release. Is the fake smile showing or am I still stone-faced? I can almost hear Beethoven and Ozzy. Excited by the violin, my eyes roll as my brain melts into my nerves. I've got to calm the deepening intensity in my stare, it might look bad. Desperation and distortion threaten to overcome. To ward off the onslaught, I work furiously while focusing on the guitar screaming in my head.

What cacophony drills into me? I tease the beast and look up. Straight chaos widens my eyes and pours inside. The overbearing legion of moving mouths and eyes tear at me . . . sounds like a farm animal being brutalized. Just like old times, I'm becoming a little disoriented. My nerves grate with a screech and fray like an electrical wire. Maybe my caffeine pill could have helped. I don't want to run away, I just wish I could pace the floor. The comfort of fading away soothes me. Front end's maelstrom is unreal as consciousness ascends to another plane. I look back down and see only a torrent of groceries to be bagged like a puzzle.

At 8 o'clock the store went dead. Piece of cake. Front end veterans called it the busiest day they had seen in months, which abruptly became the slowest. That's the unpredictability of evenings in retail. I talked with an Egyptian cashier who claims he enjoys dealing with customers. Yeah, and he probably thought this little rush was bad. I also bagged for a cashier who used to bag for me at a previous job. We joked around yet I somehow neglected to mock his new receding hair line. Being the only courtesy clerk on duty, I juggled three registers that day. Just another screwed up day in the gutter of Hell.

It was almost invigorating to confront the action once more. Crowned with high praise from managers who were totally blown away to see a bagger actually work; I won't get another raise in this decade, so who gives a damn? No customer complaints; survival is success.

Pedaling hard on a bike with dead brakes, my mind was dark as night and a free man's life is divine. I needed the kind of thrills that satisfy only geeks and addicts, only in public this time. At the risk of hearing sports nonsense on TV or being accosted by a patron, I strolled out to a bar for the first time since 2007. My pen needs some action — time for some real work.

Fire charring my mind, sentences in Times New Roman scroll through my brain and caress my nerves. Wherever they come from, they always bring me closer to something ostensibly unattainable or unreal. Dopamine for the soul. I'm sucking tar like a fiend, but the gorgeous smoke can't give enough nicotine. Entranced blue eyes glare beneath a stern brow as an indulgent mind lays napalm on paper. Why are there mirrors behind the bar? Nervous system writhes in beauty and splendor. Times New Roman stays etched in the brain, so I pocket my notebook and shift from beer to bourbon.

The bartender couldn't hit me fast enough. I slammed the McCormick home and quelled the pain in my vengeful esophagus with a Coke back. Forty or so dollars later, some European freak started asking me about cocaine. Just try to get the drop on me. I don't know any peers, much less dope peddlers. In the same sentence as "methamphetamine," he directed my attention to a table of young ladies. Wasted and fully reminded that women exist, I'm intrigued. Rather than tell the shapely girls what was on my mind (the implosion of the free world), I asked them who they "liked" for the playoffs. Football is obviously in season . . . and maybe basketball or something, whatever.

Euro-freak passed around some Xanax bars with fat bonus for me, probably for buying him a shot and not for insulting him with a laugh. Back on earth, I told the foxy blonde majoring in business to blow off her "future" in light of the impending uber-depression. Seems like that was the wrong line. I lost the last brunette standing to a dullard who probably uses his cell phone to tell time. Even happily intoxicated, the charm that got me fired from Taco Bell shines through. After last call, I was escorted out by a fat man with orange hair. In retrospect, I don't think that bar has a bouncer.

Savoring the crisp air, I smell the old foreboding of desolation in the wind. Deserted streets are my red carpet as the city's far north sleeps. Under infinite blackness, the dead of night is sublime and pure. Now I'm eager to blast that violin sonata and see my cat. The best part about working evenings is spending the nights in sweet solitude.

2008-01-01T07:54:00.000-06:00

Money for nothin', narcotics for free. While dopeheads are content to rob mere convenience stores, drug dealers hit licks at your friendly neighborhood pharmacy. What does it take to steal tens of thousands of dollars in powerful narcotics and get away clean? Astoundingly little. An overnight robbery in November revealed laughable security failures at an average supermarket pharmacy in upscale North Dallas.

My night manager was talking to me as I threw stock on the dog food aisle when the booming pharmacy alarm sounded. Being the responsible nocturnal steward he was, my boss ran towards the imperiled dope department. Having been robbed as a nightshift cashier months ago (as detailed in the May 5, 2007 edition of Mad Cashier), I was thoroughly disinterested in the action. I kept working steadily as I tried to shake the ludicrous fear that yet another masked gunman would come after me.

After a while, my boss approached me with a grin on his face. "I hope you brought your book," he cackled. During my lunch breaks, I had been reading an investigative book about domestic surveillance after Sept. 11. Upon being notified of the break-in, loss prevention gave one lucky member of night crew an interesting assignment. The boss laughed as he handed down orders to have me posted by the pharmacy until loss prevention arrived should another break-in occur. My tension melted as I laughed at this asinine assignment.

After 20 minutes of droning, the alarm was shut off. The unlucky night stocker who would get back to the grindstone was eagerly talking to police as I passed by en route to the pharmacy. What a rush this little ransacking must have been for him.

There I was, sitting on my narrow ass, reading my book and eating a free jelly doughnut. I went ahead and checked my blood pressure just for laughs. Thrilled with my luck, I looked through the pharmacy pick-up window and whipped out my handy notebook.

Mangled mini-blinds from the drive-thru window had been cast onto the floor. The flimsy drive-thru window was the point of entry, pried open in an instant with an ordinary crowbar. Even McDonald's drive-thru windows guarding petty cash have lock bars. Not here, where a wealth of popular narcotics are at stake. A cabinet which looked like the one holding swabs and examination gloves in your doctor's office was opened and empty. There were absolutely no pry marks on the cabinet, which contained all of the pharmacy's high-dollar dope. If the cabinet ever had a lock, it was clearly not being used. Guess where the brain trust put all this; right next to the drive-thru window.

Morphine, oxycodone, methadone and fentanyl were among the narcotics stolen according to labels on the cabinet's shelves. According to my night manager, who saw the bandit exit through the window, the robber was a bulky Latin man wearing all black with the archetypal black ski mask and armed with a crowbar. Passing by the pharmacy on my walk home as usual, I saw deep crowbar marks on the windowsill. That was all it took. Management made it too easy--for the second time.

My night manager identified this man as being identical to the robber who knocked off the pharmacy in a nighttime raid three months prior, according to video footage. That time, the pharmacy alarm was out of commission and the robbery was not discovered until the pharmacist arrived that morning. In his debut lick, the robber scored $20,000 to $30,000 in dope with an estimated street value upwards of $1 million.

The disconcerted store manager waltzed towards the pharmacy waiting area; my 45 minutes of company ordered lounging was over. I slowly marked my place in the book with a pipe cleaner and deftly half-smirked at the store manager's aghast demeanor. Despite their true role as petty corporate tools, store managers typically respond to incidents with a grave sincerity born of managerial self-importance. If some desperate vulture had struck the pharmacy once more, I would've ran for another doughnut.

Were all these security failures even legal? An assload of serious dope made its' way onto the street, apparently with little effort or risk on the robber's part. One has to wonder how many pharmacies get pillaged after dark. This crime is infinitely safer and more lucrative than common robberies. Supermarkets would never get the reputation as crime magnets that convenience stores do and nobody but us would ever have to know.

Incompetence is costly and dangerous. A presumed drug dealer procuring that much dope causes an obvious chain reaction of street crime--and it's all management's fault. Pharmacy security should be held to a higher standard, and the vanguards of criminal stupidity should be held accountable. Then again, if the job were harder, the robber might have brought a gun. Perhaps we'll see him in another three months. Yet, I still see no lock bar on the pharmacy drive-thru window.

2007-12-31T11:15:00.000-06:00

The sound of suck is coming after your psyche. Whether you find it insipid or you're tasteless enough to feel the groove, we're all forced to hear the music played at retail establishments. More than an annoyance, music is a mind control tool employed by the grocery business. Typically, service industry corporations operate radio networks, punctuate their third-rate playlists with asinine promotions and play the cacophony 24 hours a day.

Marketers' old school of thought was to play cheery music to induce feelings of well being and thus increase customer spending. Playing fast music towards closing time to make us shop and work faster is an obsolescent yet famous trick. The old butcher knives have been supplanted by surreptitious scalpels. Newer research has shown the tempo and giddiness of music to be practically irrelevant. For example, Kroger now plays Simon & Garfunkel every day. People simply stay longer and spend more when music they like is being played.

Some sucker ambling along and whistling to the music is a common sight where I work. Question this: are you thinking what they want you to think when you go shopping. Ironically, when front end was rocked by my favorite Rolling Stones song, I was more likely to listen to Mick Jagger than to my customers.

Christmas is the most nauseating time of year as McDonald's takes the lead in offending sensibilities. My first December under the Arches was especially harrowing, as putrid renditions of Christmas favorites drove my coworkers and I to the brink of madness. Our survival instinct kicked in, inspiring one cashier to sing along with some creative revisions. His ballads of destroying the store and making lowlife customers suck on our vengeance gave the crew a desperately needed laugh.

Like automatons, we zealously heil the ubiquitous corporate beast. Rather than celebrating good will and generosity or the summertime birth of Christ, we hoggishly wallow in our self-imposed slavery to the corporate powers that be. These masters to which we have surrendered our minds and lives are the very con men who have shrewdly decreed that we be serenaded with ballads of holiday warmth and cheer in the hopes that our beleaguered credit card accounts succumb.

Human decency forgotten, my employer commenced their noxious holiday onslaught on Nov. 10. I wonder if any customers heard me muttering obscenities. Shattered, but not broken, I brought a Walkman to work the following night.

Surely, we've all suffered through too many Decembers to have any remaining appreciation for the holiday classics. The Christian world is plagued by Christmas "carols" for some six weeks out of every year, yet albums of this chirpy, irksome drivel keep on selling. Then again, there are still Rush fans out there--misguided souls.

Nothing unsettles an actual classic rock fan more than some crap artist shrieking like a little bitch. That and the shitkicking magic of country music was part of everyday life working at Albertson's. Yeah, that company is on the brink of collapse. My current employer thinks the spoof soundtrack of The Wedding Singer is the way into a deeper relationship with America's disposable income. Of course, no talent hacks who charge lower royalties appear to be the mainstay of every company's playlist.

The sickest part of our plight? The most mind-raping songs on their playlist are by far the ones played most often. Hearing some Starbucks-ass little punk sing like a pansy about true love on a first date just makes me want to whip out my box cutter and end it all. I'm constantly subjected to this. It's all candy ass, all the time.

Classical music would be an attractive solution to the annoyance problem. Hardcore favorites like "Toccata and Fugue" or "Beethoven's 5th" would be unlikely choices for retail radio. However, unnerving besetment does not result from even the most listless, piss poor classical tune--shrieking opera scores aside. Simply put, I'd rather abandon my shopping cart and sprint for the nearest exit than be assailed by "Achy Breaky Heart" as I was as an Albertson's cashier. Each slaving day, I looked forward to going deaf with George Thorogood and Motzart while swilling caustic Chardonnay. Vivaldi ain't great, but he won't drive you to drinking.

Ignoring the music would be great if your subconscious mind would allow it. A tight budget and a wary mind guard me from psychological tricks ... I think. Whether you abhor the music and shop or whistle along and buy more, we all lose. Small, everyday victories are how the ruling class stays on top, screwing us all from cradle to grave.

2007-08-31T02:47:00.000-05:00

Wholesale abuse and rock bottom wages can turn cherubs into guttersnipes. The remainder of the service industry's renegades are simply low-rent degenerates without a cause. From an ostensibly innocent snowball fight to wanton vandalism--whether for vengeance or sport--the job never fails to inspire free thinkers.

Smoking in the drive-thru booth while taking orders, stealing petty items out of anger, painting the walls with dipping sauce packets; those were the days. From vandalism to the proverbial sleeping on the job, I've done my share of screwing around. Truly, it feels great to make a decent living and do the right thing. Unfortunately, corporate makes it hard to care while customers erode our sanity.

I first came to appreciate snow in a Jack in the Box parking lot on Valentine's Day. It was 3 a.m. and Hell had frozen over. The shift leader and I tried to deface and destroy the store's exterior with snowballs. I had been off the clock since midnight, so I put my leisure to good use. Using my shoe, I carved threats and obscenities for the customers' reading pleasure in the snowed-over parking lot. I then erected a Siegfried Line of snow in front of the drive-thru entrance and reinvented the snow angel.

I flung myself onto the snow in the manner of a bludgeoned corpse, creating the impression of a dead body. Strawberry soda from the fountain finally served a purpose--as a pool of Hollywood blood.

Why stay at work three hours past quitting time? I was waiting on my ride. The buses stopped running at 11 p.m. and I desperately needed to keep the meter running for an additional hour. The shift leaders always gave me a ride when they got off in the morning.

A write-up dated March 6, 2004 reprimanded me for staying on the premises after my shift ended. I clocked back in that night to cover drive-thru for the night manager, who became ill while working. While being interviewed for this job, I told the general manager that I had plans to get a car. As she scheduled me for fewer than 20 hours every week, she was pissed because I hadn't made good on that claim.

In the end, I was happy to afford bus fare. My only ambition was to find a decent job and an actual meal. I scammed my way out of paying checks at restaurants and stole provisions such as paper towels and trash bags from my former college. Desperation breeds loathing, just like the assistant manager's constant verbal abuse. Not everyone brings their work home, but we carry animosity around like a tumor.

Our night manager was a brass-balled desperado with a piquant recipe for revenge. This guy actually killed the lights and closed the store significantly early on a regular basis, leaving the crew free for unencumbered screwing around. He was an ambitious man who once respected the job and smiled at every customer. When the lowly "team member" was promoted, corporate screwed him out of his management raise for the remainder of his tenure and declined to give him back pay for his time in management. He was paid like a cashier and was full of acrimony like the rest of us. I was glad to work for him. He even covered my ass when I cussed out a customer.

"That means take your bitch ass home," I shouted into the headset while working drive-thru. After repeated requests to silence his new age putrescence so I could take his order, some little punk kept the music blaring. I then refused him service and was ignored. Every night, my blood ran cold as I tolerated belittling and disrespect from all directions from imps with inferior intelligence.

My aloofness imploded and I shouted at Johnny Punk Bastard. Suddenly, I was heard loud and clear. The driver speedily pulled up alongside a customer at the drive-thru window and fired a barrage of obscene threats at me. He came back the following night to curse to my boss. The night manager told the clown that he didn't know my name and that for all he knew, I no longer worked there.

Management bombarded an industrious night stocker with empty promises of pay increases and promotions. Continuously shafted, the hopeful stocker remained at $6.40 and without the possibility of advancement. Cartons of cigarettes went missing, property was destroyed and a paint bucket was emptied on a backroom floor. In a moment of bad temper, the stocker spontaneously quit during a phone conversation with his department manager.

Whether or not our actions are right, people are products of their environment. Casual observers seldom consider the human side of the service industry. Garbage in, garbage out; it's a matter of cause and effect. From Watts to McDonald's, we all have the need to purge our psyches of indignity and find the peace that only justice can bring. Why steal an avocado from the backroom? Perhaps it's the right thing to do.

2007-07-17T02:36:00.000-05:00

Dueling an agent of America's decay with the truth as your weapon is a rare treat in this world. Rarer still is when bullshit is vanquished by earnestness. Albeit a small battle, the culmination of this wage slave's recent cockfight with big business was a sublime finish to a story of close calls with murder and eviction. Countering the lies of a corporate gargantuan, I testified on my own behalf at a hearing to appeal the Texas Workforce Commission's decision to deny me unemployment benefits.

