Customers

I have been working at a grocery store since April 11, 2007. What a treat. I had forgotten how much I liked this type of job. My second job ever was as a cashier in The Dominion store at Eglinton Square in Scarborough, Ontario.

That was back when it took a week to train you. They had books you had to work though, you had to know how to make change, how to put a new roll in the register (back then it was wheels and pulleys and had to be threaded through everything by hand). You also learned how to bag groceries. Not an easy art, I might add. They used paper bags then and the bag had to be able to stand on its on, and be not too heavy and everything bagged correctly. I took pride in that.

So, back to almost present day.... I would go grocery shopping and the people bagging it would make such a mess. No idea how to bag items, bananas on the bottom next to ice cream, eggs wherever they'd fit, soap and toilet cleaners in with food. I'd get home and nothing would be organized, like cold with cold, fragiles together, just a mish mash. I used to try to bag my own items as best I could before they got their hands on them. I also tried to shop at the bag your own places so that I knew where everything was.

I now work about 16 to 20 hours a week, making just above minimum wage and can honestly say that I look forward to going to, and being at, work. I love most of my customers and even though I was very, very shy as a teenager I have found that I am a big ham. I love kidding around with my customers, or talking about any number of things. I love performing my one liners and now have several customers that look for me specifically in the store. I even had one customer that liked my bagging so well that she wrote to the company about it and I ended up with a plaque and a pin for my name badge.

So..... how come there are all these people that can't count to eight? I work express a lot as I am fast and efficient. It is supposed to be 1 to 8 items. Ten I can see, even 12, sometimes, but there is no way I want to let you come through my register at the evening rush hour with 30 items. It is not fair to the people with 1 or 2. I am not sure we should say anything and most times I look at body language and decide not to. But if you are going to be cocky about it and feel you have a right to be there because you don't want to wait, then you are sure as heck going to be called on it.

I will NOT tolerate at my register, those who want to break the unwritten rules. I get people through very fast, sometimes with only a token greeting, but I still greet everyone with a smile. I am very conscious of customer service and believe for the most part that the customer is always right. But NOT when you can't count. I don't care what your excuse is. The ONLY exception is if I am NOT busy on my register and you will not hold up a line of people by coming through express. I even had a man the other night who's son (about 15 years old) told him he was in the wrong aisle and he said he didn't care, "she has to serve me". Ex-freaking-scuse me!!!

Lucky I didn't smash his groceries. Although as angry as I was at him I couldn't do that. But he did get the cold shoulder and the son looked very uncomfortable. What kind of a lesson was that to teach his child?

And while I'm at it. How hard is it to take the groceries out of the little carry baskets. I work hard in an awkward position because of the way the belt and scanner are set up . There is no getting around that. But you are facing the belt straight on and managed to get the groceries in that basket. I am NOT lifting them up and stretching sideways to take them out for you. You got them in there, you can take them out.

And how hard is it to return the buggy? For goodness sakes, you are struggling out the door, squeezing past the buggy you left in the way and walking right past the place the buggies go. How about putting the bags in the buggy, walking it back to where it belongs and THEN take your bags out to go to the car.

Anyway, I LOVE my job and enjoy seeing the people I work with and the customers. It is nice to have all these little relationships. It is wonderful when people greet you by name and ask how this or that is. I have given out suggestions, recipes, and ideas. I have helped some first time grocery buyers (students from McMaster University) and been able to give them ideas on what to cook or how to store things. I guess that's from being Mom, even Grandma age.

So I've been gone a long time from here. I'll add more stuff over the next several weeks. Stay posted to find out about the new hip and whatever other exciting things I can come up with. I have more grocery, gas, and driver rants coming up.

Thanks for reading.

Today's Rant

So, last weekend just happened to be a long weekend in Canada and surprise, surprise the gas prices just happened to go up. Now can someone explain to me again why this happens and no one "investigates". Even when they do pretend to check into it how come they say that there is nothing untoward going on?

