Frontin’

Mama Said Knock You Out – LL Cool J

I hate confrontations. Of any kind. I’ve always been that way. I’ve just got an overwhelming fear mechanism. I’m like a lemur. I think. All I know is that anytime someone acts even mildly aggressive towards me I get all shaky and red.

So this customer was giving me a hard time today. I’ve seen this guy a bunch of times too. He’s always complaining about something. In fact, the only reason he keeps coming to our wonderfully flawed store is because he knows that he can find something wrong and it will give him the opportunity to harass some lowly cashier. More on that later. Here’s what happened today.

He was the last, last customer. He walked in about a minute before closing. At about 10:00 I call out to a co-worker, “Hey, is there anyone left?” She tells me that there’s one guy and I yell, “Tell him to get up here!” When the guy eventually makes his way to my register, the first problem comes when I scan a loaf of bread. There’s a dispute over the price. I tell him the machine says what it says. He tells me to check. I say, “Come with me, then.”

We’re walking to the bakery and I know, I just know that he’s going to try and start something. He does. “You know, you shouldn’t have yelled for me to come up here,” he says.

“I know, sir, but the store closed 10 minutes ago and I wanted to make sure everyone was out,” I say.

We get to the bakery and I was right about the price. I figure this whole thing is over. Wrong. “I had all this stuff in my hands. You shouldn’t ask your customers to run,” he says.

“Sometimes we prefer if they do,” I said. That did not make him happy. He said I shouldn’t have said that. I told him that everytime I’ve seen him in here he’s complaining about something. He said I shouldn’t talk to the customers that way.

“That’s only an issue if we actually want that customer to come back,” I said.

“Don’t talk to me that way you fucking…”

“Sir, you obviously hate this place. Why do you keep coming back here?”

Silence. Now you’ve got to understand, I was scared as shit. Like I said, it’s my natural reaction in these situations. At that moment, at that exact moment, I realized the only reason that I wasn’t curling up into the fetal position is because this guy was a hell of a lot more scared than I was. He told me to void his order and then he said he was going to talk to my boss. I told him, “My name is Alex. Alex Lee. You can tell him exactly what happened here.” He just walked off.

This guy was one of the first customers I had a problem with when I first started working at Food Basics and that time I just did whatever I had to do to make him happy. I wouldn’t let him have his way today. I saw him complaining about something on Saturday too and that really pissed me off because he was getting mad at one of the new girls. I should have said something then. It’s one thing for him to give me shit, but I can’t stand him coming in here and disrespecting the place where I work (though I do that every day) and the people I work with.

I’m kind of bummed about the incident though. I feel sorry for the guy. I mean, clearly something else in this guy’s life is just not working. I don’t know if it’s at home or where he works (he is constantly reminding us that he works at a Loblaw’s) or if it’s something minor like he’s a big football fan and his team is off to a bad start. I don’t know. All I know is that the whole situation made me feel helpless. Here’s this guy who as far as I know is a great guy, a family man, a hard worker and all that, but when he comes in here he becomes this total asshole. And there’s nothing anyone can do about that.

I’m tired and hungry.

I thought you guys said he was some kind of monster, Jesus, how the hell did you do that…?
Jesse, are you okay?

Mm? Oh. Could one’ve you drive me to the hospital, please? I think I just broke every bone in my hand.