As detailed in the May 5 edition of Mad Cashier, the road to confrontation began after midnight on May 3, when masked robbers spiced up my nightly tedium at the convenience store I tended. I struggled to accept dying in an unbecoming polo uniform shirt. The armed gentleman demanded I "open the safe." This being impossible, I hoped he'd spare my low-rent life in exchange for the contents of all three registers.

The .38 wielding thug was more magnanimous than my employer. As reported on May 11, I was fired for having in excess of $300 for the robbers to pocket. My termination was unjust, considering that I was never trained to handle a robbery or instructed to keep only $30 in the store overnight. In fact, I was fastidiously trained with regard to receiving and stocking deliveries. The minor detail of preparing a new hire working the high risk third shift for retail's worst case scenario was overlooked by management. Our cash handling habits were lax by corporate standards.

Had there been only the corporate mandated $30 accessible to me, perhaps I would have been gunned down out of anger. Comically enough, upon arrival that morning, my store manager admonished me for not carrying a portable panic button in my apron. Let's analyze this ... reaching into my pocket and groping for some gizmo while a gun is being pointed at me. As I nodded my head, I couldn't help but glare at him like he was a fool. Cleaning up 160 pounds of blown away employee off of surfaces and shelves surely costs the company more than a bloodless robbery. I wonder how many cashiers have been killed by corporate "profits over lives" policies.

I suppose this inane ass-chewing was the boss' special "thank you" for my working two hours late that morning. So ended my seventh and final shift in the convenience store business. I was told not to come in the following night and fired by corporate soon after.

On June 1, I unlocked my mailbox hoping for an overdue unemployment check. The familiar gauntlet of rejection dealt me another bitch slap. A notice informed me that a TWC investigation found that I quit my job upon being reprimanded. Quitting under such circumstances forfeits a worker's right to unemployment benefits. Employers pay unemployment insurance taxes based on the number of their former employees who get benefits. My former employer simply lied to the State of Texas to save on their taxes, a point that was made in my letter of appeal.

Just another day and a fortune to be made for the ever-tarnished top brass. "I am appealing the decision to deny me Unemployment Insurance benefits because it is the product of blatant lies," my letter of appeal stated in part. The appeal was about what matters most: rent money and general principles.

I had to wake up early for the 11 a.m. Appeal Tribunal hearing; the pitiful new job I scrambled to find is an evening shift position. The three-way conference was conducted by telephone and tape recorded by the TWC. Both the claimant and the employer testify under oath. The opposition was a female corporate area manager, another company cog under the influence of misplaced zeal.

At the outset of the proceeding, the hearing officer asked the corporate representative how I left the company. Her response was that I was fired. This was a complete reversal of what corporate initially told the TWC, according to a TWC fact finding report. Was she avoiding perjury or had her organization realized that the lie was no longer useful?

The question then became whether or not I had performed my job to the best of my abilities on last night at work. The employer's argument fixated on the sum left in the registers. I contended that I had not been trained otherwise. In my defense, I testified that I had promptly dropped an estimated $1,700 from money orders prior to the robbery, as had been demonstrated to me.

I was informed the morning after the robbery by my store manager that $50 was "acceptable;" not before that night and not $30, I told the Tribunal. During the same conversation, I was told for the first time that the two other registers' contents should have been dropped upon my arrival each night. "He was given full training," the area manager rebutted. So much for eschewing perjury.

"Why was Mr. Harris fired for his first violation of this policy," the hearing officer asked her with a soupcon of incredulity. "I need more details," the area manager tentatively answered after a few seconds of hesitation. First blood was mine.

The smug area manager then attacked me for opening the two registers not my own for the robbers to plunder. By this point, I tired of my actions being condemned by dullards who clearly know less about armed robbery than drunken redneck viewers of Cops. I brusquely explained that demands had been made for the safe and that they demanded "all of it" after emptying my drawer. I then stated the obvious; I will provide 100 percent robber satisfaction rather than stonewall my way into a pine box. To my glee, her cage had been rattled and I had taken the offensive. I savored the pathetic verbal pauses as my nemesis for the day fumbled for a decent retort that never really came.

Ultimately, an unprepared opponent less eloquent than myself incinerated corporate's case. "I'm just another casualty of corporate America's exploitation of honest workers," concluded my letter of appeal. Not this time. Without till counts of the night of the robbery, the area manager could not testify as to how much was in my register. Thus, whether or not I had violated the $30 policy could not be substantiated. The Appeal Tribunal reversed the TWC's decision and my check would be in the mail.

Victory is like a paycheck--I'll grab it anyway I can. Whatever symbolic blow was dealt to corporate deserves some recognition. We often lose, but the fight is its' own reward. Dammit, let's all throw rocks at the Bastille whenever possible. Tonight, I'm leaving "Paint it, Black" on the shelf and blasting "Ride of the Valkyries."

2007-07-10T02:28:00.000-05:00

"Get a clue," is the title of a job orientation packet from a major supermarket chain. Despite the best efforts of retail propagandists, all but the most delusional of time clock slaves have done just that. From the painfully dull to the wildly implausible, service industry orientations and subsequent corporate indoctrination attempts are brimming with bullshit. Having worked with very few retarded people and even fewer contented employees, I'm confident that corporations' brainwashing endeavors inspire more laughs than loyalty.

The "Get a clue" packet, otherwise known as the "elusive satisfied customer caper," is rife with lies/punch lines such as: "people are great" and "prices are good." This is in addition to the implication that customers can get what they want "plus a little." However, illustrations of the Pink Panther cartoon grinning at me on every page elevated this clumsily written drivel to the same tier as red letters in the New Testament.

Orientation videos are perhaps the industry's most common brainwashing tool. In 2000, tooth grinding was mitigated by jaw dropping as I watched such a video on my first day at McDonald's. A prominent feature was excessively smiling Asian women and children in essence performing for corporate in the manner of actresses employed by the adult entertainment industry.

Cliche notes of melodrama played tenderly in the background as a doltish regular customer shared her remarkable story of love pure and true served up with her morning coffee. Alleged employees of this store lauded the woefully unattractive woman. They even claimed to have missed her while she was on vacation. Remarkable, indeed. McDonald's coffee sucks while human nature and basic economics prevent cashiers from giving a puddle of grease. The tape even told a story of how McDonald's saved a life. I'm secure enough to admit that this video left me cheering and militantly proud to shovel shit for my millionaire overlords.

The demon came back to haunt me in 2006, when a different Dallas area McDonald's hired me. Computers had supplanted VCRs, but the annoyance was still real. Computerized cartoon characters walked myself and the other unfortunates through the magic of fast food. "Baibrook [the franchise company] is the best company in Texas," the orientation manager proclaimed. The best for whom?

"Number one" was a recurrent phrase in the orientation packet, as were "happy" and "guest satisfaction." Apparently, "guest" is the new, corporate correct word for "customer." Directly after this packet welcomed me to the McDonald's "family," a page was devoted to describing what burgeoning tycoons the franchise owners were. Hiel Ronald!

Actors in a Kroger orientation video used the word "customer" 39 times in a five minute period. As someone who really knows what the "c" word means, this only served to piss me off before I even hit the so-called "sales floor."

Orientations are merely prelude to an intellectual gang bang, with corporate wielding the bull whip and management holding long hair out of the way. Poorly written bulletins likely composed with a third grade audience in mind dominated the backroom scene. If an employee is lucky enough to have a breakroom, his subconscious is likely harangued by company cartoons raving about kissing customer ass. "Being a champion feels great and is easy to become," declared an Albertson's bulletin titled "How to become a champion courtesy clerk." I take my lunch breaks outside.

"Say one "extra" thing" is my favorite. This affront to my intelligence was ripped off of the freezer door at Jack in the Box by yours truly. This smiley-face adorned eyesore gives examples of how to initiate conversation with a "guest." "That's a cool car you're driving!" "Your dog is so cute! Look at him ready to eat your french fries." These are two of seven lines crafted by corporate that I'd rather burn in Hell than utter.

"Cool car?" That is raw, undignified bootlicking. I've never had a car in my life, nor do I use the word "cool" in slang fashion. That is, unless I'm blackout drunk. We are denied full-time hours and disgracefully paid. For this, corporate expects us to give unconditional allegiance to the beast and suck up to customers who treat us like garbage.

Not only are indoctrination attempts insipid, they are condescending. Every orientation, campaign and bulletin treats us as though we were mindless toddlers. Just as well; I've never been paid enough to think. Although everything corporate writes is geared to illiterates, I often see errors and pathetic writing in every paragraph.

Unsurprisingly, corporate's onslaught is in vain. We may notice their propaganda long enough to mock it or deface the bulletins. An anonymous poet changed "service with a smile" to "service with a suck dick." My ballpoint pen graffiti was slightly more cerebral, but with the same spirit.

"A satisfied customer made this paycheck possible," reads the bottom of my paycheck stubs. At the top of these stubs is my pay rate--$6.15 per hour.

2007-05-11T12:24:00.000-05:00

Thieves triumph and corporate overlords shaft the hard-working. If anything this cashier's story of robbery at gunpoint lends credence to common cynicism. The saga continues and the real bad guys' occupation should come as no surprise. From violent thugs to white collar jerk-offs, scum comes in all shapes and sizes.

As described in the May 5 article, a North Dallas convenience store was recently knocked off with yours truly serving up corporate cash. I was alone, holding down third shift on my sixth night of work since hire. In a rather lucrative lick, the robbers got $348 for their trouble. Undeniably, the security of that cash was my responsibility. However, demonstrating proper security procedures to a new employee working the high risk shift is the duty of management.

I was scheduled to work the night after the robbery. My boss told me to stay home due to an ongoing corporate investigation into the incident. Before long, I was told by phone when to pick up my first and only paycheck from this douchebag company. Like any company isn't a douchebag.

There are three registers in the store; the robbers ravaged them all. The contents of the two registers left unused overnight and counted and left by second shift every evening, should have been dropped. The extraneous small bills in my register should have been dropped, leaving less than $50 in the drawer. I learn all this well after the robbery. Once the store's first robbery took place, the boss magically became gung-ho about practicing textbook cash handling procedures. I was fired by corporate for giving the thieves a successful night. To be fair, my boss claimed he contested the firing and I'm halfway inclined to believe him.

I have to wonder if I put my former coworkers at risk. Surely, that score introduced yet another hook into the robbers' mouths.

The fact is that I promptly dropped an estimated $1,700 well before the masked men showed up. My transition from training on day shift to working alone on deep nights was rather swift. This training focused on efficiently handling deliveries and making coffee. Quite literally, the only security threat my boss prepared me for was ruthless gangs of scrawny ass suburban teenagers shoplifting beer. The stories I heard about those hooligans were simply chilling.

Obviously, corporate wanted a sacrificial lamb; for a Satanic ritual of course. This wouldn't be the first time I've assumed that position. I learned as much as I could and worked my narrow white ass off--which is typically a mistake in my experience. Those who care are not rewarded; they are exploited.

The stories of millions who get shafted by corporate America just for hitting the time clock go unrecognized. Cashier Angelica Gomez posted her story on the website Find Law for the Public. According to Gomez, she was fired for failing to display the desired level of fear and submissiveness to her shop's owner. In a decision that I would attribute to her fondness of dignity, Gomez refused to pick up a pen that the owner had dropped on the floor. The owner then spoke to the manager, returned to Gomez, and informed her that she no longer had a job. An attorney posting advice on the website saw no potential for a wrongful termination suit.

A California fast-food cashier was fired for having a register shortage of $30, according to a post on Wrongful Termination Blog. He made an angry phone call to an attorney connected to the blog describing the situation. Of course, the cashier had no right to sue, the attorney wrote. A shortage of $30 is not quite indicative of theft on the cashier's part and surely there were security cameras. Shortages happen to the best of us. I was once fired for a $50 shortage; courtesy of a short change artist.

A successful cashier with four years of company service to her credit claims she was fired for being pushed too far. Her entry on Find Law for the Public mentioned "small" problems with the work environment that simply added up. A dispute mushroomed, drawing from her a tearful emotional outburst. I've just about been there myself. She was fired. Company loyalty is a misguided blunder at best.

"You may well have been unjustly terminated, but that does not mean you have rights under any theory of law to sue the employer or to contest the termination," attorney Anthony Lourdes de Grasse wrote in response to her story.

Common American workers need more than a minimum wage increase insisted upon by congressional Democrats for the sake of displaying some glimmer of populist appeal. We need rights and actual representation. As we all know, our arcane legal system is by and for wealth and power. A worker's only right is a lunch break, which I've been denied in the past. In reality, our elected officials will remain comfortably tucked in the top brass' breast pockets and nobody who matters will ever give a damn.

Perhaps risking a bullet in the face is part of a night cashier's job, just like the builders of the Empire State Building risked a plunge to death. Getting fired for accepting that risk and giving the boss your best effort is not what an honest worker should expect. The moral of the story? When dealing with human trash, one should expect to get burned. To a "cynic," getting screwed also means being vindicated.

The robbers will keep hitting convenience stores, corporations will always violate their workers and I'll find another $7 job that incites liquor cravings. Our supreme freak show known as the service industry carries on as the rest of civilization swaggers by for gasoline and lottery tickets. The bottom of the food chain is sustenance for the rich and insatiable. Robbers will blow your head off, but corporate will eat your children.

Unemployment benefits are a joke. Some Coors sure would hit the spot ... a blue mask would flatter my eyes.

2007-05-05T23:23:00.001-05:00

I love the night life; cold as it can be. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has named the position of convenience store clerk among the most dangerous jobs in the nation. Less than a fortnight ago, I ended my state sponsored vacation to become a third shift cashier for a major convenience store chain. Dying in the service of corporate America is an abominable tragedy.

After three years of damnation to afternoons and dreaded mornings, crisp night air and comforting black skies are now my reward for dragging ass out of bed. I soak in the evening during my walk to work, where a maintenance routine is my primary responsibility. On Friday at 1 a.m., my routine got shot full of holes.

As I was alone writing off old doughnuts, a tall man wearing a black mask pointed a revolver at me. I went numb. "Open the safe," he barked at me as I walked behind the counter. He should have known the impossibility of a cashier opening a safe. I thought that if my survival hinged on his procuring the safe's contents--I was fucked. "Don't do nothin' stupid," he gruffly advised me. This gunman was obviously intoxicated with a power trip and attempting a Charles Bronson impersonation. Belting out that robbery cliche must have made him feel special. "I ain't tryin' nothin' stupid," I calmly reassured him.

I disregarded his demand for the safe and cracked open my register. A second man, the lookout, was standing at the entrance and holding the door open. They strongly urged me to "hurry up." I locked eyes with the armed man as he grabbed the bills from my drawer and demanded more. I'd been making habitual eye contact with him the entire time and suddenly remembered reading that cashiers shouldn't look at robbers. In his eyes I saw a man ready to kill. I averted my eyes and happily granted his request for additional funds. I signed on to the other two registers and set their drawers on the counter.

They had the money. Now what? I wasn't thinking of the security of the gold ring on my right hand or the $64 in my wallet. For an instant, I wondered if my next workplace would be Heaven or Hell. The duo cheered as they dashed away.

"It was a very good robbery," a cop said to another while standing in the parking lot. I agree. The robbers wore masks and nondescript clothing, executed the job well and I didn't get shot. I sign on the door reads "store has less than $30 after dark;" they scored more than $200. Although I was alone, all three registers were ready and each held more than $65. Had I failed to drop some $1,700 from money orders well before the robbery, I'd surely be looking for a new job. By 2:15 a.m., the cops were done and I still had those doughnuts to write off.

According to my general manager, this was the store's first armed robbery. The store is located in respectable Far North Dallas. However, my apartment on McCallum Boulevard is a mere 20 minute walk away. Hurricane Katrina evacuees flooded this low rent street, giving rise to a persistent crime wave.

Many cashiers have perceived near misses and some have been murdered. After dark, suspicious people and activities flourish, leaving employees to wonder. We joked about it at my previous third shift job, which was at a fast food diner. "Don't be a hero" is a common training slogan. Potential heroes we certainly were not.

