Stupid Cashier Story

So we went to Petsmart. We had a coupon for

ONE FREE BAG

(emphasis not added to enhance the stupidity of what happened, but to show how big the words actually were on the coupon—so, yeah, I guess to also enhance the stupidity of the clerk) of Brand X cat food. As I’m sure you’ve seen on these types of coupons, there was an empty box for the actual product value to be hand-written in. There was no limit on the value, but we were limited to a 4# bag.

So we get to the cashier and she rings up our first item then rings up the cat food. I hand her the coupon and she looks at it and scans it. I can see her register screen and it is asking her to enter the amount of the coupon. And she’s looking at it. And looking at it. I’m wondering what the problem is. It appears she is confused—but maybe, I think, she is looking for a max value in the small print so, fine. So what does she do? Cancel the coupon and scan the coupon again. Funny, the same thing pops up again—enter amount. She cancels it again and scans it again. Lather, rinse, repeat x 4. By this point, I am ready to explain what needs to happen, but on the flip side, I want to see just how long it takes her to actually figure it out (there was no one behind us).

So she finally does it one last time and quickly enters .01 (I kid you not), slides the coupon in the drawer, and gives me my total. I say “That coupon was for a free bag of food.” She says “Oh, was it?” OH WAS IT? Well, now she has to call the manager over to open her drawer to get the coupon out to verify, which means he has to cancel the entire transaction (good thing we only had two items). The manager leaves. So she rings us up again and she gets the coupon and scans it and…looks just as confused as the last time. I let her go through the scan and cancel routine three more times before I say “It’s just asking you to enter the cost of the bag of food—$7.99 [which can be clearly seen on the register].” Oh, she says, and punches in $7.99 and completes the transaction.

What the hell? I tried to think of any reason she could be so stupid…first day, young kid, etc. but if it was any of those, you’d think she would at least have said as much to explain the problem. But aside from that, how hard is it to read a screen and follow the directions? And if she was having an issue, why not call someone over? Especially after she screwed it up the first time?!

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