Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 12:07 PM i was a cashier for seven years, and realized people just wanted to get the fuck outta there, so i went about my business with a quickness. i always befriended the baggers so that they would hang around and bag for me as the ratio of checkers to baggers always favored checkers. i had my favorites, and most of the teens enjoyed working with me.
i often ignored the customers (unless i knew them; i probably met a third of the town since i worked there so long. also, i had a strong penchant for knowing which customers didn't care if i largely ignored them as long as i got them through quickly and didn't screw up anything) and had long, ongoing discussions with the baggers about their lives or mine or whatever the topic of the day was partly to keep them planted, partly because some of them i genuinely enjoyed talking with. in the latter years, i talked quite a bit of loveline-esque stuff with them. i just had to avoid talking politics and religion in front of customers. i learned early on that was important. politics was easy for me to avoid, but as most of you know, i'm offended by religion, and almost everyone in the midwest believes in teh sky god. i was like one sand bag trying to stop a massive flood of sewage. i occasionally received complaints, but also had quite a few "regulars" who always went through my lane because on top of being fast, i'd usually have something quasi entertaining to say to them or whoever was bagging. i stayed at that job longer than i should have, but the bottom line was that i enjoyed it.
in fact, i often have re-occurring dreams of working there. —plurry | 