While having a smoke one night at my job as a third shift waiter, the cook and I spotted an occupied brokedick car with limo tint in our parking lot. It was 3 a.m. and he'd been there for at least 30 minutes. We had the manager call police. Just before the cops arrived, so did the driver's date. A black man emerged from that shitty car and, as I predicted, he played the race card and demanded a free meal as compensation for our hateful discrimination. This intellectual offspring of Al Sharpton must hate white people, being that the bitchface didn't tip me. More likely, he was just another lowlife looking for a free ride.

My first drive-thru booth was home to the worst security blunder in the annals of retail stupidity. The evening blitzkrieg prevented managers from picking up cash from my drawer. There were no drop boxes. We were so busy that I might have a few thousand dollars on any given night. With no room left in my drawer, I stuffed gobs of $20 bills into small brown bags and tossed them behind my register. Considering the complete isolation of my work station, this was obviously an armed robber's wet dream.

While in training at my new job, the boss assured me that our nights were relatively safe. There was no preparation and little training for the worst case scenario. Ultimately, cashiering after dusk is a crap shoot. Like any cash handler who is cognizant of reality, I'm glad to cough up corporate's money when my life is threatened. To make a living on the shift I love, I'll gamble another encounter with those John Dillinger wannabes. But, I know what I'll be thinking of the next time I write off those second-rate doughnuts.

2007-04-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

The price of freedom is penury. The aftermath of my store's closing has become afterplay: corporate has screwed us and now the state government is completing the ill-fated encounter. The other day, I saw the corpse of that pathetic store from the window of a lurching bus. I almost smiled at the sight of the fallen beast. Little guy reality has confronted me; who really won on March 11?

What sufferer of profound retardation ravenously scrambles for what the vultures rejected? The last crew of #4273 found out. Unfathomably stupid purchases were the order of the day. One bag of trailer trash actually selected a shoe with no mate. I shook my head, glanced into her begging eyes and told her it was free. If I'd charged the dolt, the shoe wouldn't have cost more than three cents.

The final markdown was 98 percent--a number which likely surpassed that of the combined IQ of all the revelers in idiots' mecca. Such quantities of utterly useless items were scanned as to overload the registers, causing them to shut down. We had to break down orders into multiple transactions to avoid this problem. Some orders took about 50 minutes to complete. If you buy garbage that is of no practical use whatsoever, you've saved nothing--markdowns notwithstanding.

Three plugs of chewing tobacco and the smell of cleaning spray were all that remained of that retail blunder at the final closing time. I was eligible for severance pay and unemployment benefits; the world was mine. For the first time, that stagnant cesspool made me crack a genuine smile as I emerged from the west door that afternoon. It was the dawn of a new life, as I had taken what I thought could be my last order.

The end of my cashiering life was it's apex. In due time, douchebag LLC would mail me a check just for giving them the finger. Throwing my name tag and and dunking my uniform shirt in an outdoor trashcan was the coronation of my glorious victory over the corporate slime.

Like Napoleon triumphantly returning from Elba, I proudly went home donning a bleached wife-beater. Cognizance was in the background of my psyche while disbelief and elation dominated a mind once enslaved to the stress and loathing of register life. We severance seizers had won the battle. Then again, who typically wins the war?

When I was issued severance, the uber-Big Brother kicked my ass. I lost 25 percent of the once decent sum that corporate coughed up to the federal government's raiders. In reality, this amount will merely supplement chump change unemployment checks that can never hope to cover both bills and living expenses. At this point, I still have wine and food. Should the former become cost prohibitive, the American axis of evil will discover who it has prison fucked. I've got a few shanks stashed in my cell.

For the first time since 1998, I left home without wearing an undershirt. Maybe that's what jinxed my latest Wal-Mart interview. With that defeat, I've likely run out of good job opportunities for the time being. Jan. 20, 2006--my last day in fast-food. Never again. Fry grease is surely avoidable, but a swift departure from cashiering was merely a wet dream. Dreams are for suckers and six-year-olds.

Reality's a screaming dike bitch; and it's dragging down us all. Unemployment insurance is paying me $122 a week. I used to make about that much. In those pathetic days, I lived in lowlife apartments and was accustomed to eating nothing. Recently, I've been bold enough to purchase meat. Goddamn it, steak sauce cannot be used on Ramen noodles. Surely, you remember living this far below the poverty line. What's even trickier is finding a job that pays more than this despicable sum.

Nervousness forgotten, I showed remarkable poise at the Wal-Mart interview. I made the manager laugh when I referred to a former employer as "obsessive compulsive." I didn't much give a damn about the outcome. That was before I got my first ornate check from the TWC. Tomorrow is a new day and an interview I'll likely cancel. "Hours may vary," I was told over the phone. We all know what that really means. At the conclusion of the Wal-Mart interview, I heard the words "full-time" and suddenly cared enough to wish I'd worn fresh underwear.

My last employer started me off at 20 hours a week as a produce clerk and ultimately gave me double that on front-end. The $6.90 job I've been trashing all this time was cushy and lucrative in comparison to my previous gigs. Why all this grief and poverty? There are good jobs in the service industry; just not held by anybody I know. Many of these require experience. How does a shit-shoveler get experience if nobody gives him a chance?

We get interviewed for these positions and fantasize about the possibilities. We end up strapping on a headset and dropping baskets of curly fries. In this business, the knock of opportunity is an auditory hallucination. Apparently, seven years of retail experience and an actual desire to work nights isn't enough. Neither is a rudimentary command of the English language and basic grooming skills. Who the fuck do I have to give oral pleasure to in order to get 35 hours a week? Fuck all these asswipes and their clip-on ties.

Napoleon lost and died young with a potbelly. In the end, it all comes back to a magnum of Chardonnay and "Paint it, Black."

2007-02-21T10:50:00.000-06:00

One application can change your life. That's enough idyllic asininity for one day. Once again, I'm searching for a job and hoping to break even. With 18 days before my store is set to close, the pressure is on and hopes for the near future are low.

The applications with tiny spaces and the ache of writer's cramp. The repugnant enthusiasm that comes out torturously. Applying at all those substandard shops and restaurants that we'd rather die than dine at. Answering stupid questions and groping for positive things to say about former employers. The hunt is on.

I'm reminded of bleaker times when embarrassment and failure were the order of every wasted day. During one three week period a few summers ago, I submitted more than 100 job applications. Every morning, I caught a bus to my next series of rejections. Under the broiling Texas heat for the duration of every business day, I went thirsty rather than drop 75 cents on a beverage.

I was dressed for success and verging on heat exhaustion. A pack of cheap smokes was my comfort while an empty wallet kept despair at the forefront. When the pressure of joblessness overwhelmed me, I might drop by a strip club during happy hour for all the free bourbon I could chug. I became a master of the research game. The bulk of my income came from focus groups, clinical trials, taste testing and product testing. Also, I sold many gallons of plasma. When these resources fell short, I resorted to a childhood pastime of selling personal belongings on the street.

I've always had the job that every worker loves to hate, but hatred pulls a 180 when the job is lost. On my current job-hunt thus far, I've been interviewed and rejected by the best in the grocery business. Target considered me for a position on my favorite shift; the primary responsibility was hanging price tags, which I am experienced with. This was an overnight job--no customers are allowed inside at night. After two smooth interviews, I was summarily told to screw off and die. Another candidate who I assume was my competition was sporting a wrinkled shirt and a slack-jawed expression complete with the ever-popular vacant stare. I should have guessed that speaking correct English and shaving would put me at a disadvantage.

A teenager I worked with at Albertson's comes to mind. He had an obsession with behaving like a toddler and abandoning his station at whim. Naturally, the same Target hired this little punk for a grocery position. Aside from the fact that he's a pre-pubescent jerk-off, I presume he has no grocery experience to speak of. Out of sheer jealousy, I detest the scrawny little bastard. Nothing new here; just the story of my disgruntled low-rent life.

Meanwhile, my store has descended into unadulterated Pandemonium. The closeout sale has attracted legions of North Dallas' cheapest, most vacuous lowlifes. In all my time cashiering at the metroplex's most unruly hellholes, I've never seen this degree of profoundly retarded customers and unbridled chaos on such a grand scale. Forty percent off does not make an item free--find me someone without a name-tag who grasps this concept. These tightwads of legend actually have me void off multiple items or entire orders because they aren't blissfully in love with their total. May I be so irrational as to suggest that when one buys 100 items, the balance may exceed $25? The voids I bothered to record Sunday night totaled $482.83. I stayed after close to help return 11 full carts of items that were decided against at the last minute. That would be perhaps 1,000 percent more returns than the pre-closeout usual.

Suffice it to say that I'm leaning on the bottle quite a bit more. The savage bedlam of closeout has given rise to a personal level of acerbic psychosis reminiscent of my drive-thru days. Mysteriously, I have yet to scream obscenity-laden death threats over the intercom and walk off the job. I just came off of an eight-day workweek. Another cashier is finishing with a nine-day damnation to self-check Hell. The great uncertainty of a cashier's life is not knowing how much more he can take.

My job hunt began as infinitely more promising than previous searches. It could have been a gateway to a life without cashiering. The quest for a better life has disintegrated into the scramble for economic survival that I expected. Will I be working the dire poverty 22-hour workweek that has become so popular among retail employers? Maybe someday I'll have a job without customers and the intellectual nausea of a fake smile. We should all be so lucky.

2007-02-15T00:18:00.000-06:00

The savings are an illusion and your wallet is fat for the wrong reason. Shopper's cards bearing names like "Reward" and "Preferred" have been forced upon customers by retailers such as Tom Thumb, Kroger and CVS. Ultimately, customers pay the same price while cashiers have another problem to contend with.

"Do you need my card," "do you want my card," I continuously hear from customers. Bitch, I don't want or need anything you've got. However, you may need me to scan your sanctified card in order to avoid getting ripped off too severely.

When supermarket companies instituted loyalty cards at the turn of the century, I was reticent to get one. The notion of scanning a bar code linked to personal information for something as basic as grocery shopping had such a mark of the beast connotation as to vindicate George Orwell's every paranoid fantasy. Goddamn the twenty-first century. Clearly, what corporate had done was jack up sans card prices by some 30 percent and call the existing price "savings." Surely, these cards were produced solely to track customers' shopping habits and worse. On all card applications, I wrote the name "Joe Blow," complete with a fictitious address and phone number.

Loyalty cards also amp up the annoyance factor. The ever patronizing key rattle comes to mind. This subtle request for a facial bludgeoning is executed by holding the loyalty card key ring tag and shaking so as to jingle the attached keys in hopes of alerting the cashier to the presence of another hopelessly worn bar code. I construe such impertinence as a plea to be ignored. Most key tags fail to scan; the bar code having been scratched into oblivion by an array of possibly useless keys and asinine key ring decorations.

Some customers are pressured into a frenzy by these cards. With wide eyes, they rabidly dash in front of the register to proclaim "I have a card!" No shit, you're sticking it in my face. Actually, you may want to retire to the public restroom and ram that special card up your ass, because I've already keyed in a bullshit card number in the hopes that I wouldn't have to hear about your "discount." Perhaps I'll scan it nonetheless so I'll have a chance in front end Hell of not hearing anymore about it and save myself the aggravation of yet another puzzled stare.

Then, there are the logic-impaired skeptics. "Every time I come in here, I really feel like I'm not getting my discount on all this stuff," a woman told me earlier tonight. There was a time when I vainly attempted to explain the deductions to customers as shown on the monitor. An obvious obstacle is that people are jerk-offs who aspire to the intellect of sputum. Another issue is that customers generally don't take a cashier's word for anything. Screw your feelings, madam. Pay up or drag your vapid ass to Tom Thumb.

"Is that before or after the discount?" If you can't tell, then either the alleged savings are irrelevant at best or your too retarded to shop on your own. They are card savings, not discounts.

The customer's phone number may be entered to retrieve their card information. A phone number prefix is often the first thing they blurt out. The problem is that phone numbers may not link to their information. I once keyed in four numbers for one woman--none of which were found by the system. What they don't know is that a card may be applied by keying in random numbers. This is exactly what I do every time a customer rattles off a phone number. Some people are quite surprised when they perceive that their number "works."

"They've got me trained so well," a woman said of habitually handing her card to cashiers. The savings card illusion has been superbly instilled into the unwitting masses. Occasionally, customers who have lost their card balk when I offer to issue them a replacement. With an expression of dubiousness, they ask of their account will be maintained. Entirely too many customers feverishly complete card applications upon being handed a card. I try to tell them that the application is optional.

Last August, I began shopping infrequently at PETsMART, a retailer which has a loyalty card program. A card would not be issued to me until I submitted an application. The application even asked questions about my pet. In a moment of self-indulgence, I entered "Harris" as the pet's name while claiming my name to be "Joe Davenport." Davenport is the cat's name.

For untold millions, loyalty cards have become an integral part of the shopping ritual. Customers flip through a collection of cards to find the right one. Ironically, the best deals are generally found at stores without savings cards.

2007-02-01T17:10:00.000-06:00

The train to Hell has ran out of track. "We are continuing to evaluate the long term viability of every store in this division ... After reviewing all of the options for your location, we have made the difficult decision to close your store," according to an information packet issued to my store's workers. The packet was authored by Dallas-Fort Worth Division President William Emmons.

My store is among the fallen in corporate's casualty list. Albertson's, now formally Albertson's LLC, has commenced a new round of closings. On Jan. 26, mandatory meetings were held to inform employees of the decision. We got the news only one business day before the media was alerted. The closing date is March 11. For those of us who depended on this job to survive, we've got until then to find meaningful employment.

When the failing supermarket corporation changed hands last year, closings were the ostensibly the first order of business. As locations were put up against the wall and shot nationwide, employee meetings were held. In the meeting I attended, the store director speculated that our store had been spared due to substantial profits during the 1990s. This store has failed to turn a profit since the turn of the century.

Employees from defunct stores were transferred to my location and likely all others. Front end and other departments were overwhelmed by a gratuitous boost in labor. Consequently, hours of current employees were cut drastically. As I was temporarily reduced to penury, the transfers were shafted harder. I estimate that no less than 90 percent of these workers left the company within two months of being transferred. They were transferred only to be gotten rid of. This bleak scenario is certain to be repeated. If I sought a transfer, meager bus service would surely be an issue while being scheduled for 15 hours a week or less. This sound hypothetical translates to a $600 per month cut in pay and no chance to earn a living.

Bearing this in mind, I opted against requesting a transfer on yesterday's deadline. Having been with the company for more than a year, I'm eligible for a severance package worth two weeks of base pay. I'll be damned if I let Albertson's screw me one last time. I'll just get prison banged by Big Brother. The odiuos federal government will pilfer 25 percent of the lump sum, not to mention state income tax and typical payroll deductions.

A Jan. 29 story by The Dallas Morning News offered a half-assed overview of the closings. The story, a mere six paragraphs, reported that the 450 metroplex employees affected would be offered transfers and may collect severance pay if elligible. The News neglected to investigate or at least report what this actually means, leaving indifferent fools to conclude that Albertson's is taking care of its' own. This is what most customers seem to think. There will be no layoffs. Employers pay unemployment taxes based on the number of former employees who collect benefits. The fewer employees who file for benefits, the lower their employer's tax. Just an inconsequential detail.

With joblessness a vivid threat, things other than cash flow seem painfully trivial. My store is only one of two kosher supermarkets in the metroplex. The closing has Jewish customers up in arms and has figured prominently in the one-dimensional news coverage. Customers who have the money for kosher meats from chicken to lamb and $13.49 per pound pastrami balk at the notion of making the trip to Dallas' other kosher store. Kosher meat is exorbitantly expensive and even Gentiles' meat is a luxury item.

