I promised you a few weeks ago that I would share my Kroger experience with you all even though I’ve tried to block it from my mind.

PhilBillPaul, his mother and my mother found this whole story way too amusing. I’m calling for a little more empathy from my loyal blog readers after you get to the end.

First, let me preface this story with a little background about being a cashier as a part-time job or as a career choice. We have a lot of cashier history in our family. My mom was a cashier back in her youth. Cashier was my first job in high school and the darling twins are cashiers at that other grocery store which I’m not blogging about today but is known for its stellar customer service.

The first thing we learned in cashier training was “The customer is always right.” Never were we allowed to argue, roll our eyes or have an attitude with a customer. (Or chew gum which is a personal pet peeve of mine when I see a store clerk chomping.)

My mom and I had major cashier job stress. It was back in the day where you actually had to punch numbers on the cash register, know department numbers, prices AND even use old-fashioned addition and subtraction to handle money and count back change.

Nowadays if the scanner or the touchscreen isn’t working, the average cashier cannot do his/her job and management seems panic-stricken.

Which reminds me of another story you must remind me to tell you about McDonald’s and how you can shut the whole place down with one tiny request.

Sorry for that wandering mind distraction. Back to the subject at hand.

Krogers

Side note: That “s” is for a certain friend. She knows who she is.

I need for you to have a picture of the cashier who checked me out in your mind. I really need to go back to the store and snap her picture. It’s one of those “Separated at Birth” things…

She looks eerily like Maxine, the crabby Hallmark character. Minus the biting sense of humor.

I actually love Maxine.

The Kroger cashier. Not so much.

Kroger has some standard greetings and questions asking the customer:

“How are you today?”

“Are you a Kroger Plus customer?”

Ending the checkout process with:

“Would you like to donate a dollar to ____________ (insert current Kroger charity)?”

To which I almost always reply “No thank you” with a smile.

Because I will freely admit here and now that I prefer to choose my charitable giving without any cashier pressure. Yes, even when it’s only a dollar.

I’ve never felt any wrath from this.

Until now.

When the not sweet Maxine-like cashier looked back up at me and said…

“Are you a senior?”

Which changes my relationship with Kroger on so many levels.

I’ll proudly ask for my senior discount when I’m eligible but until then, I think Kroger needs to re-visit their cashier training program.

Only after I shared this story did PhilBillPaul share that the day before he went through a local drive-thru for lunch and upon handing his debit card with photo on it that the cashier declared…

“Wow, that’s an old picture.”

Ouch.

Customer Service 101 – let’s get back to the basics folks. I think that begins with not biting the hand that feeds you. Insulting your customers is bad for business.

Especially the old, grouchy ones.