Is it too much to ask for people in the business of customer service to give us customer service?

Case in point: The last time I was in the grocery store, I became the victim of a check-out assembly-line which had evidently been cranked up to high speed; the idea being that the sooner one customer is processed and spit out, the sooner the next guy can be sent through the ringer and the sooner everyone gets to go home. It’s similar to being sucked in by an undertow where there’s a point of no return; Once your items are on the belt, it’s pointless to try and scoop them up to go over to lane 5 because someone just opened it…you’ll never make it.

I stood waiting at the conveyer belt while the woman in front of me was being helped. The cashier, who was evidently also the manager, was sliding her items past the scanner at a furious rate and all of them, eggs, bread, croissants…were piling up like cars on a foggy highway. The box boy, wasting no time, decided to conserve time and energy by asking her if plastic was alright even as he had already begun stuffing her groceries into one…in no particular order. She hadn’t answered his plastic bag question when the manager, being careful not to look at her for more than a nanosecond, asked: “Find everything OK?”

But it was too late! Already two questions behind, she had no chance to open her mouth when the cashier announced her total, forcing her into the financial part of the transaction. So she fumbled with her money, while the bagger piled her groceries into the cart and asked her if she wanted help out. It was purely a rhetorical question, as he had already started talking to another bagger as they went over plans for after work and the heavy drinking they would be doing later that night.

The lady gave up after the third question, I guess realizing they were not meant to be answered, and as she carefully put her change away, the manager began whisking my items toward the box boy, and an uncertain future in the bottom of a plastic bag. He had already thanked the lady but had begun my transaction while she was still standing there. Of course, when you’re drawn into this ugly game, your first instinct is to start nudging her out of what’s now your rightful place in front of the cashier and that little ledge where you’ll be counting out your cash or putting down your coupons or, if you’re really foolish, writing your check. My transaction had begun, but I was not part of it, and I felt cheated by having to hang back while she took my place at the trading post.

She was given her change and she began placing it in her purse. This she did with great care, but it was too late for her because the cashier was now talking to me and she was now officially out of the picture. She was history. She no longer existed. After a few more seconds, she took the hint and started moving off into the haze and out of our peripheral vision.

As I stepped toward the ‘ledge’, the cashier asked me how I was doing. He did this without looking at me and then said: “find everything OK?” and I said yes, although I wondered what he would do if I had said ‘no’. Would that stop everything cold? Would he stand there, he and the bagger, and stare at each other, not knowing what to do? Would it make their heads explode? I was tempted to do this and one day I will although I may regret it.

As I began getting ready to pay, the cashier, who you’ll recall I said is also the manager, started a conversation with the bagger about clocking in on time at the beginning of his shift, and coming back from lunch. The bagger, for his part, had an excuse for each offense and argued loudly with his boss, while the boss argued back, all in front of me and God and everybody.

I tried to be noticed. I waved a coupon and yelled, “Over here…HEY, over here!!”

He took the coupon and scanned it while the bagger, still gamely defending himself as being always on time because the union rules state that you have a ten minute grace period to clock in, threw my items in the bags. If he’d been careful about it before, and he was NOT, he was haphazard now, putting cantaloupe on top of eggs and muffins under laundry detergent.

At this point, I made a mistake that was to gum up the system for next few customers in line: I asked for a pen to write a check. This began a search for a pen that covered ten minutes and about 2000 square feet of the store. Customers behind me threw up their hands, sighed loudly and in general made me aware that I was an inconvenience and that if I held them up any longer, I would probably be signing the check in my own blood.

But a pen was found and I dashed off the check as quickly as I could while still being legible. As I signed it, the guy behind me in line had already seen his groceries scanned and put in bags and the lady behind him was being asked: “Did you find everything OK?”

She said “Actually, I couldn’t find the marshmallows…could you tell me where they are?”

As I walked toward the exit with my mangled and beaten groceries, I glanced behind me and saw the manager and bagger staring at each other. The store had gone strangely quiet and I could swear that the lights dimmed.

I left the store in a hurry