They whine, but every time they drop lamb and veal on my checkstand, I fantasize about these succulent meats and barely recall what they taste like. Fantasy is a prominent vice of the common worker. At my register last weekend, I was salivating over an issue of Sunset Wine & Food magazine. After reading reviews of expensive Rieslings, I fixated on photographs of fine cheeses. It occurred to me just how trivial these things have become in my life; and that the closing announcement of the previous day had moved them so much further from my reach.

On Tuesday night, I helped drive a few ceremonial nails into the coffin. I volunteered to hang signs for the massive repricing project. Last year, I hung price tags for mediocre sales and price increases that were sure to send discerning customers elsewhere. Most of those hanging yellow tags that boasted "new lower price" have been supplanted by prices equal to or greater than those of pre-LLC Albertson's.

Overtime is being handed out across the store for likely the first time in the building's existence. I got 50 hours last week and am expecting the same this week. Meanwhile, balls to the wall job hunting is the main priority. Against a passionate vow to myself, I'm seeking fast-food employment after one year of drive-thru celibacy.

A Feb. 1 memo was attached to yesterday's paychecks. The bullshit love letter to Albertson's mentioned the closings and shifted to typical corporate grandiosity. "As we move forward, it is important and necessary that each one of us work every day to provide the best customer service and look for ways to drive sales and reduce costs ... Now, we must continue to WOW those customers ... Team, we are on the brink of success in our division ... I can feel your positive energy and enthusiasm when I am in the stores," Emmons wrote.

As for myself, and undoubtedly the rest of the collateral damage, I'd like to bitch slap the esteemed Emmons. Or, maybe, I'd like enough blood in the streets to wash away my piss and vinegar. A full-scale riot on Coit Road would be nice, complete with burning cars, plundered shops and the terrified screams of those who make more than $15,000 a year. Maybe I'll just blare "Paint it, Black" repeatedly while seething with a magnum of Chardonnay.

Yielding to my constant fatalism could have spared me this. There were entirely too many slow days at the store. I was surprised that the location wasn't Jettisoned during the initial closings of 2006. I've heard that this closing was a last-minute decision. My co-workers showed shock, anger and desperation. Notices of the Jan. 26 meetings were posted by the time clock, and I thought I knew what it was about. Pessimists hate to be right.

I got the news second-hand in a state of nicotine deprivation. I laughed it off and hurried out to lunch. Reality dawned the next morning. As I approached the time clock the following day, the familiar angst and desperation of unemployment permeated my psyche. There's a decent chance in retail Hell of me beating the deadline. I've pushed with worse odds.

2007-01-21T22:58:00.000-06:00

You will all pay. The question is by what method and at what cost to my eroded sanity. My company accepts nine basic forms of payment and three basic types of coupons. All of these carry the risk of incident and annoyance.

Although widely eschewed in the odious 21st century, cash is the most common form of payment. Some notes are torn in half. One $1 bill was stamped "track me at wheresgeorge.com." These anomalies aside, paper cash is the simplest method to accept. Coins are another matter. Despite the proliferation of Coinstar machines, including one within vomiting distance of our registers, some lowlifes pay with change.

"I got lotsa' change, I'll let you fish it out," a man told me while putting his undoubtedly unwashed hand in my face. This and other jerk-offs actually insist that I pick the required sum of change from the pile in their goddamn hand. How beneath me, this defilement is insanely unbecoming.

A filthy hag in drive-thru once poured some $3 in change into my hands. She had the fingernails of a coal miner and the coins were enrobed in some mystery goo. Disgusted, I dropped the pennies on the lane once she left for the second window. Given inflation and a pornographic cost of living, it's a wonder the United States circulates this copper pestilence at all.

"I gave you my pennies," some dipshit noted with a giggle. She also gave me a Canadian dime. I typically spot foreign coins and return them to the customer, but cashiers sometimes slip. I've amassed coins from 13 countries. American money is so vanilla.

With its' largely Mexican customer base, foodservice chain Pizza Patron has begun accepting Mexican pesos at all locations in Texas and other states. The red carpet has been rolled out to the register. Inconcievably, my $9.40 in pesos is valid payment 300 miles north of the Rio Grande.

Personal checks are an obsolete pain in the ass. It takes the average senior citizen 96 minutes to write a check. The check is written, but we're not hoisted up from Hell just yet. The system may prompt the cashier to enter the customer's government I.D. number. Apparently, requests for I.D. deeply offend some people. "You saw my [name of store] card, was that not sufficient? Seriously. On the subject of shopper's cards, a kid high off his ass tried to pay with one at self-checkout the other night--repeatedly.

"I hope it won't charge me twice, 'cause I won't pay twice." Say what? The asinine belief that a register system is even capable of accepting payment twice on a single order has no basis in reality. Customers ask for reassurance that they won't be ripped off, and I have to suppress a smirk. Paying once at this store will rape your wallet.

Accepting payment that was siphoned from taxpayers can be loathsome. "The milk is on WIC," a woman told me the other night. What wasn't on WIC? That would be a brisket, pork spare ribs and a slew of other treats that I've only dreamt of affording. The total was $152.33; $65 under my usual paycheck and paid by Food Stamps. Being that 89 items were purchased, I'm confident that this WIC bitch and her boy toy had a vehicle. Ribs and a ride; that's how the other half lives. This scenario is common. They returned to my register 27 minutes later to drop $15.36 on snack cakes and high-dollar ice cream.

Coupons are a noteworthy problem. From a 1983 coupon with no expiration date to milk coupons made from pom poms, the oddities are endless. Some customers place coupons atop the items for which they are specified. How irritating, these people must be developmentally challenged.

Last week, some imbecile showed me a copy of the ad, which had coupons on it. She pointed to the portion of the ad stating that the grapefruits she selected were on sale. No shit. She proceeded to pay the order and then got pissed off because I didn't scan these coupons that she failed to hand me. She subsequently bitched to me and the customer service clerk beside my register. "I try to show you but you stupid [unintelligible]," she elucidated. A lard ass Siberian bagger hastily glanced over the ad and then told me "you cashier and you don't know [unintelligible]." Their point was moot, as the coupons were not valid for another two days. I hate being second-guessed in broken English. I'd give my left nut for a baseline M-16.

Personally, cash is all I use and my only coupons are from R.J. Reynolds.

2007-01-06T23:44:00.000-06:00

Indifference is power. Try explaining that to the customers and managers who believe that employees give a happy goddamn. Do the remnants of my failing store's clientele realize that I live off of less than $7 an hour? The service industry attempts to slave-drive its' workforce into being devoted and concerned. Corporate uses training videos and harrassment in lieu of a reasonable pay scale or a positive work environment. Concern for customers is largely outgrown by service workers within weeks to months of entering the business. From the store director who said that mine is "a service job" to blithering fools who think I'm listening, they all want an undeserved piece of my dead rat's ass.

"I don't understand why you would do that," a slow-witted bitch told me this summer as I returned to my register after doing a price check for her order. She was incredulous because I didn't return with the item that was actually on sale, thereby saving her the trouble. I had briefly considered doing this, but it seemed entirely pointless. Quite simply, madam, I don't give a free-falling spew of bird shit about your petty satisfaction or your pedestrian frozen waffles and doing the price check myself was courtesy enough. I'm not lazy--concern must be tempered with logic.

Customers say the damndest things. "You guys don't have what I need." That's nice. "Y'all just lost a sale because you do not have enough help here." This means what to me? "You must go home and drink, 'cause I don't know how you deal with this." Right on. If you vow to never shop here again, please keep your word and have a nice life. Giving 110 percent is an off the clock extravagance; or 26 percent for that matter.

When a boss expects me to bother delivering friendly service or the revered customer thinks I should go the extra mile, I'm reminded of a few facts. I walked to work in tattered shoes. My last paycheck was a disgrace. Hours have been cut. I've not actually received a raise from this company during 14 months of service.

Money is a powerful factor in workers' attitudes, but is human nature the overriding factor? "I don't care if I ever spend another dollar at Wal-Mart. I hate those people there. They have no customer service," a customer told me this week. At Wal-Mart, a cashier with my experience can make about $1.75 more per hour than I do and snag decent hours, according to a man employed by that company. Come to think of it, those cash-flooded punks never pretended to offer me assistance unless I was suspected of shoplifting.

Like a duped kamikaze, I dove into the service industry at age 17. I was cashiering for the busiest and most shorthanded retail establishment I've encountered. The customers were degrading asswipes of legend while the work was rife with pressure and misery. This job was a formative experience. Even as I took home overtime pay, I loathed customers with a militant fervor, as did my coworkers. It took two months of 43 hour weeks to get me that way. Disgruntled frustration gives rise to sheer apathy. How could we care? Wal-Mart is infinitely busier than my current store, and incidents with customers are more prevalent.

Aside from freak shows, customers are virtually faceless order numbers. A feature of customer syndrome is the sufferer's belief that they are special. Customers see a bitch badge on a polo shirt and assume that we were born to smile and take orders. Cashiers see another order on the screen or another item on the conveyor. My greatest wish is that the voice behind the order will refrain from causing annoyance. Beyond that, I'm focused on my next smoke break, lunch or clocking out.

The opportunity to provide great customer service to yet another in an eternally endless stream of irritants is surely a joyous occasion. I'd better ensure that this pork is speedily returned to its' cooler--any loss to the company is tragic at best.

Gung-ho managers: the deluded leading the pragmatic. The assistant manager at my old Jack in the Box is a colorful example. "You have no respect for the job," he would shout at us. I was scarcely making enough to eat once daily. One night after cleaning a restroom, he slapped 35 cents beside my register. "That's Jack's money," he said of the quarter and dime recovered from the men's room floor. I pocketed the coins with an astonished snicker.

This shell of a man was pathological about being a corporate tool. He knew no shame when it came time to whore for a customer. Dignity forgotten, he took all varieties of abuse like a lost, beaten down submission whore. We despised the guy, but had to pity him. Inexplicably, he expected of us the same seig hiel devotion that he gave to the corporate machine. "Willingness to bend over for the general public and sell your soul to a plastic-headed Pol Pot" was not a job requirement listed on the paperwork I signed. For all his psychotic admonishments, we were possibly the most indifferent night crew I've worked with. The insanity and degradation dished out by customers along with meager paychecks screamed louder than managerial mantras. The quality of a crew's work is reflective of their working environment.

"You have a serious problem in the meat department," some customer told a cashier this week. How in sweet Hell is paid-for spoiled chicken a cashier's problem? Grapple this concept; not my department, not my concern. The bitch mill whines to front end of issues in every department from drug to floral. Rotten produce, broken eggs, an inept worker in butcher block, items past expiration date, etcetera. None of which is germane to me getting through another shift. Oddly enough, they believe that I'll grab the Creutzfeldt-Jakob bull by the horns and fix the percieved problem. Crises of this magnitude demand swift, unilateral action. I for one will abandon my station for a leisurely smoke break.

Give us a reason to care. Nevertheless, those who care are not rewarded, they are exploited. I try to make the days go by smoothly--disregarding customers whenever feasible.

2006-10-18T23:02:00.000-05:00

The facilitators of maximum entropy proudly deliver maximum annoyance. Obnoxious customers are Hell bent on giving service industry workers more annoyance than we are paid to tolerate.

A cashier making my cashiering average of $6.27 who takes a modest 150 orders in a given eight hour shift will receive 33 cents for dealing with one customer. Aside from the obvious offenses, this patron may subject the cashier to intellectually repugnant remarks. The most indecent aspect of such displays is that the employee is fully obligated to respond inoffensively.

"Hey there, hey there, I got a big one [order]" was a creative gem. Classics like "are you checking," "are you open," insightful weather references and senselessly informing me of produce prices are always in poor taste. "Do you work here?" No, this candy ass uniform is a fashion statement. "I like a "ma'am" with my "yes,"" one woman informed me after my slavely decorum faltered.

"Are you waiting for a customer?" I'm waiting to clock out and get the rabid fuck away from customers, ho ass biatch! Perplexedly, some dipshits believe that the prized delight of taking their order is akin to that of a cash flooded vacation (whatever that's like). Am I eagerly awaiting yet another self-important irritant? You can return your items, shove that tasteless wallet up your rotund ass and leap in front of bus 451 for all I care.

"Are you checking," lets analyze that popular question. For starters, a uniformed body is standing by the checkstand and facing the flow of customers as the gate is open. These clues were hopelessly vague for many people, so my company installed lights over all registers. Clarity has not been achieved. With my light on, I hear "are you checking/open" every tooth grinding day. If you are so imbecilic and oblivious as not to be struck by all the telltale signs of an open register, you don't deserve any groceries. If any cashier with a pulse is not taking orders, you will be made perfectly aware upon first glance.

"That's parsley," a woman who must think that I am baffled by produce told me. Bitch, I used to work produce and I've eaten more tabbouleh than you thought existed in Texas. Don't presume to tell me what parsley looks like. Some customers will actually state the produce item's name and proceed to spell it out. As patronizing as that is, it's even more unnecessary.

"It's free," many customers jest when an item fails to scan. They all beam with pride after reciting this carbon-copied phrase, as if they are so damned clever. I want to scream but suppress my sense of self and respond with a smile and amicable words that come out torturously. Only shoplifting would make it "free." Thieve away with my blessings.

"Do you have a trash can?" Customers will hand cashiers everything from paper to drink cans to apple cores, as if we are their servants. If you can't dispose of your own filthy refuse, don't make any, little bitch.

"Use my earth bags," a customer requested of me. She presented two canvas bags to be substituted for the store's bags. This hippie tree hugger is not alone, customers routinely make this request with cloth bags or grocery bags from previous trips. Unknown to me is what mystery messes have been made in these bags. I find fishing through used bags on command highly annoying. Has it dawned on these fanatics that the environment is a lost cause for delusional kids to indulge in?

In addition to being obsolete, paper bags are a greater annoyance. "I'd like paper." Your life is cheap and the only thing of yours that needs brown bagging is your smug face.

Last Monday, I was running on four hours of sleep and had forgotten my caffeine pills. A man in line turned towards a woman paying her order and asked "Is he [me] alive?" This comedic genius should do stand up--before a firing squad. He then directed the same question at me. What dignity I have left prevented me from responding. Customers have actually given me abridged lectures on the evils of cigarettes.

Some customers are just repulsively annoying people. A regular is pompous and loud for no justifiable reason. He wears a bicycle helmet and has fingernails like a coal miner as he buys his $1.39 snuff. The awkwardness in his strut makes it look like an adolescent affectation. He lets loose with a drive by barrage of pointless commentary and excruciating one liners in a tone which he believes to be commanding. The most tragic element of this situation is that he seems to think he is John Wayne, Chris Rock and Arthur Fonzarelli rolled into one. Last week, he jokingly feigned an attempt at kissing a bagger.

The common denominator here is that most people think they are special. In drive-thru, a slew of customers would inform me that the menu light was off. Like they were the first ones to point that out, and like I cared. Your odds of expressing a unique thought are infinitesimal. Customers are not omniscient and we surely know our job better than they do. A step in the right direction would be an industry-wide no talking rule. Sadly, that would deprive customers of a vice-like outlet and the workers of infinite wisdom.

2006-09-28T11:58:00.002-05:00

Patronage under the influence is a continuous problem. Inebriated customers give us Hell and inject some humor into the humdrum. After last call, a shared bong and you name it, they all end up seeking grease in their veins. In six years of working nights, I've dealt with my share of intoxication enabled psychosis. I even found the time for a little of my own.

Drunks are a dirt common sight in drive-thru, of all places. Most of them are agreeable and get their orders without incident. Others like to scream at or with passengers and otherwise make a nuisance of themselves. If they find that verbal outlet less than fulfilling, they harass the cashier. Some are prone to making unwelcome advances on female employees. Some have been drunk to the point of scraping their cars against the building. A customer at Jack in the Box had a young woman in the car who was screaming to the music playing. I had to shout "Shut it up or go home" before their order could be taken. Marijuana use is so commonplace that I have seen many customers put down a joint to open their wallets.

