"Cunt Market"

That is what the little Englishman calls my place of work "County Market." The name came about when we noticed lots of stores in the place I live had letters burnt out in their signs. For example: Carpetland was "Car--- Land", Beefaroo was "-----roo" and Blockbuster was "--ockbuster." We started playing this game where we'd remove letters from stores in order to make the funniest name. Most of mine were lame and not worth mentioning but he came up with the little gem that is now the title of this post.

This is me in full work attire. Notice my awkwardness.

I started working at County Market after being here for a year and applying every where, literally.  It's such a small town that after putting in applications for a week, I ran out of places and briefly worked from home as an "independent contractor," answering calls for various infomercials and trying my hardest (tricking) to get the people on the other end of the line to buy all the extras. I earned so little at this job that I didn't even have to document it in my taxes for this year.

County Market is a chain grocery store in Illinois owned by a company that has numerous other chain grocery stores and even a pet store. I knew on my initial training day that it was going to be an interesting experience when they showed a video about why they remained "union-free." It was basically one long right-wing anti-union ad about how unions are bad and why we should get wrapped up in their bureaucratic mess. I'd driven to training that day in a car with a "Union Yes" bumper sticker and another bumper sticker that had the name of my mom's union on it.

My first day actually working was a nightmare. I was scheduled for seven and a half hours which means I got two breaks, one fifteen minutes long and one thirty minutes long. I took my fifteen break about an hour and a half into my shift thinking I'd get my lunch later on. This never happened. I watched as hours went by, my feet and ankles feeling like they were going to explode. Anyone who works in retail knows that feeling even though it seems like just standing around wouldn't cause so much agony. I realized how inadequate my training had been when people started coming through with alternative forms of payment to the normal credit/debit cards, cash and checks. I'd been so confident going into that shift that I'd remembered everything I'd been taught that it became mentally anguishing whenever I had to call one of the Customer Service Managers (CSM) over to help me or override something stupid I'd done with their keys. I also had never been taught that when people come through with their foodstamps cards, sometimes you have to type in the numbers on their cards because most of them have been unable to keep their cards in good repair. I also did not know that when people with these cards used vendor coupons, they'd still have to pay the sales tax on the items. This is something that most people with foodstamps cards also do not know so after being yelled at for hours about having to pay a few pennies of their own money and still not having my second break, I was close to a mental break down.

The last couple of hours went by in a similarly horrible fashion, however there was only one CSM still there and one other cashier. It was at 9PM that I finally broke. This family decided that it would be a great idea to come out at this time with about ten WIC slips. The father seemed rather scary and was in a foul mood because they'd brought all four of their children to come shopping. The mother was passive and seemed rather apologetic about the whole situation, but it didn't really help. Anyone who has been on WIC or has had to ring up WIC knows that it is terribly complicated especially if you have no idea what you are doing. Most of the stuff this family picked up was either not WIC approved or not the right item listed on the slip. I had to keep having someone to go get the right item or just take it off altogether, which meant more overrides for the one CSM still there. Also, if you don't designate the transaction as WIC before starting it, the register won't let you go back and change it so the entire thing needs to be canceled by means of supervisor keys. It doesn't matter if all you've done is scanned the "Max Card" (County Markets Big Brother card), the register doesn't care. The father of the family kept getting more and more impatient with my foibles and the CSM was on a register at that point to handle the long lines of people created by my inability to complete one transaction without trouble and couldn't come over every time I had an issue. I felt all the pressure from these customers and started tearing up a little from my own unabated anxiety due to my ADD. I finally finished with the WIC slips and started helping the people next in line but my register took issue with that. After inputting so many WIC transactions into it, it was stuck in WIC mode so when I scanned the next customer's bread, their only item, it kept telling me it wasn't a WIC allowed item. The CSM couldn't help me because she was helping someone else and no matter how many times I trying scanning this loaf of bread, the register kept spitting at me that it was not WIC approved.

I broke into sobs over my inability to simply ring up one item correctly and the long line that had formed from it. I kept apologizing repeatedly to the customer and letting them know it was my first day, which was probably incoherent to him though he said it was all right. I felt like an idiot because I was crying unabashedly in front of dozens of strangers. The CSM was finally able to help me and when I told her that I hadn't gotten my second break, she let me go home. I fully planned to quit and never go back to face the embarrassing environment my scene had created. But my sister made me go because she wanted money for all the bills I hadn't been paying for the year I lived there. No one mentioned it the next day but anytime two fellow employees were chatting quietly to one another, I was convinced they were talking about me. It took me a month to get over the episode and my shyness towards my coworkers. Strangely, after all that, I'm now a CSM and a bookkeeper and get to hold the keys.

In related news, the customer whose bread made me cry found me on both facebook and the myspace I hadn't used since I was 15. He added me as a friend and after a bit of back and forth asked me if I worked at county market. I was alarmed by this stranger having found me on the internet, months after our one and only encounter and tried to pump him for information so I could avoid him at the store. I asked what he looked like because he didn't have a profile picture. He said he'd show me but asked if my boyfriend would be okay with it. Recognizing his intentions immediately, I responded that he'd be fine as long as it was a picture of this guy's face. He responded with what must be his best pick up line ever "I could show you much more if you didn't have a boyfriend." I instantly blocked him. It wasn't until recently that I found that he sent me a message on myspace as well and it was there that I found a description of him. I was a bit saddened to find that it was the guy that I'd been having rather pleasant conversations with whenever he came in with his grandma to by bread. That's all they ever buy, no joke. My coworkers and I have deemed him Bread Guy.

Again, I'll probably post more soon in a similar strain as this.