I have just finished reading Madison Murphy’s column in Technician, “A grocery list of what not to do.” I work in retail and have had my fair share of difficult customers. Nevertheless, I always do my job and part of that job is to please the customer. At a grocery store, I imagine the job is the same in that regard. I hope your manager doesn’t know that you consider your job “the worst possible” and that you think “when people shop at grocery stores they become some of the dumbest people on the face of the earth” and “their IQ drops by 30 points,” because I am sure your boss shops at the grocery store as well. 

You probably shop at the grocery store too, so unless you place yourself in that category, then I think you should consider retracting that statement. How many of your readers shop at Food Lion? Considering it is one of the most accessible and inexpensive grocery stores in the area, I would guess that the percentage is fairly high. I’m sure if you think your job is so terrible, your manager will be happy to give it to someone else.

As far as your list goes, it sounds like you have an issue with customer satisfaction. Part of working in any job is customer satisfaction, and that means answering your customers’ questions regardless of how trifling or redundant they may seem.  So when you put things on your list like “Do not ask me if my register is open” you should also consider why the customer is asking you that: they don’t know. If you didn’t know, you would probably ask too.  

I would say it is your job to inform the customers of things they don’t know, and if you don’t know, find someone else you work with who does. Remember that without grocery store customers, there would be no grocery store, and thus you wouldn’t have a job there.

Halsey Merrit