I was once a food runner for a pathetic sports bar. While returning to the kitchen after running an order, I was accosted. "Hey, sailor! Hey, sailor," a man shouted at me while his sweaty drunk ass gave me a homo-erotic hug.

While working drive-thru at Jack in the Box, I had a certain grungy customer who was stoned out of his mind. Rather than stopping at the window, he circled the building. On his third pass, I suspected he would pull a gun and hold me up. He ordered six tacos in lieu of the register's contents. Reeking of Mary Jane eau de toilette, a drunk at McDonald's thought it prudent to scream a barrage of obscenities at the swing manager. A dope lush moron at Jack in the Box tried to use the drive-thru without a vehicle. He left after the night manager cussed him out and I went to call police. Dallas' finest were regulars at that store.

Crackheads have caused some aggravation. A few months ago, I had a crackhead try to get a refund before customer service opened. "Well, it can't wait until eight o' clock," she said when I informed her of lobby's opening time. She had no reciept and the coffee maker she presented was not sold in the store. Her dopehead face blurted out "I want my money back!" How original.

The intoxicated can also be amusing and profitable. Drunks were a blessing to me as a third shift waiter. Being agreeable and laughing along with their remarks could mean a 40 percent tip. Flirting with drunk women was quite effective on occasion. Or, drunks could leave me 12 percent and a pornographic mess. At McDonald's, I once sat down with a loud table of happy drunks for some entertainment. Their insights on the quality of a cashier's ass were profound. Drunks sometimes help to break up the day.

Drugs aren't just for customers. I once brought a liter of Jim Beam to work at Steak 'n Shake. The grill cook spotted the bottle and I offered him some. We took a few shots in the break room. The ex-Green Beret cook smoked pot at work, and insisted on repaying me with some hits off of his pipe. Sharing a bowl or two became a nightly ritual, and he always had good stuff. We smoked by the front door for an optimal vantage point. An ex-cop manager knew of our illicit breaks, but looked the other way for third shift's best.

At Jack in the Box, we drank. A manager was an inveterate drinker. He would mix out some Wild Turkey from his car with fountain drinks in the store's cups. On occasion, we all went off camera into the break room and pounded back longnecks all night. This manager would get fully locked and loaded while working. I am told that he passed out behind front counter. I had only seen this happen to him outside: he gave me a ride home shortly thereafter.

One night in February 2001, a woman with damage to her fender rolled up to my window. Stoned completely out of her mind, she asked "What do ya'll have?" Being that she passed a McDonald's sign and a lit menu, this question was unfathomable. "Burgers," I responded acerbically. "Can someone else take my order," she asked. "Yes ma'am, at the second window," I responded. I was already tired of stoned customers that night. Although she remained at my window, when I consider myself done with an unhappy customer, I disregard them fully to avoid appearing subservient.

Several to 10 minutes had passed when a cashier came to my booth to investigate the hold up. "Oh, my God! She passed out," the cashier exclaimed. The woman was slumped over her steering wheel. I had the manager call 911 and I wrote down her license plate number as instructed. We shifted the car into neutral and pushed it to the second window. Drive-thru got slammed with a rush. I had to leave the booth after taking orders to grab each order and run them to cars waiting in the lot, being that the second window was blocked.

Paramedics discovered that the stoner was actually a diabetic who had passed out due to insulin shock. She came for a quick meal to prevent that occurrence.

Intoxication is the spice of life. On a cashier's income, it may be just about the finest thing. Nevertheless, people should indulge politely. Too much bullshit is attributable to public intoxication. Beautify the community; put the glass dick down and learn how to hold your liquor.

2006-09-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

A cashier was conned out of $1,400 from his register, according to a Sept. 11 e-mail from my company's loss prevention. Con artists and register shortages are problems that confront most cashiers at some point. When till counts fall short, somebody's got to pay.

I lost my job at Burger King to a con artist. In February 2002, a man paid his $1.07 order with a $50 bill and requested change for a $50. A clumsily charasmatic dishonesty emanated from his brown eyes. During the exchange, I was confused but knew exactly what was happening. Rather than heeding my instincts, I made the mistake of hoping I was sharper than he was. My register shortage reflected the amount of "change" I handed him. The incident was embarrasing enough that I never spoke a word of it.

Company policy dictated that cashiers having shortages of $50 or more get tested for drugs. My manager referred me to the wrong clinic for testing. There was another location, but I was in college and juggling four news stories for the campus rag. I failed to throw some piss their way in a timely fashion and was quickly fired.

Although rarely seen, counterfeit money is an obvious issue. Working drive-thru at my first job, a customer passed me a $20 bill that looked real enough. After close, the manager counting my drawer gave it a second look. I took the bill from her hand, felt the paper and peeled apart two slips of paper. They don't always look very fake, but the feel of real federal paper is unmistakable.

Last December, a jerk off insulted my intelligence with even funnier money. Following protocol, I laboriously rolled my eyes and paged a manager. They took the bill into the count room and played with a marker before telling the maggot to ram Andrew Jackson's clone up his candy ass. Even the assistant store director kissed my ass over that save. Counterfeit pens are overrated and unnecessary if one really knows what to look for.

Despite the intrigue of federal crime and illusionist cons, common register shortages are a greater threat to profits and employment. Technically, cashiers are not considered to be short or over unless the discrepancy limit has been exceeded. The limit is $2 in fast food and about $7 in grocery stores. Regardless of a shortage's true cause, disciplinary action for discrepancies greater than $20 are typical. The consequences range from a meaningless write-up to termination.

One hideous night at Jack in the Box, I was blamed for two shortages; one of them being $164. I was contending with a wrapped around drive-thru and a woeful incompetent was pretending to work front counter. We got overwhelmingly bumrushed and the incompetent fell worse than behind. With foolish disregard to my pay rate, I sent the bum to the fryer and assumed control of her station as well as mine. There I was, an admirable worker in rare form and clueless of my impending bitch slap.

The punk's register was found to be $164 short and I took the fall. In the write up, I was reprimanded for using a register not my own and was guaranteed termination for another shortage of any amount. Every single cash handler in fast food shares registers as a matter of necessity, regardless of a universal company policy prohibiting it. Prior to recieving discipline, I overheard the inept woman telling a co-worker that $165 had been stolen from her purse in the break room. She failed to report the theft and had no intention of doing so. This tumor was not written up for the shortage. An expert review of video footage saved my job, but I kept seeing her at work. Given our use of drop boxes, $164 did not vanish quickly or inadvertently.

At Jack in the Box, I got a pink sheet of paper. At my first McDonald's, I lost a few green ones. In that particular franchise company, the policy was that shortages were solely on the cashier's dime. I always worked nights in an isolated drive-thru booth, where assholes were free to rape my unattended drawer. In the fall of 2000, $20 shortages became a pattern. That year, I lost $85 to a single shortage. Obviously, there is no reason for the company to take action when cashiers have wallets. Bearing all this in mind, I took to borrowing lunch or cigarette money from my register. The practice of making cashiers reimburse the register is fairly rare and rightly so.

After quitting Jack in the Box, my former night manager told me about a rash of shortages. He said that a private investigator had been questioning all employees in the matter. Utilizing lame police tactics, the investigator accused the night manager of stealing and encouraged him to confess. My hunch is that he knew something but wouldn't say. Silence is often the moral approach. Personally, under-employment has prompted me to scoop off a few dollars on several pathetic occasions. I never pocketed more than I needed for laundry, cheap smokes or a bland meal. Ironically, there were never shortages or suspicions when I actually stole.

"... Over the course of 10 minutes money was exhanged 21 times with the con artist," the company e-mail read. A cash handler should never be confused, or quite that stupid. I have known multiple cashiers who were fired over shortages. Most of us are honest, but I find it hard to judge a poor thief too harshly. High dollar mistakes are unlikely ones to make, but shit does happen. In a job that requires little thought, momentary inattentiveness can add up to months of joblessness.

2006-09-19T01:12:00.000-05:00

Old age is youth's vengeance, and its after us all. They are wise, spiteful, happy and stupid; just as they were 40 years ago, possibly with a touch of dementia. Some should rightly live to 100 while natural selection should have eliminated others before their aging process began. Wisdom may come with age, but wisdom is habitually rejected by many. When they go shopping, I'm wondering where their children are.

Senior citizens, or geezers, form a large part of my store's customer base. For some nine months I worked the opening shift every day. Morning is when they are most prevalent. They hobble, wheel or perhaps strut to my register with bananas, Fixodent, prune juice and other retirement paraphanalia. Paper "sacks" are insisted upon; once I've already bagged half the order in plastic. Credit cards become "charge cards," loose change flows from "billfolds," checks are written for $3 orders and coupons never expire. After waiting for an 85-year-old to write a check, I examine myself for signs of aging en route to the nearest calendar.

Some are quick to extend a confident smile and a kind word. This behavior is a sharp contrast to that of their pissy counterparts. Old men and women in their 80s are more likely to be courteous than the 70s female demographic. Some bitch mills live on condescending language and a disregarded prayer.

Earlier this year, I took one such woman's order. Despite her dismissive attitude, annoyance did not occur until the order was totaled. Upon giving her the $54 total, she handed me a check for $5.64. She was incoherent and disbelieving when I informed her of the $49 discrepancy. Senility had clearly gotten the better of her cognitive abilities and attention span. She had written the check while the order was taken and dated it for the following day. Visibly disgusted with me, she wrote a fresh check.

Being that she was not an established check writer, I was required to get her phone number and identification to complete the transaction. At this point, she became angered and incredulous, as if an insolent underling had rudely questioned her standing. "This is why [the company] is going down. Because they hire just anybody," she informed me. She would not be the first to fault a cashier for personal inadequacies. Forty thousand people died the day before, why couldn't she have been among them? She was certainly ripe enough to fall off the vine.

Nevertheless, many oldsters disprove the myth that the elderly are mean pricks. Some men actually have the decorum to address a cashier 50 years their junior as "sir." These "grumpy" old men value civilized courteousies that have been lost on subsequent generations. A cashier I work with insists that the old bastard stereotype is unfair and that such people were dipshits decades before their golden years.

Simply put, some old people have "euthanasia" etched across their foreheads. A drawn out morning visit to my store is one woman's daily ritual. She hits the lottery machine before ambushing the customer service clerk with her trivial blitherings. She concludes her brain cell killing spree by windbag taxing the cashier with epic tales of childhood and her daring exploits. She has actually had me lift her purse so I could experience its legendary heaviness--more than once. Sadly, I know her husband's first name without having met the man.

The lady once accosted me while smoking on my 15 minute break. She regailed me with stories of family discourse until moving herself to tears. She violated the sanctity of my only break for this, how wrong is that? Last year, she asked what I wanted to do. Regretfully, I admitted to an interest in writing. Ever since that fateful exchange, I have been hearing about her fabled encounter with a drunk William Faulkner. I don't care if she runs a goddamn soup kitchen out of her garage, nobody needs to go grocery shopping every single day. She's probably got enough canned goods stockpiled to see her through Armageddon. This insufferable vulture comes just to piss into the ears of a captive audience. The Mississippi banshee has asked to see my writing; I think I'll finally oblige.

This spring, I had an experience with the elderly that left me hoping for an early grave. A flurry of decrepit and hopelessly senile customers brought front end to a halt. One woman slid her credit card on three different places on the keypad before I swiped it for her. I gave her a pen and a slip for her signature, she proceeded to sign on the keypad buttons with the wrong end of the pen. A few others competed for a world record on the longest time spent writing a check incorrectly. An Alzhiemer's poster child handed me a miniscule fragment of plastic when I asked for her shopping card. And Mike Wallace makes old age look so glamorous.

A man who could have used a stiff drink walked to each register asking for room numbers and hurrying the customers along. His tone seemed harsh, but I caught a glimpse of his frustrations. I have seen shoppers accompanied by their kids, which is what they and many others need. I was glad to walk a nice, half blind old man around the store to help him shop. In retrospect, I wonder if there was someone who really owed him that assistance.

2006-09-14T23:14:00.000-05:00

Cashiers are America's cheapest whores. Customer service workers have been pimped out by their companies to perform obscene acts of service with a show. For only 99 cents, you can receive undignified service that is tantamount to a hand job. Don't mind the fry salt.

Television commercials portray contented young workers with pressed uniforms joyfully grinning with reckless abandon. McDonald's has spent the last few years wrapping itself in their "we love to see you smile" campaign. McDonald's employees shouldn't even love to see their paychecks. This corporation actually put those infamous words into the mouths of thousands of people who don't get paid enough to provide such a form of service. Why do you think hookers charge so much? Another lowlife has approached my register, I can barely contain my glee.

Compare the actors' portrayals in service industry commercials to that of phone sex commercials. Note the effervescently subservient demeanors of the vapid poverty liners who will stop at nothing to satisfy your every desire and who are euphorically thrilled to delight you. The similarities in their sweetly recited, lame ass slogans are striking. "We'll get you horny," "it's your store," its all the same in terms of the workers' alleged attitudes towards customers getting over on them. In both occupations, unbecoming dialogue and virtual fucking are heated orders served up lukewarm.

Enthusiasm cannot be bought for $9,000 a year. All but one of my employers has demanded far more of me than was commensurate to my hours and pay rate. After hiring, more bullshit is heaped onto our overflowing plates with each new insipid campaign.

We have been misrepresented by soft handed punks and 50-cent actors. Few of us are goonish, undiscriminating 16-year-olds with a grin fetish who are devoid of actual thought and differing opinions. It is apparent to me that many customers have taken stereotypes and televised lies to heart. However, we too have stereotypes and grounded opinions which they might not like.

Attention, dumb ass shoppers; I do not play Nintendo, my wardrobe is exceptional and judging by your order, my taste is far superior to yours. You are clearly pond scum, whereas I am the sharp dressed shitshoveler with the sexy stoneface. Go play with your sports section and eat your bologna, douchebag. Be advised that upon entering this establishment, you have agreed to be viscously mocked. We love to share a laugh.

Advertisement has gone beyond selling products, they are selling us. Yesterday, a customer told me that she would grace me with her order on the condition that I smile at her. I did my bitch job and smiled with an undertone of good humor. This customer then told me that she had recently gone computer shopping. She said that she turned down a $2,500 computer solely because the salesman didn't smile at her. Service with a show. People really are that petty and childish. This ass clown wanted me to put on a show for her, and I did. It turns out that I'm just another ho, assuming the position since age 17. At least this time it was with a chick; albeit one in her golden years.

I've cussed out a few customers--once accidentally. I started off in my present store as a produce clerk and was transferred to front end for a failure to smile. Taco Bell nearly had me shot for the same reason. At Steak 'n Shake "the most important part of your uniform is a smile." I never wore one but I still made a killing on tips. La Madeleine seemed to think my attitude was lacking. Reality has caught up with me, but it will always elude customers.

At $6.40 an hour, I try not to let reality drag me down. A few years ago, I was angered by the commercials. Now, I'm further vindicated in my belief of a foolish and primally emotional general public.

2006-09-10T03:36:00.000-05:00

One year after Katrina--they're still here. Katrina evacuees have blighted Dallas communities and taken Dallas jobs, if they have bothered to find work at all. Yet another reason to stomp Gov. Rick Perry into the Italian marble.

McCallum Boulevard was a nice, quiet urban street when I moved in last year. New Orleans moved itself to my Far North Dallas neighborhood with a vengeance. Trash litter the street, trying to bum my cigarettes and money while attempting to sell drugs. Thugged out packs of them congregate on the street and in my previous apartment complex at all hours. Clearly, they are jobless and not seeking gainful employment. Gunshots and police sirens have been common bedtime serenades. These degenerates accepted Perry's gushing invitations following New Orleans' catastrophic flood. Forty percent of Louisiana evacuees polled after Katrina's onslaught said they would not consider returning home.

