Did you find everything okay? and other Capitalistic Nay-sayery

I have not written in a while so I decided I will do what I do best- complain!

My subject today is supermarkets.

Why is it when you reach the cash register, saying without words that you are done with your shopping, does the cashier say, “Did you find everything okay?”

Why do they ask you when it is too late? What would happen if I said no? What if I told the truth? No, I did not find everything okay. It took me a long time to find what I was looking for and/or I never found what I was looking for.

Instead you say yes. You say yes every time because it does not make sense otherwise.

Why is this fakery necessary? Is it company policy to ask you this? If you did not find something are they really going to call someone to go get it for you while you are out the door?

It is like waiters and waitresses in the U.S. Since they are basically living on tips they have to kiss your ass, constantly refilling water and asking is everything okay? If something is bad, do you really have the balls to say it is bad unless it has a hair in it or something? I mean do you really expect fine dining at Fridays?

And another thing about cashiers. Why do they have to stand up? It is unnecessary and bad for your body to be standing all day. With stools, they can switch easily between sitting and standing. Many European supermarkets offer their cashiers stools. But here, they have to be standing so that the general public doesn’t think they are lazy.

On a quick google search I found this Washington Post article from 2007. Some (the cashiers) were in support of the idea of the stools. Others (managers) argued it would not be culturally accepted for cashiers to be sitting. Excuse me, what? I thought Americans’ culture was that we are void of culture. Culture my ass. Captalistic nay-sayery is more like it. Or is capitalistic nay-sayery our culture? And why isn’t it normal to help with the bagging? Some places do not have designated baggers. We wait doing nothing while the cashier rings up our items. These are valuable minutes that we could be using bagging our own damn groceries. Basically, we are only happy if we know the person waiting on us or ringing up our items is in pain.

Other than this article, there are not many websites that come up when you google “sitting cashiers.” I think this is a good indicator of how much we think of our cashiers. Here is an interesting discussion in Yahoo answers where someone rags on America pretty hard near the bottom of the page, it’s pretty entertaining.

Speaking of standing up all day, let’s talk about sitting on your ass all day. I have only recently come across the idea of standing desks. Why aren’t these more common? I didn’t even consider their existence. It is great to alternate between sitting and standing no matter what your job is. Our body is not meant to do long periods of either. Let’s not even get into cubicles. Because, well, Alicia already has.

Maybe we can’t change our “culture.” But next time think about your cashier or waiter. They are people too, not just robots with pre-recorded messages. Though I guess not for long…dun dun DUNNN.