We have a lady that comes into my department every friday and complains non-stop about the prices being to high and also that the items she wants are not on sale. She can be very loud and obnoxious about it. She drives a new Mercedes and her husband is a big shot at a major university. She also has a big shop job at a pharmacy company. Money to burn. If she had to work for Kroger low wages then I might be able to understand her problem, or I would just go shop at Save-A-Lot ahd keep my big aligator mouth shut.

Last week we caught this woman in the meat department shoving steaks and raw chicken into her undershirt and purse. Looked like she was pregnant with all that product on her. Anyway we confronted her and attemped to hold her for arrest. She started to scream like a screwball and kick, curse and spit on everyone. The police had to drag her out the door. Later that day her husband came in and tried to get the manager to drop the charges. He offered a cash bribe to let her off. He is a well known local doctor and has plenty of money. Management told him to leave and both he and his wife would be arrested for tresspassing if they ever enter the store again.

We had a college co-ed come into the store with a towel wraped around herself asking " Where is the Shampoo?" Looked like she had just stepped out of the shower. Also we had an escaped mental patient enter the store, walk back to the dairy section, and lie down in the egg case. Had to call the police and have her removed. Later we found out she had escaped from the hospital mental ward. Seems like all the nut jobs find their way into Kroger.

lol a prawn is another word for shrimp. I'd tell her to wikipedia it. In terms of it we in America prefer the word "shrimp" and in the UK its Prawn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prawn

Purists may argue that the term "prawn" is reserved for the shrimp's close relative, the Dublin Bay prawn. The Dublin Bay prawn resembles a shrimp, but it's distinguished by its small pincer claws (similar to those on a lobster) and a narrower body. Sometimes called Florida or Caribbean lobsterettes or French langoustines, these shellfish can be hard to find in markets. And unlike shrimp, Dublin Bay prawns are usually cooked with their heads on. The claws make quite an attractive presentation, although they're too tiny to render any meat.

There's a lady who will go up to our produce manager just about every week (on the same day, too, and about the same time), and each time, she'll ask him where we keep the organic apples, and he'll show her...She'll come in the following week (same day, too), and ask him the very same question, and again, he'll show her...but she's been doing this for a while...I don't know how much more plain he can make it...

Another time, a man threw a fit because he wanted "scallions" for a recipe...When shown the green onions, he said "THOSE ARE NOT SCALLIONS!"...When asked if he meat shallots, and shown where the shallots were, he proceded to claim that I didn't know what I was talking about, and that I must have been new there, and didn't know what I was doing, even though I've worked in the grocery business for more years than I care to remember...I kinda enjoyed it when he had his little fit, but I wouldn't let him see that!

By the way, anyone ever ask you..."What's the difference between a yam and a sweet potato?"

Also, did you ever have a customer buy organic eggs, and then ask you if they're all-natural?

What about ladies coming up to you, looking for as bigger discount on a marked down item, and proceeding to tell you, "The guy that was here last week marked it down for me"...or "So-and-so at the other store does it"...I've had customers ask if we can mark down items that were 7-8 days from expiring, because they wouldn't be able to finish the product before it expired. And there are some who are constantly trying to pull the wool over our eyes...BUT I WAS WISE TO THEIR SCHEMES AND TACTICS!!!

I remember once a customer berated one of our older cashiers (who, coincidentally had been at that store for many years), saying that she must be new, because she didn't know what she was doing, and that our whole store was trying to run some kind of coupon scam, because some of her precious coupons were invalid or outdated. Or she bought the wrong product for that particular coupon. I think she was trying to play some kind of shell game with the coupons, too, just to confuse the cashier...After an hour of getting the runaround, according to her, she stormed out of there, still unhappy...Our cashier was so poised, even when the customer asked to see a manager, that she didn't even flinch an eyeball...She let that lady's tantrum just slide off her back, without even a smirk...That's class, I tell ya!

How about a lady that sat in her car for an hour or so while her groceries got warm, looking over her grocery bill with a fine-tooth comb, and then came back in, complaining that the cashier overcharged her by 10 cents...And how much of her perishable food must have been spoiled by the time she actually left the store, and got her money? Surely, more than 10 cents worth!!! Really, people?!! REALLY???

Oh, and the big one..."I can get that (fill in the blank) much cheaper at the other store (fill in the blank), but the same customer is a regular shopper that comes in every week...And I heard THIS on the news, too...For any customer who complains about high food prices, wait till the prices of food go up next year!!!...What with all this drought across the country, and the corn crop being ruined, it's hard to say, but everything from bread to pop to juice utilizes corn (as in "high fructose corn syrup"). Even the cows (where your meat and milk and cheese comes from) depend on it for their food source...Guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens...

Like I said, when you've worked the grocery business for a long time, you've seen it all before...You've gotta laugh...Either that, or cry!!!

You know...this stuff is so, so funny...and so, so true!!! Makes me wanna hear more...

here's a flipside story that happened just yesterday ....

a lady comes to the deli counter and wants 10 pounds of montgomery inn pork bbq for tomorrow. i'm back frying chicken and the counter lady is working with her. she isn't the brightest bulb out there. but the customer is relatively affluent and the deli lady isn't. so she goes into the walk in to see if there is enough to handle it. thats when i step in and talk to the customer telling her that our chef isnt here yet (its 8:30am and he comes in around 9:00) and he handles that section but most likely we have it in the freezer way in the back and i need your ph # and will call you to inform blah blah blah....

so now the lady moves on over to our free coffee maker and i am heading out of the deli to do something and she and i get into another quick convo. 5 minutes later she is back at the deli inquiring about a potential party she is hosting besides the one she originally came in for about the bbq. i get called up bypassing the other two deli clerks standing between me like i have now trumped them. she somehow then spills her coffee down on the glass windows of the case.

here is where it gets interesting. she then proceeds to say to me "you need to have your lady come out and clean the deli windows again" i was quickly off guard by the comment but said back "why?" to which she said "i just spilled my coffee on the glass" and she rambled away. LOL. now my co worker goes "what did she just say? and the other coworker who was right there told her exactly the full sentence. now mind you, both of my co worker are black. the one who was dealing with cleaning the glass 15 minutes earlier took her comments as racist. that first occurred to me to might be the case but it might just be a poor choice of wording right then and there. regardless, we now spent the next 1/2 hour talking about it and "the nerve" of that lady to say such a thing.

i'm a white male. i stayed out of their bickering. only when they asked my opinion did I say "umm.. i'm not sure cause I am white and a male" and they go "exactly" and cut me off to go back to their bickering. so do you all get my take? i was thinking that they overdramatized the situation and it made good fodder for them for the next couple hours or so....