I met one such woman during orientation for my current job. She mentioned her hometown with a flourish and seemed to consider herself a hero for taking a Texan's job. I was watching CNN when all Hell broke loose in the Crescent City. As evacuees were bussed into town, Baylor Hospital announced the creation of 500 job openings for Katrina victims. That summer, sharply dressed and desperately unemployed, I applied at Baylor for every job that I was qualified for. I was qualified for fewer than five jobs and I never recieved a phone call or page from any hospital in the metroplex. I definitely was not owed a job, but certainly more entitled to one. By the way, if your heart bleeds, let it be fatal. I was jokingly advised to acquire a Louisiana ID and a grungy outfit in order to find work.

In many companies, if not all, there is a tax credit portion of a job application or in subsequent hiring paperwork. In all major grocery chains it is part of the application. Companies receive annual handouts for hiring the disabled, recipients of government assistance and those who were residents of Katrina stricken states at the time of the hurricane. In all actuality, the tax credit system grants such applicants preferential hiring status over the rest of us. I once worked with a disabled man at Burger King whose status gave him the retail equivalent of a license to kill. The effectiveness of this governmental bribery is reflected in the labor pool of many stores, including mine.

In the winter of 2005, I attended an orientation for a second job at McDonald's. The some two dozen new hires in attendance had to present government identification for verification and photocopying. I pulled mine from my wallet and glanced around the room. I took notice of multiple Louisiana ID cards. A sizeable remainder of the applicants had produced alien worker permits and had Matricula Consulars showing from their open wallets. It struck me that as if common Texas workers weren't threatened enough from our southern border, an eastern neighbor stood to kick us in the nuts.

If you tender sense of racial political correctness has been mildly perturbed, you lack enlightenment. It is true that the overwhelming majority of them are black. It is equally true that local black people despise them. Shortly after Katrina, groups of blacks on the train and elsewhere would paint the walls with vitriol at their expense. New Orleans evacuees were called thieves, dopeheads, violent criminals and every expletive in the book.

My brother and I watced footage of New Orleans' descent into anarchy, and busloads of these unfortunates head for our town. Our unemployed asses made predictions concerning the evacuees' impact on Dallas. Our hopes for the job market and the crime rate were unenthusiastic. Natives are still unemployed while government-backed refugees are given handouts. That September, my brother moved into my shitty old neighborhood on Skillman Street and I moved to low-rent McCallum.

Skillman was a cesspool of drugs and crime when I lived there, but the N.O. factor took things to a new low. These punks pestered him daily in the hopes of selling cheap crack and ice. Gunshots and intoxication fueled outdoor rowdiness persisted after 3 a.m. Think a section eight street like Skillman can't get worse overnight? Just add a shot of Cajun.

It turns out that we were overly concerned about the job market, being that many of these treasured citizens have an aversion to honest work. Some will actually brag about working the system and slinging dope on the side. I'm always unarmed at the wrong times.

We must always expect people to take advantage of any system that is at least nominally profitable. The federal government enabled these puddles of bourbon vomit to gang bang the taxpayers with impunity. They also neglected to evenly distribute the evacuees among the states. On the lighter side, Perry will burn in Hell for pimping out Texas. Some evacuees need to go away and some need to be incarcerated in their own state. The government officials responsible should forfiet their net worths as reparations for fed up Texans and go beg for change with the New Orleaneans. Its just a damn shame that Perry will get reelected.

2006-09-10T01:16:00.000-05:00

The punch has been spiked with urine and the party sucked regardless. Tomorrow will be a sickening day for Texas. Sept. 1; the day World War II began, the day of my birth and the day my home state succumbs to the trend of heavy cigarette taxtation. The odious $1 per pack increase was implemented by Gov. Rick Perry. He is the very same slimeball who has yet to raise a minimum wage that is an international disgrace.

In the mood for more numbers? Screw you, you're gettin' them anyways; $133, $127.39, $190.65 and $0. The first three figures are my net pay from my last three weekly checks in chronological order. The fourth number represents the sum total of money in my possession--three hours after receiving my Aug. 31 paycheck and dropping $27.05 on a carton of Camel filters. Although I'm proud to say that I've never received government aid, I intend to apply for food stamps when bus fare becomes available. For the past two weeks, I've been walking to and from work so I can hear bitchface customers with steak-laden $150 orders whine to me about gas prices and the goddamn weather.

In mid-August, I had the audacity to move into a pseudo-two bedroom apartment with my roommate at an additional monthly cost of $75 each. Incidentally, my company temporarily cut hours by half in all departments the week I signed the new lease.

Aside from chugging Chardonnay and swilling caffeine pills, how the fuck should I tolerate this bullshit other than smoking 50 cigarettes a day? It's time to break off the filters and drink from the bottle. Political correctness has steamrolled smokers and we have not done a damn thing about it but apologize for exercising our basic right to indulge in a habit which has been deemed "offensive."

On March 1, 2003, smoking was banned in Dallas restaurants and I saw the ban coming before its conception. The city council which approved the ban was comprised of only non-smokers and ex-smokers. That's why I formed the Smokers' Club at Richland College. Even traditionally rebellious demonstration happy college kids weren't interested in the club or in protesting smoke-Nazi Mayor Laura Miller when she came to speak on campus. With a government like ours and a doormat population like this, nobody can make a difference. America is all about political correctness, low wages, high taxes and fat asses.

Unlike other minorities, show whining complacency rather than focused concern as they foolishly choose not to vote with their lungs. Cigar-wielding gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman will receive what will likely be my last vote. Aside from being a militant smoker, Friedman advocates a $7 state minimum wage.

On an unrelated matter, Dallas politician Al Lipscomb once famously likened Miller to Adolf Hitler. Lipscomb made me cheer and lowlifes like Miller make me disgusted to have voted Democrat. Fast forward to 2006 and the Republican Perry has excise-fucked the freedom loving Marlboro Man. Voting is pointless when all candidates are cut from the same cloth and dipshit voters don't know what they are doing. People are quick to chastise non-voters, but those who actually hit the polls are the real danger to democracy.

Legalizing gambling could have been a rather painless solution to the state's budget shortfall as Texans flock to Louisiana and Oklahoma to bend over the blackjack table. I used to deal blackjack; every non-tipping asshole loves it. Perry took the safe approach and did what has become a modern political fashion statement. That pompadour capped Bush loving embodiment of America's toilet bound future can and should jump up and kiss my white, nicotine stained ass. I am a peaceful man, but nothing would bring me greater joy than kicking the GOP horse shit out of my dirtbag governor, in his mansion and right in front of his degenerate wife and rich white trash children. I ate his blackened heart with some non-filtered cigarettes and a nice Chianti.

If Texas wants to tax like California; Texans should be paid like Californians. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ("R"-Calif.) approved an $8.50 minimum wage. The increase, which will go into effect within one year, is $3.35 higher than the federal minimum wage and more than $2 higher than the average shit job wage in Dallas.

"The federal minimum wage, currently $5.15 an hour, was last raised in 1997. Since then, its purchasing power has deteriorated by 20 percent. Analysts at the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities jointly crunched the numbers and determined that, after adjusting for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is at its lowest level since 1955," according to a July 10 article by The Dallas Morning News.

A separate 2005 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that "an average chief executive officer was paid 821 times as much as a minimum wage earner," according to the same article by The News. That's $4228.15 an hour, at 40 hours a week. I'll bet my battered lungs that their shifts go by dramatically easier than that of a $6 drive-thru cashier. All that money, funneled through our cash registers, so they can have our elected officials keep us broke and desperate for another 15 minutes on the clock.

As a matter of course, the people who keep this country fed, clothed and operating are the disrespected bastards who get the shaft every day for hitting the time clock. This summer, lowlife Republicans blocked a Democratic bill sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy that would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25. The bill would have required increases in the wage proportionate to any future congressional pay raises. That and another 50 cents will buy you a pack of Manhattan's fire safe smokes. We can't really trust Kennedy's type either, being that Massachusetts has a statewide smoking ban, which includes bars and the outlawing of cigarette coupons.

All jocularity aside, my old longing for a plundering, arson ravaged orgy of a wanton street riot has been rekindled. If legitimately working lower class Americans have any balls left, there will surely be class warfare in French Revolution form. Of course, riots and wars will remain disgruntled fantasies; we'll all just fade away and die in smoke free penury.

The recession, the practice of outrageously lowballing hours and the insidious wages have helped turn honest, hard working Americans like myself into thieves and charity cases. It's hard being a shit shoveler in the 21st century and a mad cashier needs his nicotine fix.

2006-07-28T17:09:00.000-05:00

Is that supposed to make me love you, or are you just a non-compliant psychiatric patient? The only thing more offensive to my intelligence than receiving a fake smile is forcing one in the name of customer service. From hiding behind a grin to hoping the white cashier's nose will turn a brownish hue, obligatory smiles cheapen and intellectually depreciate us all.

Smiles have been a shadowing demon and a necessary evil throughout my working life. Managers everywhere insisted I adopt a less sincere disposition for my minimum wage acting performances. Greet each customer as they walk through the door (while grinning). Greet them as they approach the counter (while grinning). Pretend to care deeply as to the goodness of their day (while grinning). Take their order and suggestively (I have a few suggestions) sell (while grinning). Bootlickingly thank them for their stock-surging $7 business (while grinning). With tears of joy and baited breath, thank them again before warmly wishing them a nice night (while contemplating unemployment and homelessness). Bend over and bubble over with speed-freak phone sex actress enthusiasm while doing all of the ungodly above. Check your dignity at the door in preparation for a whorish, soul-siphoning, hope a robber puts two in my head love fest with the monstrous general public. My God, I'm hardly alive.

Flirting women aside, I have no need for the grins of strangers. If you have such a need, allow me to explain what is wrong with you. Smiles arouse feelings of acceptance. Being appreciated is such a great thing that people accept it at face value rather than evaluating is genuineness. Of course you don't care about the workers, but have you actually deluded yourself into thinking that they care about the quality of your mood? "We love to see you smile" makes McDonald's a bigger corporate liar than Philip Morris. We love to see you get the Hell out of here so we can bitch about your sorry ass over a cigarette.

Another aspect of the obsession for appreciation is that people rarely take time to appreciate themselves independently of others' feedback and opinions. Wanting to find feigned nuances of validation at every turn is comically pathetic. Most sober people are not so unstable as to be emotionally stimulated by a facial expression, at least not consciously. If you actually want a smile served with your Chalupa, what does that reveal about your emotional and psychological disposition? Screw this, I hate fake smiling and your punk ass is unworthy of my efforts. Pay the damned order and get your love at home. Does nobody love you? What a jarring shock. Your fault, not my problem, fix yourself and find some loser.

A smile can easily be construed as a show of subservience. Some controlling bitches and or bastards enjoy having servants dance for them. The perception of subservience may arise from a gratuitously beaming smile or a subordinate demeanor. Such garbage may perceive submission solely for their childish indulgence. People see what they want to. Just as smiles incite acceptance, they are used to gain acceptance. Contrary to these domination junkies' chosen delusion, our employment does not hinge on their petty satisfaction. For such customers, I suggest a more regal, or nose in the air type of smile. Better still, Molotov any hint of subservience with a trademark of mine which has been dubbed "the smile of insanity." Picture Hannibal Lecter on ice.

On the subject of insantiy, one can never know the truth behind a smile. Hypothetical explanations include; his psycho ass grins at the visualization of bludgeoning your face, hypomania, he sabotaged your order, he is mocking you (likely justafiably) or the asininity of his job has struck him funny. Personally, I used smiling to mask my complete disgust during my fast food days. My thoughts urge uncouthness, so I'll veil my contempt with a goonish smile. Eat it up, cerebral slugs.

Aromas of saccharine come to the front in this nauseating grin. Note the layers of piss and vinegar emanating from the cashier's eyes, complimented by a soupcon of spicy bitterness that lingers in the palate-raping finish. Serve this off-dry gesture glacially cold.

Apparently, people feel welcome when cashiers smile, as if bringing their wallet didn't make them welcome enough. "If customers don't think you want to be here, they won't want to be here, either," according to a training video by my employer. They are trying to convert grocery stores into an escape from reality. Do these people actually need smiles of encouragement to frequent retail establishments, or is that approval just the colorful icing on their loser cake?

These are nothing more than illogical behaviors that reek of childish vapidity. Most people will continue to panhandle for smiles and hiding behind their own. Ironically, people clamor for idiotic smiles but claim that they don'y like being lied to. Clearly, feel good bullshit is high among their vices. Realistically, obligatory smiles do not intellectually depreciate us all, many of us are beyond braindeath.

2006-07-13T17:50:00.000-05:00

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black. Paint the walls with my brain. The arches are fool's gold and their doors lead to Third World wage abominations. Welcome to McDonald's, now turn off that goddamn diesel engine so I can take your white trash order.

The blackening of the evening sky brought cool air as well as the foreboding of the torrential nightly rush. We cashiers loathed them all, the hooligans, drunks, snobs and savage overemotionals. In the chaos of a rush I might be unsettled enough to despise all customers. I became disgusted by every ethnicity, including my own for uncertain reasons that became logical as my overwrought mind and frayed nerves succumbed to desperation. A rush often convinced me that all customers were the enemy. This belief was only 89 percent grounded in reality.

Am I insane or do I just need a cigarette? Will I ever get off the clock or is this rush eternal? Another in an endless stream of automobiles rolls up to the speaker. I know this because my headset has beeped in my left ear. That nerve-racking beep that has come to feel like an ice pick thrusting into my brain, thereby destroying the region of my cerebrum that enables me to feel hope or give a rat's ass.

I've been languishing in this isolated drive-thru booth for four solid hours now. It feels like 15 hours, I wonder if my watch has stopped. The usual massive rush has been unrelenting and the customers have been wildly contemptuous. I try to think of myself as a machine--a hate machine, perhaps. I hate rude people and annoyances alike, but I wouldn't be so disdainful if there were only a dozen to contend with. The procession of lowlifes is seemingly infinite while the rush's typical duration precludes one from feeling hope. My mind is being battered by the consuming maelstrom of; cars, headset beeps, repetitive action, diesel engines, shouting people, whispering people and the vainglorious smirks of those who are clearly my intellectual inferiors. I can only feel desperation and vehement disgust.

Ironically, these feelings kept me going. I resolved that these senseless animals cannot break me or make me run away like a little bitch. Notwithstanding such colossal irritants, these feelings may have been extreme. Assuredly, McDonald's Dalrock after dark was an exceptionally extreme place to shovel shit.

The position of cashier/ordertaker is a fast-paced juggling act that quickly becomes painfully repetitive. In addition, people are far more likely to be combative and debasing from the security and perceived comfortable distance of their vehicle. They have nothing to say on the street and little to say on front counter, but sit their fat asses in a car and they sprout a set of erroneously used balls. "You need to turn up the volume, son. I can't understand shit you're sayin'." A so-called man under the mistaken impression that I could "turn up the volume" on the ordering speaker shouted this at me. Such degrading remarks were commonplace. A woman working at the second window had her life threatened on a separate occasion. They might even yell at the cashier on the hunch that their unprepared order would be botched by the grill crew. I now guarantee that it will be royally botched.

Attending to customers without gratuitous bloodshed was only one facet of the job's frustrations. The winter of 2000 proved that Hell can freeze over. My drive-thru window faced an open field from which freezing winds in excess of 15 miles per hour typically pelted my flesh. Closing this window at any point during the evening was unfeasible due to the nightly bumrush. The open window transformed my station into a wind tunnel as temperatures in the booth fell below 45 degrees, according to the thermostat. Bulky overcoats were too cumbersome and gloves obviously weren't an option.

The relentless wind rendered my hands, face and groin completely numb. The numbness of my face could make my speech sound like that of a stroke patient's. Frigid walls of wind gave my skin a burning sensation and caused my eyes to water. If I opened my mouth widely while speaking, the wind would stimulate my gag reflex. Each winter night I resigned myself to these discomforts and progressed beyond the point of shivering. Add these conditions to the perennial customer insanity and you get a desperate register slave on the edge.