I wonder if the groceries stores started to up their prices on those same long weekends you can be darn sure there would be some squawking and cries of outrage. How about if the the beer prices, and the price of bread and milk and all those other necessities we need over the weekend went up.

And then there is all the services we need.... police, fire emergency, doctors etc., etc., etc. Only the gas companies get away with this supply and demand bull. You don't see the farmer with his milk making any extra money for hoarding his milk. What he produces goes out at one set price and funny enough it is in the stores in time for the long weekend but the price doesn't go up "suddenly".

How can that gas that came in on Wednesday and sat in the tanks till Friday suddenly be worth more? Did someone take it out and then put it back in again? I think not.

I personally have been buying only ten litres at a time for. Not ten dollars, ten litres. I will do that every time I need gas and not always at the same station. I refuse to pay the ridiculous prices they are charging and so I am using a dollar cost averaging process. I have been doing this since March 9th of this year. My piddly little bit isn't going to make anyone notice but it is the only way I can see to protest. Trying to have everyone boycott a certain station isn't going to work, obviously, but maybe if we all were to just buy ten litres at a time then maybe someone would notice. I bet the prices couldn't go up so fast becasue they'd still have all that gas sitting in their underground tanks. Now, obviously if you're driving to Toronto or Brantford every day you don't want to be doing the ten litre thing, but there are HUNDREDS of us that just tootle around town and my own experience has been that I only stop at a station three times a week and that gets me more than 200 kilometres.

There is something I find very satisfying about going into a totally empty gas station, pulling up to the pump and filling it with a whole ten litres of gas.

Also, new is that I have now had my replacement hip for six months. They told me I was too young to have one, but I am so glad that they decided to finally go ahead with the surgery. I will write more on this in a couple of days.

Barbaro

I won't say much because it is all over, but I felt so sad for that horse. He tried so hard and in the end his own body let him down.

It is a shame that evolution still allows such a beautiful creature to have such delicate legs. It is a shame that a stallion must physically cover a mare for the breeding to be recognized in thoroughbreds. It is also a shame that we did not all, at least once get to see that beautiful, beautiful animal just plain run one more time.

I felt this horse close to my heart as it reminded me so much of what happened with Ruffian. I was watching that day too and I just cried my heart out.

I too agree with one of the suggestions I read today that they should wait until the horses are four years old before they race them. They are still such babies and as such undeveloped completely at three years old.

Anyway, that's my piece and I know that I will see Barbaro, Secretariat, Northern Dancer and Ruffian one day, as well as all my pets that I have had and loved.

Should have written sooner

I can't believe that it has been so long since I posted on my blog. Where has the time gone?

Shortly after my last post, I got the news that I was getting a new hip. Finally!! They have been putting it off because at 53, and then 54 years of age I was considered too young. Finally this June I was told that I was bad enough that they would do it.

Thank Heaven. It would be so nice to stand straight and not be in pain. I was told the wait was about five months. I planned on it happening just at or after Christmas. Well, in July they called me with a late November date. I was pleased and then shocked and then....... scared. I was mentally prepared for the five month wait but four seemed too short all of a sudden.

I had planned on writing a weekly blog detailing my adventures etc. Obviously that didn't happen. So I thought I would write a weekly one afterwards chronicling my recovery etc. Guess what? It has been 8 WEEKS since I had the surgery and I am just now writing.

They measure your pain level on a 1 to 10 scale, 10 being the worst. The evening after the surgery I was at about a twelve, which sounds bad but wasn't too much higher than what I had been at for the past year or so. The next morning, after a terrible night reacting to morphine, I was at a 2, maybe. I stopped taking the morphine at around three in the morning and went to Tylenol 3's. That's all I needed.

I have been recovering so well. I can stand up straight for the first time in over three years and I can walk fast again. I can also walk distances, which was hard to do before. I still need my knees done and they are all that are holding me back, but I still get out and do about a km a day at this point.

I can shop for groceries without it being an ordeal. I don't have to worry that I may not have brought medication with me or that I will be crossing a street or parking lot and not be able to get out of the way of traffic. I have FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!

Thank you Ontario!