Hicks and Homies

Desperate to make money before going to Germany, I accepted a job as a cashier at Wal-Mart in June. My good friend, Eric, has a blog dedicated to his Wal-Mart happenings and various stories here, and I, too, have had some jolly good times/basically met some of America's finest weirdos in my summer working there. From hicks to homies, I'll dedicate a couple of posts on here to some of my faves...

--Plastic Bag eating old people? One fine Sunday I had a young-ish guy come through my line with four carts full of small items...FOUR! So I started sacking everything (yes, sacking, for all you Northerners), but it turns out this fine gentleman was OCD and didn't want any of his bags to be touching. He kept waving his arms at me and saying, "No...no! You're doing it all wrong...no touchie!" This made loading everything up a very difficult endeavor, but I eventually got everything in the carts. If only the weirdness ended here, but nooo. There were 4 carts and only one of him, so 2 other cashiers and I helped him out to his car. On the walk outside, one of the cashiers said "I hope you have a big trunk!" and he said "I do, but it's full of wheelchairs and walkers." Then the other cashier suggested we put things on the seats, to which he explained "that's impossible. All 15 seats are full of old people, and they eat whatever we put in front of them, even the plastic bags." I now have a new fear.

--Trained by a robot. Whenever I want to have a good chuckle (not LOL or ROFL) I think back to the wonderful 40 hours of computer training I received on how to be a cashier, including a virtual cash register. That was WAY more fun then the real thing. Bummer. BUT the best part of this training was the videos. Cheesy training videos are my favorite part of new jobs (It might be a little sad I have been through enough new jobs to have a favorite part?), but anyway, Walmarts' videos take the cake. Reasons:
1) The "Why we don't stereotype/sexually harass customers/coworkers" video. I learned so much through their poorly acted out examples, i.e. its not okay to compare shopping customers to grazing cows, nor is it acceptable to stare at coworkers and make grunting noises (I wish I could make this stuff up myself.)
2) If I actually follow the video training's instruction, I should smile and say "thank you for shopping Walmart" after every move I make, even if it is in the middle of the checkout process and they are not leaving yet. I still desperately want to try this and see what my manager says.

--On another note: Things I will never understand:

...why a customer changed their mind at the last minute on purchasing a large table saw. Yeah, I always get the urge to buy a saw, then decide it's just not the right day, too?

...why it is socially acceptable to sport the American flag in any tacky form of shirt, hat, scarf, shorts, socks, sandals, legit toga (oh yes, I worked 8 hours on the Fourth of July--I've seen it all). Side note: when are peoples' super faded "Old Navy--2000, Turn of the Century" shirts EVER going to be considered too ratty to wear in public?

...why generic insult tee-shirts were ever made. Mr. "If you're reading this shirt you're a loser" that's you, and that's not clever, and yes, Ms. "I'm With Stupid" that includes you, too. Stop hurting my feelings! All I wanted to do was read your shirt.