I hate you, me and the rest of the world and I was going to kill myself when I got home, regardless. Adequate provocation for my leaping from this window to savagely beat your ass would earn you my eternal love.

I eventually left that hellhole in favor of a similar one. My reasons for rotting there for 13 months remain ambiguous. Eleven of those months were spent in the booth, which resembled a dismal cage at the zoo surrounded by unsupervised children. After some 40 hours a week at that store, I am confident that no future job will be worse or pay any less. I am equally confident that Ronald McDonald's lacerated corpse will be recovered from a North Dallas dumpster.

2006-07-10T15:36:00.000-05:00

Insolent customers should be dragged out into the street and shot. Punk bitches roll up to the drive-thru for a cheap and filthy bite--you're in my world now, asswipe.

Fat boy needs a cholesterol fix at once. Frenzied by the unlikely prospect of losing a gram of lard off of that miserable ass, he abandons common courtesy and begins shouting "Hello!" at the speaker. "Hello," are you there?" Actually, I abandoned my station to board a trans-Atlantic flight, where the Hell do you think I am? Such impertinence mustn't be rewarded or dignified with a response. After the first "hello," time out 30 seconds before responding. Time an additional 20 seconds for subsequent hellos. The clock is on our side; we're getting paid by the hour. If your patience is wearing thin, simply shout back "Hello!" in the bitchiest tone possible.

Hold the pickles and add some rat poison. Many fool asses think that cashiers are as dumb as them and are therefore incapable of taking a special order. These bastards will methodically enunciate their order as if speaking to a learning disabled child. "Alright now, I want that with nnoooo ooonnioons. Okay, no onions on the burger, just make sure that they don't put onions on it" (direct quote from numerous customers). You must go the extra mile for this stain of primordial ooze. Proceed to the grill and drop an obscene handful of onion slivers on the burger in question. In your face, maggot.

Overloading a sandwich is an effective technique. Slop a massive dollop of the desired condiment and close firmly. Mayonnaise in the most gagging; ketchup stains clothing and mustard combined with heavy onion causes some consumers to choke.

Fries are easily sabotaged. Decent fries may be rendered hideously soggy by dropping them in the vat for roughly 15 seconds. Oversalting is an easier method still. After boxing, slam a torrent of salt on top and gingerly shake the box for even distribution. Salt the slug and end his trail of slime.

I can't take credit for this pearl of brilliance, as it was the brainchild of my night manager at Jack in the Box. When boxing fries, thrust the scoop deep into the boxed product firmly and swiftly with repetition commensurate to your annoyance level. This act will mangle, pulverize and chop up the recipient's grease sticks. Now, plaster an undignified grin on your vengeful face as you present the punk with his "mashed potatoes," as the artist phrased it.

If your store happens to sell tacos, consider yourself fortunate. Grossly overload them with lettuce and sauce before cracking the bottom of the shell. Hopefully, the abundance of condiments coupled with the shell split will create a vomitous mess, preferably in the lowlife's lap. Another method of taco violation is as follows: bag the tacos shake the closed bag vigorously for 10 to 15 seconds.

One easy fix in my repertoire is a simple beating of the order. Optimal results are obtained when using a bag containg only one to three sandwiches. Grab the top of the bag and slam it down on a horizontal surface using a hammer-like motion. Take care not to rip the bag.

By the time I came to work at Jack in the Box, my skills as a foodservice terrorist had blossomed. While working drive-thru one night, a man screamed "hello" three times into the speaker before I took his order. Upon arrival to the window, he again shouted at me, demanding "lots of ketchup." Tired of being yelled at by customer trash, I gave this scumwad the preferred treatment. I instructed him to wait in the parking lot as his order was prepared.

His order was actually ready--for me to have fun with. I took his two chicken sandwiches to the grill and slathered a few ounces of mayonnaise on one of them prior to smashing them both. I then placed these two small sandwiches into the largest bag available. Being that the rabid fool requested ketchup, I proceeded to stuff the inordinately large bag to the brim with ketchup packets.

By this time, he had been parked and waiting for perhaps four minutes. Not long enough to suit me, as his ruined sandwiches grew more smashed and stone cold. After nine or 12 minutes, I was ready to present. I strutted out to the lot and gave him the obviously destroyed order with a joyful smile that I couldn't contain. That son of a bitch didn't get a single napkin for the mess he earned.

While the tricks described above are effective and satisfying, they can't compare to my nightly ritual at my first McDonald's. Five minutes prior to closing time, I waited for a car to pull up to the speaker. I hastily dashed to the breaker box and flipped all closing switches, beginning with those for drive-thru. Not missing a beat, I locked the drive-thru windows. If I was in a playful mood, I might've asked the would-be customer for his order immediately prior to killing the lights. With the grace of a gasoline fire, I rejected his request mid-sentence by informing him that the store had closed.

Rather than removing my headset, I gave the perturbed customer a chance to be heard. A closing bitch would often opt to piss, moan or simply fulminate in response: so much the better. The childish emotion in their pointless diatribes was a comedic delight. The last customer of the night leaving in a fury was a rewarding symbolic victory.

Sabotage orders responsibly and only to those who deserve it (when feasible). Never be content to merely spit in some degenerate's burger. I encourage you to eschew such pointless and unimaginative wastes of bodily fluids. Your worthless thug customer-turned-victim will never notice a shot of saliva. To achieve true fulfillment, the sabotage must be known to the punk. Deliver the moderately edible insult with a beaming smile and extend sincere thanks for his business. When you treat the customer like the gutter trash they truly are, the smile is never fake.

2006-06-16T16:00:00.000-05:00

A classic feature of customer syndrome is the sufferer's tendency to lynch the messenger. The emotion-saturated misconception that service workers have control over such matters as company policy is woefully immature. This thinking and the domineering anger it evokes reveals a weak mind under the foolish conviction of its' own strength. A minor detail of my employer's training is to avoid personalizing the anger of disgruntled customers. Although this is the logical approach, it is obvious when the customer is disrespecting me rather than my company.

"What is all this bullshit about with the I.D.?" A lowlife condescendingly barked this at me the other night after he paid by check and I requested to see identification. The computer system prompts I.D. verification from the cashier on check writers who are not established and so forth. The I.D. number must be entered into the system and it is impossible to override this prompt. In all actuality, this "bullshit" is about either cough up the driver license or trot your happy ass home empty handed, little bitch. His retort to my politely asked question was completely unwarranted and watching him char will ease my torment in Hell.

Incidentally, he had handed me a special request order form prior to pissing in my ear. He wanted Heinz beans. "All y'all have is that Bush's crap," he snarled. A connoisseur of canned beans, such a refined palate. Care to hazard a guess as to what became of his order form?
In a fast food place, for example, customers don't consider the wrapped around drive-thru, the haphazard grill crew, shorthandedness or the plethora of orders being filled ahead of theirs. All they can think of is that their order was not presented within a three-minute time frame. For this miniscule inconvenience in their trivial day, they blame the cashier. With their eyes, demeanor and language, they patronize and belittle the cashier while insulting his intelligence. Reality check; I didn't bumrush the store, nor did I assemble your precious Whopper.

While working front counter at my first job, a man presented me a coupon for a free apple pie. When I informed him that the coupon was expired, he gave me an incredulous fuck you sort of look. At this point he still seemed to be under the impression that he was getting a free apple pie. To continue debating the coupon's validity would have been to surrender my psychological advantage. Most importantly, it would have been beneath me. Rather than pandering to his attitude problem, I attended to the next customer. "Y'all got some idiots working here," he shouted before walking away. To recap, he was stupid enough to think that an expired coupon would be accepted, but I'm an idiot for telling him that it wouldn't be. How classic--and sir, fuck you, too.

In a grocery store, they blame us for the store's refund policy, the validity of coupons, the fine print details of special sales and whatever else disagrees with the notions of their primal intellects. My company won't allow me to accept computer generated coupons, so naturally I'm at fault as well as being a worthless moron. I am obliged to shatter a nimrod's delusion that Ruffles are on sale, thereby lowering my status to that of scum of the earth. I must inform a woman that a receipt is required for a refund, which of course makes me a stupid, insolent prick. Please, give your pissy looks, backhanded remarks and clumsy monologues to the parties responsible and leave my $6.40 an hour day the Hell alone. And by the way, you are probably a dumb ass.

In many cases, the customer is eager to be offended and only considers the facts that accomodate the childish attitude that the world revolved around him or her. Cashiers are the unfortunate ambassadors of retail businesses. Aside from customer stupidity, most of the perceived reasons to complain stem from corporate tightwads or misfortunes inherent to retail. Nevertheless, ignoring the real issues and bitching at the first uniformed body that presents itself makes people feel secure and in control. A simple method for simple minds.

People show intellectual slothfulness by blaming the innocent and those within a convenient proximity. Senselessly reacting on juvenile "no fair" logic and yielding to any resulting emotion reveals a basal thought process. Often times, this line of thinking shows a self-indulgent temper that temporarily loosens these customers from the finer points of reality. More pathetic still is the clear sense of pride that these people take in their foolish behavior. They consider themselves strong poeple who won't be marginalized or trampled on. They also suffer from the delusion that they are keen observers who know when they have somehow been steamrolled or viciously inconvenienced. The more inadequate or subjugated they feel in their humdrum lives the greater the classless outlashing.

Faulting others as being inept and moronic assholes rewards them with a breeze of superiority accompanied by a shot of the vindication they crave. They are emotional infants and intellectual slugs who have unwittingly parlayed their show of strength into a divulgence of garden-variety weaknesses. The psychiatric profession's role in dealing with the middle class' so-called issues is a cliche. Service workers quite possibly serve as the public's greatest outlet. Contemplate this: we are the hirelings, but they are the weak.

2006-05-26T16:29:00.001-05:00

Consumers who consider shopping at Wal-Mart to be a morally reprehensible act are in dire need of a reality check. I have listened to customers at my store tell me that my company is plummeting downhill, but that they refuse to shop at Wal-Mart. The notion that Wal-Mart is hienously unfair to it's workforce is a media driven hoax. One man boycotts are worthless and my store is chock full of blatant rip-offs.

Fact is that Wal-Mart jobs are highly coveted and and relatively well paying. My entry level coworkers and I make $6.40 an hour and receive no benefits whatsoever. Out baggers are the exception to the $6.40 rule; they make $5.25. We are elligible for miniscule raises annually. These numbers are common in the business. The average pay for a Wal-Mart employee in the United States is $9.64.

Miguel Santos, a stocker I work with, is also a stocker at Wal-Mart. Far from a Western sweatshop, Wal-Mart pays Santos significantly more than the employer we share. I earned higher hourly wages at three different fast food places than at my present employer. Santos encouraged me to apply and said that my starting pay might be $8.50. Every lower class worker I have discussed Wal-Mart with agrees that it is the place to be. Snagging a job with this company is difficult and I have repeatedly heard that getting hired is a matter of knowing someone.

In 2001, I was interviewed by Wal-Mart for a job as an unloader. At $9 an hour, this was a phenomenal opportunity. The position was 40 hours a week; full time is extremely hard to come by. Aside from the benefits I would have been elligible for, the store's employee accomodations were heavenly. There was a large indoor smoking room, which I had never before seen or heard of in this century. Adjacently was a break room the size of a cafeteria where my interview was conducted.

Another contention with Wal-Mart that has no place in reality is that many of their employees receive no benefits. This may be the case, just as it is with every company in the service industry. Of my 11 service industry employers, including my present one, I have been offered benefits only once. The company was Steak 'n Shake, and the package was the bare minimum, including such things as A.D. & D. and meager coverage on doctor visits. There was no coverage for anything such as medications or dental. The bottom line is that benefits for entry level employees is seldom heard of.

These facts beg to question why some people hate Wal-Mart. Why does the mass media all but slander this corporation and who are they in bed with? It is true that newspeople take an orgasmic glee in manufacturing controversy. It is equally true that many people distrust large entities and view globally successful companies from and odious mark of the beast perspective. These truths are coupled with the fact that the general public enjoys being spoon fed by the media. Sincerely, John Doe American will wolf down whatever pissed-in corn flakes he is told to and discuss the finer points of his breakfast at the proverbial water cooler. Recall the Bush reelection? I rest my case.

Unquestionably, Wal-Mart has abandoned Sam Walton's vision and has perhaps grown too large for common comfort. They also hire illegal immigrants just like virtually all other major corporations. Corporations are operated by the top brass' greed and the misguided ambitions of their underlings. Therefore, these organizations are inherently corrupt and overbearing. This is a result of human nature more than it is a byproduct of capitalism. In addition, a deliberate lack of governmental oversight or intervention has given corporate America the carte blanche it has paid for. Thus, we have a slew of known scandals and a $5.15 minimum wage.

To single out one supermarket company as wantonly evil is to declare it's competitors moral and upstanding by comparison. Personally, I have no interest in glorifying their cheapskate competition, getting shafted at checkout or being the mainstream media's intellectual bitch. The media's Wal-Mart fetish is far from remission. In the meantime, shop there and stay the Hell out of my goddamn checkout lane.

2006-05-23T16:34:00.000-05:00

How often do you actually read the signs at a retail establishment? Many customers have their own interpretations for special sale signs, business hours and ordinary price tags. Some people believe their whims take precedence over rules, procedures and simple logic. Everyone seems convinced that they are special and thus deserving of special treatment commensurate to their god-like status.

A typical symptom of customer syndrome is the apparent belief that signs and price tags were printed just for them and therefore display the information that they want to read. If the sign shows information contrary to their petty desires, the sign's validity is rejected or the existence of the sign is ignored entirely. Paying attention selectively is the hallmark of a childish mind. Being in an oddly charitable mood, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

We all notice a tag that reads "$0.99." Have we let our imaginations run amok, rendering us oblivious to the fact that this tag was for an entirely different than the one which we had foolishly hoped it to be for? The usual way of resolving a price dispute is doing a price check. Waiting for a department such as grocery to show up for a price check is comparable to waiting for Christmas in Hell. Therefore, I prefer to do them myself.

There is often a discrepancy between the price on the tag and the price on file in the computer system. The remainder of the time, the dispute stems from the customer's complete failure to pay attention. For example, he saw a $1 tag in the general vicinity of the $4 item he wanted so it's damn well going to be $1. Or so this intellectual colostomy bag thinks. The customer is usually wrong, and there will be no appeasement giveaways while I'm in control of the situation.

That 39 cent store coupon sure would make those Red Delicious a bargain. Unfortunately, this coupon was for Gold Delicious apples. The yellow ones, you would-be rocket scientist. Obviously, this advertisement was criminally misleading and caters to the masses' ignorance most inadequately.

In the interest of common decency, the cashier must page a professional bend-over manager at once so that this travesty may be rectified. Management at your service, victimized and hallowed customer! I eagerly agree that this circular is full of insidious lies and of course this coupon is valid on any unrelated item you wish. I now smilingly renounce a sliver of my battered corporate concubine of a soul by giving in to your idiocy/impudence and kissing ass with reckless abandon! Thanks all to Hell and back for your whining ass tightwad business.

The front end couldn't go a day without those customers who think that gracing us with their business is a grand occasion warranting royal treatment. At 7:30 a.m., customers demand a door unlocked for them, the hours for this door are clearly marked "9 a.m. to 9 p.m." It seems that the door should open 90 minutes premature for these people, as they were obviously chosen by God to forgo the 15 second walk to the other door. "Could you just open the door so I could get out," a customer asked the manager late one night. Clearly, pushing her cart to the unlocked door would have been beneath her.

