I've mentioned dealing with asshole customers at my cashier-and-more job at the Asian supermarket, but not all my customer stories involve asstomers. Sometimes the people I deal with are just weird. This is one example.
I'm pretty used to customers who can't speak English. Most of the time, they can say a few words or point to something on a list, and I can handle that. Not so much when they just assume I know their language and talk at me in Korean/Japanese/Chinese/et cetera, despite my blank look of not understanding.
So this one woman summoned me to the register by calling out in Korean, which is something I do get: a call for assistance has pretty much the same tone of voice no matter what the language. I detangled myself from the cases of shrimp-flavored crackers I was working with and hurried to the register, and she just kept chattering away in Korean while I rang up her items. Then, I came to a soup pouch I didn't recognize. She had apparently dug it out of the stack of taped boxes containing things that were not yet in the system and did not have a price. It took a few minutes for either of us to convey what we were trying to say, but she eventually decided that she didn't want the pouch of soup after all.
OK, I thought to myself, I can deal with that. As I was swiping her credit card, all of a sudden she pulled out a stack of six Jehovah's Witness pamphlets (in English) from her purse and shoved them into my hands. "Present!" she declared with a smile.
"Oh, um, thank you?" I responded while handing over her receipt.
"Thank you! Thank you!" The woman nodded and smiled and hurried off with her purchases, leaving me holding a bunch of Jehovah's Witness stuff and feeling thoroughly confused.
Why did she give them to me? Did she not know what they were? Did she think that because they were in English and I speak English I'd appreciate them? Or was she really able to understand English after all and wanted to convert me? Who knows? I certainly don't.
Off to work again, and I wonder what types of customers I'll encounter today.
XOXO
Gossip Ghoul.
No comments:
Post a Comment