THE BAD IDEA
Trying to Make The Clerk With The Mean Look on Her Face Smile
There are only so many times you encounter someone before you realize that it’s not working
We knew that there was a chance that we’d be in the area for a while when we first walked into the travel center right off the toll exit near the interstate. What we weren’t expecting was the rude, bitter clerk from hell who didn’t find joy in any aspect of her job and made co-workers and customers feel her bitterness alike.
It’s not like I’m expecting her to be fake and over-friendly with everyone that walks into the store but to be hostile and aggressively rude to everyone, that’s a bit of a stretch. But that’s what I experience on a daily basis when I encounter her walking into the store of the travel center to buy anything.
You know that feeling when you’ve walked in somewhere and felt like you weren’t welcome? Well, every time this woman is at the counter, that’s how we are made to feel as customers.
It is clear that the woman doesn’t like her job. Not only that, but I heard from one of her co-workers today that she not only hates everything and everyone involved with her job, but she has a sense of arrogance about her and thinks that she’s the one who should be in charge. Hang on…you’re telling me that a woman who doesn’t even like her job and is openly hostile to customers thinks that she should be running the place? Oh, hell no!!
First of all, you have to actually do your work and like your job or at least pretend to somewhat like it to even be considered, much less respected by other workers. She has such a high opinion of herself, though, that this woman wants to be the boss without earning it.
First of all, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a worker do less work on shift than she does. She barely does the bare minimum at her job, never smiles, and expects everyone else to cater to her needs and bow down to her excellency. Wow!!
And I thought that in my nearly two decades in retail and customer service, I’d seen everything. The bad idea in my case is that I’m a new customer entering into this situation regularly and I’m trying to cheer her up, compliment her, try to make her smile, or just be generally courteous, sweet, and pleasant. Things that you’d expect would make a cashier’s day, but nothing.
One time, it felt like she was nearly going to bite my head off for just saying hi. I walked by her one time on the way to the bathroom and asked her, “What a lovely day, isn’t it?” and all I could hear was a grumble, what resembled a shriek, and then groaning indignation. I know you’re not going to please everyone and not everyone is going to like you but no one, and I mean no one can make her smile.
I can’t even begin to know this woman’s personal story but she seems sad, lonely, and oddly insecure. I would think that she’d need a friend but I think that it’s a bad idea for me to try to be that person especially given the circumstances of us having to leave the area eventually once all of our matters are in order. She can just scowl at us from a distance for now.
I don’t want to see her bare her teeth much longer if I can help it. So, you learned it from me today, one bad idea is trying to cheer up a middle-aged depressed, and arrogant cashier at a travel center who only wants to scowl and frown all day.
UNRELATED LESSON: New York City, the largest city in the United States is obviously in the state of New York. However, the capital city of Albany, NY, approximately 150 miles north of New York City is actually further away from it than two other capital cities in the region (Trenton, NJ, and Hartford, CT).
That means that if you want to drive to a state capital from the large city, you would go to one of two other states to take a shorter drive than to the capital contained within the same state. Another fun fact about New York City is that it contains about 44% of the state’s population within the city limits alone and 64% of the metro area of New York City is the whole state’s population.
The state is fourth in population in the nation behind California, Texas, and Florida, but again most of that population is centered around the one large city. In the rest of the state, the population is a lot more sparse. This also explains the cultural differences between New York City and the rest of the state. Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse are the biggest cities in this region.
I’ve gotten to experience that firsthand being here in semi-rural Western New York for the last couple of weeks. This is definitely nothing like New York City and almost the opposite of what I’d expect in the city, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.