A detestable bastard comes to my express lane with 64 items. Some lowlife forgot his rain check at home and expects to be charged the price on the alleged rain check. An assbrain thinks I should accept a store coupon that is 12 days expired. "But it's your coupon," the hag protested. A jackass shows up four hours before a sale which begins at 3 p.m. and wants her Mountain Dew for the 57 cent sale price. A lobotomy patient with a coupon worth $5 off a $50 order wants to use the coupon towards her $44 order. These are real incidents which I have seen repeatedly. Please, get over yourselves and join us in reality.

Being that my store's customer base is largely Jewish, an extensive Passover section is erected annually. Passover ended on April 12, so logically, Passover items could not be returned after that date. Signs stating this painfully straightforward policy were posted in strategic places including on all doors and the customer service booth.

For the following two weeks, I witnessed numerous people strut to customer service for refunds on Passover items while a sign in 72-point font prohibiting such refunds stared them in the face. One of these treasured customers was a middle-aged woman who threw a shouting tantrum more than a week after April 12. "No! I don't want you to help me," she growled at a front end manager. The assistant store director rushed down to cave in to madam arrogance incarnate. This childish punk should have been given an unambiguous "no" and escorted out by police if that one syllable word failed to register with her puerile mind. She, like typical delusionals, believe they are unique and that their desires are of cosmic importance.

I'm not a stickler for rules, but I am rightfully annoyed when they are broken on the whims and demands of insolent scum. Considering the frequency with which management needlessly makes exceptions to the rules, I wonder why we bother to have them at all. By consistently capitulating to arrogant fools, the American service industry has made it's workers the general public's bitch. Forget your indoctrination, the customer is generally wrong. For those of you whose mother declared that you were special, your mother is a lying whore

2006-05-10T14:10:00.000-05:00

Before landing a grocery store job, I spent six years cashiering in fast food. From front counter to the first window, I survived nine of these grease ridden nuthouses. At times, I wondered what I had done to deserve taking all kinds of psychotic abuse from every ignorant punk in town while averaging $115 a week. Come to think of it, I was forced to apply for the damned jobs. Perhaps I should have drowned myself in a fryer vat six pathetic years ago. If I ever again find myself standing beside one while wearing a ball cap and a name tag, I just might opt for the convenience of that glorious escape.

In those chaotic shrines to all that is undignified, I saw every strange and abhorrent thing except armed robbery. I'll describe to you a typical easy day at my first job. Front counter at a suburban McDonald's, which was the third busiest store in the Dallas metroplex at the time.
An army of customers form an unruly throng comprised of undesirables such as white trash, upper middle class snobs and whale assed cholesterol junkies. America's least wanted waddle in by the dozens so they can inhale overpriced samples of God's curses to the human palate.

They step up to the counter for a look at the menu. These losers stare for far too long, as if half illiterate. While reading, they wear a slack-jawed, often puzzled expression as they tilt back their heads, thereby giving me a gruesome view of their pasty double chins.

The language they use while ordering is asinine and presumptuous. "I need ...," you don't need jack, walrus. "I want ...," who gives a happy damn what you want? "Give me ...," this shit ain't free. "I'd like ...," fuck you. I'd like a fifth of bourbon and a lead pipe, 'cause I'm tired of this crap. And, my favorite, "I'll have ...," you ain't havin' a goddamn thing, ass clown. I devised the perfect response to this prediction; "We're out of that, sir." Of course we weren't out, but I might shoot back this answer two or three times in a single order, as punishment for the annoyance I had suffered. Eat this, little bitch.

The raw bedlam of front counter amazed me at first. I have never seen anything quite like a rush at that store. Stress and desperation were the order of every day while the customers treated us like trash. Customers are often slimeballs who take out their daily frustrations on cashiers. These pathetic souls apparently have sorry lives that they have created for themselves and have nobody they can safely release their anger onto. That is where we come into the equation. Truthfully, there are good reasons why a great many of us hate customers. We might hate you as well.

On front counter, unfortunately, I had to have each and every worthless one of them in my face and my line of view for the duration of their visit to the intergalactic capital of suckdom. While ordering, he's in my face and I already want him to screw off and die. I strive not to notice his sorry ass belly up to the trough of culinary horrors. To my disgust, he is accompanied by his insufferable air horn wife and screaming, drooling, snotnosed, ketchup throwing punk brat blights of humanity's future that mommy and daddy dearest call "children." Table manners are discarded, if they had ever been practiced at all. Napkins are a foreign concept while not all food picked up is successfully ingested. They proceed to the restrooms after chugging quarts of white trash champagne, a.k.a. Dr. Pepper. Their lack of decorum at the table is surpassed only by that of their bathroom habits.

Following this tooth grinding display that plays out like an episode of National Geographic, I am graced with the high honor of cleaning their landfill of a mess. Having been promoted to janitor at this point, restrooms and overflowed trash cans are part of my duties. Call me an extremist, but I find it unseemly for people to teach their kids that it is accptable to make vile messes in public. My mother made me clean my messes from restaurant tables and floors. Maybe that was because she, unlike countless many, viewed service workers as actual human beings rather than mindless, soulless gutter slaves. At this point, management want me to grin and wish these lowlifes a good day as they left what remained of the store. They're getting the Hell out, so their day must be better than mine.

This described the mundane parts of an easy day at this job: all that fun and I still got paid a whopping $5.75. The moderate and worst days were full of; degradation, filth, hatred, rage, psychotic customers, high customers, 911 calls, asshole customers and often the venomous desperation of all us cashiers. So, how was your day at work?

2006-05-08T16:14:00.000-05:00

The staggering number of useless items sold in supermarkets are irrefutable proof that John Q. Public rides the short bus to work. As a scan coordinator (price tag hanger), I get a good look at all that my store has to offer. Considering the obscene selection of $2 energy drinks and the advent of American Idol fruit snacks, its apparent that people will stop at nothing to disprove the myth of human intelligence.

The only viable explanation is that these dupes have more money than common sense. I was not joking when I mentioned American Idol fruit snacks, I have seen them with my own disbelieving eyes. Not only would one must be an absolute fool to buy these, but a wasteful punk, as they cost $2.99. What a bargain; $2.99 for roughly six ounces of some gelatinous candy substance that is devoid of any fruit whatsoever. Sadly enough, there are 61 types of fruit snacks sold at my store when perhaps there should be none.

Many people lack an understanding of what getting a product to market entails. From crustless white bread and green ketchup to fake cheese in an aerosol can, these little treasures were approved of by a consensus of research subjects. Marketing research firms are located in virtually every major city. In order for a product to be introduced, it is subject to lengthy focus groups and taste or product testing.

Simply put, American Idol fruit snacks and the like were not put on the shelves because of some idiot at Kellogg's. People would love to mock the corporations for such creations; that would make us feel superior and intellectually secure as a society. I have participated in enough research studies to tell you that research subjects do not bullshit and are not paid to do so.

The reality is that a potentially diverse representative sample of regular people decided for Kellogg's that American Idol fruit snacks were a good idea. Kellogg's was merely smart enough to realize that us geniuses would overspend on this inane product and place these morsels of dyed sugar into our fat children's lunchboxes. I used the phrase "common sense" in the second paragraph: who are we fooling? Common sense is an oxymoron. At this point a bottled water rant seems fitting, but I'll leave that gem in the hands of Andy Rooney.

The famed American cereal aisle is another display of pointless overkill. Peruse the cereal aisle during your next shopping trip and count how many kinds are worth paying for (on one hand I assume). When considering nutritional value, I estimate that 70 percent of the offerings are useless. What owner of a fully functioning brain actually eats something called "Fruity Pebbles?" I'll bet my right lung that this degenerate hasn't touched fruit or seen his feet since sprouting his first pubic hair. Our world famous cereal aisles--my sense of nationalism just dropped dead.

My disgust rises sharply at the thought of cereal bars. Made just for soccer moms and lazy scum alike who take a militant pride in being "on the go." My feeling is that they should either eat in a civilized manner or "go" to Hell. Most people are seldom in such a rabid hurry for any valid reason. It can generally be attributed to a primitive, frenzied response to being off their spoiled asses for 30 consecutive seconds.

There are even "South Beach diet" cereal bars. I'm betting that half of the consumers of these are not on an actual diet of any kind. Nevertheless, these die hard drive-thru warriors still choose to live in a grandiose world in which they will be magically cured of jelly roll syndrome in due time and without effort.

If the useless items were discontinued, common grocery stores would be half their present size. Obviously, imbeciles will always do their thing despite the price tag or the nutrition facts. Baseness sells better than taste and the two cents of a cashier are easy to disregard. I'll still be giving service with a smirk and having a silent laugh at the expense of your Lucky Charms and Easy Cheese eating asses.

2006-05-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

As this article is being written, illegal immigrants flood the streets of Dallas with an inconceivable demand. Why shouldn't these smug outlaws give little or nothing to this country and command us to give them all we've got? America has taught them and everyone else that the key to grabbing the world's only superpower by the balls is to bitch obnoxiously enough.

This pathetic situation is explained by the inescapable fact that Americans are pussies. Proof of this point is that there are no actual Americans of any ethnicity marching in opposition to these freeloaders. This country drones on under a warm blanket of complacency. Few of us imagined brazen criminals marching for amnesty because we fail to question the myth of this nation's invincibility. Of course there are no invading armies or incoming cruise missiles, but a necessity more precious than the Twin Towers or even the White House is sure to die in flames. It's the economy, stupid.

It is important not to succumb to political correctness or buy into the drivel of the bleeding hearts. This is a purely economic issue that is foolishly taken as a racial conflict. To judge critics as racists is exactly what the Hispanic activists want. Race is a common smokescreen which has been injected into straightforward issues. As usual, its all about money: screw the poor and shower the rich. So either think like a rational adult or give into mind games that are fueled by minority clout and perpetuated by the castrato leaders of this nation.

Its always about money, and those of us Americans whose jobs are being taken by Mexican immigrants would like to work and get paid fairly in our own homeland. The Wisconsin meat packing industry is a prime example of how these people are taking jobs that Americans have held. In the early 1980s, the average meat packer made in excess of $19 an hour. Today, they earn about $9 for the same hard work. Fact is that Americans have worked menial and minimum wage jobs for generations. Is anyone really so dumb as to believe that shit jobs didn't exist in the United States until this onslaught of immigrants struck? I should hope not, but hope is a sad thing.

I expect the illegals will be handed citizenship. This will only worsen the problem of unfair competition for jobs which rightfully belong to Americans when millions more jump the Rio Grande for the next big giveaway. Illegal immigrants are also free to collect from Medicaid, welfare and a myriad of other government assistance programs while snatching our jobs.
The myth that Americans think they are too good to do the work that Mexicans do has been successfully spoon fed to this nation by the very people who profit from and are not adversely affected by illegal labor. The illustrious George W. Bush said it himself--let's consider the source, shall we. Bush and his kitchen cabinet allies are millionaire businessmen and oil barons who adore the dirt cheap labor that Mexico's rejects bring to the table. This scumbag supports Mexican immigrants under this insanely false pretense and speaks as is his support is based upon sound moral and economic principles. This Mount Everest of a bullshit heap is then enthusiastically regurgutated by soft handed ivory tower punks who are either motivated by their own business interests or have the financial luxury of ignoring our plight. Indeed, it is quite easy to acquiesce with a smile in the name of "tolerance" when the sickening reality costs you nothing. The Democrats are also flooded with special interest money while their penchant for kissing minority ass precludes them from standing up for their constituency.

Wonder why your kid doesn't have a job? He just might not be hardcore lazy, after all. Take notice of who prepares your number four at the nearby McDonald's, or who mows your neighbors' lawns. You can bet your sweet ass that they aren't 16 years old, English speaking or American. Of the nine fast food stores I worked at, I was forced to be a cashier at all but one of them. At Whataburger I finally got the chance to be a fry cook because the particular independent franchise I worked for required employees to know English.

This hiring practice is 99 percent unheard of, in case you were wondering. The only thing that ever gave me a chance of finding a job during the recession was that I spoke fluent English. That is why I'm pleased to hear Spanish being spoken, any more competition would obliterate what remains of the American lower class.

It doesn't help our cause that the American public seems indifferent. Flash back to the last major raid on Wal-Mart for hiring illegals. The media coverage fixated on reports such as the so-called employees being forced to work without breaks and not receiving overtime pay. When I was unemployed, my white American ass would have taken such a job without reservation. Why should we have given a happy damn about the "rights" of illegal Mexicans and Poles when American jobs were stolen?

You can always blame the immigrants themselves for this financial gang rape of our working class: that would be the feel good approach. We should always expect people to capitalize on the weaknesses of any given system. The real culprits are the corporations that run this country and the esteemed ladies and gentlemen whom we have voted in or failed to vote out of office. These corporate gangsters and lowlife politicians have sold us out to the lowest bidder. I firmly believe that the politicians responsible should be brought up on treason charges while the Fortune 500 slimeballs languish in prison with Bubba the playful cellmate. Unfortunately, that is a mere wet dream. Expect the job market to reach maximum entropy and for an era of slight improvement to coincide with Hell's first winter.

2006-05-01T15:33:00.000-05:00

Isn't it a special thing to see the disabled and downtrodden get a break in life? In turn, how special is to wait long enough to die of natural causes in the supermarket checkout line only to find melons bagged atop your potato chips? My company's brain trust has deemed it necessary to employ slow and worthless baggers in the front end department.

All arrogance aside, the primary function of the bagger is to assist the cashier, the secondary function is to assist the customer. Some baggers can scarcely do neither, which comes at the expense of us all in order to line the company's pockets. Organizations receive annual handouts from the government in return for employing people who have been declared "disabled" or who have been on government assistance, such as Supplemental Social Security Income. The majority of the baggers I work with are afflicted by conditions such as Down's syndrome and mental retardation.

Discard political correctness, ease up on the heart strings and get serious. This preferential treatment and thinly disguised bribery does nothing but insult regular working people and bitch slap the sincerely unemployed. To be perfectly clear, some retarded baggers are quite competent and I respect their ability to be productive despite dramatic impedements. Others with similar conditions, however, are useless on the job and have no business collecting paychecks and should be fired in favor of applicants who are at least marginally qualified.
I have been a grocery store cashier for the past five months and been unemployed a few times.

On the job, I have seen people with far less to offer the company than the majority of the unemployed unskilled laborers in the Dallas area thrive and screw up with impunity. I could have only fantasized that such favoritism had been shown towards me when I was peniless and hopeless during a job hunt. Like many workers in this decade, I was repeatedly rejected for minimum wage gigs that are nothing but a punch line in Western societies. Unfortunately, supermarkets have few financial incentives to hire people with triple-digit IQ levels and basic language skills. I'll be damned if these charity cases had to pitch their song and dance to half the employers in town and sweat buckets in between bus rides as many of us have done in order to find work.

To illustrate the caliber of some baggers' skills, I'll tell you of a memorable day at work. As I opened up my register one afternoon, I was joined by a newly hired bagger. This bagger was accompanied by some sort of retard counselor or coach. As the bagger "worked," this coach cheered her on with outlandish lies, such as "You're doing so good!" As you may have guessed, this bagger was not doing good by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, all she did was hinder my bagging efforts. That afternoon, I bagged some 80 percent of my orders, with the assistance of a so-called bagger. While scanning a slew of $200 orders, I took some time to coddle her, until I discovered how shockingly futile that effort was. To my amazement, the coach also assured this girl that her bagging abilities had not deteriorated in between jobs. So much for the "I'm new" excuse. Simply put, there was no justifiable reason for her to have shown up that day. The company and the customers most certainly would have been better served by someone who could produce results--or served at all.

I have seen such baggers work slowly, stupidly and in a manner that raises incredulous eyebrows. In short, they are getting paid for bullshit that would get regular people like you and I abruptly fired. Rather than receiving a swift termination that would be in the best interest of all concerned, they have attained job security. I don't know about you, but wouldn't that be great: for a real day's work at least. Corporate greed and government asininity have merged to reward incompetence and insult the American public in the process. Chew on this the next time you find yourself in the checkout line, or the unemployment line for that matter.