I work for a relatively small branch of a very large supermarket
which for reasons of anonymity I shall call Coles, as that is its name. I've been working there around two years now, as a 'service assistant' and I have, over this time, developed my own rather personal style for dealing with customers.
Some of my habits include:
- Putting all items requiring a price-check through as carrots. I usually charge $1 regardless of how much it may or may not cost. When I can be sure no one is looking, I generally just give it to them for free.
- Being inventive with change. It can be hard to count out how much a customer is owed, so I often take it upon myself to create an amount I can be sure is greater than that owed, something I've yet to have anyone complain about.
- Never charging anyone for certain cheese. You can buy cheese in packaged form from the dairy case, or by weight from the deli section. For the latter, the price is often not on file and requires a price-check. I have always refused to charge people for this and I'm not going to start doing it soon.
- Creatively bagging groceries. We're supposed to bag items in a way that minimises bag use, but more often than not I just throw things in there.
- 'Accidentally' giving people the wrong number of notes when they get cash out. Usually one 50 to many.
- Not talking to customers. Most of them are not nice and seem to assume they can speak condescendingly to supermarket employees, and because of this the only thing I say to most customers is the price of their groceries.
- I swear to myself more than anyone in a service industry should. Sometimes at customers themselves.

I would like to say, in my defence, that unlike most angsty teenagers, I have never once intentionally stolen from work.
( Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Tue 14 Aug 2007, 12:58, Reply)