I shop here once or twice a week for yrs now. This was the most unpleasant experience I've had here. I was waiting in line while the woman in front of me had a lot of items. Because of social distancing, I waited until her last items were being rung up and she went up to the payment pad before I went to the counter and set my items down. I start by lining up 3 bottles of soda in a straight line across the belt and I noticed the cashier looking over and sighing. I just nodded cause I thought he was sighing at how busy it was before Christmas and how we all had a lot of things or something like that. There was some distance between her things and mine because she was just finishing up and I had placed my items at the end of the belt and stayed at the end, to keep 6ft apart. By the time I finished, all but one of her items, a gray bottle, was rung up. Moises, the cashier, asks if the grey bottle is hers and I say, "yeah, that's hers, everything else is mine." Then he starts the belt function and my items start moving up. "Well, you didn't put the pink stick down. If you don't put the pink stick down, it will cause all sorts of problems. Look see" and he point to my items which have just finished rolling up the belt to the scanner. "I could have rung these up." Then he rings up the gray bottle, and the lady in front of me starts paying. Then he turns to me and picks up the pink stick, waves it, and says "you put it down just like this, see? ". At this point, the only items on the belt are mine and he has to put the stick down right next to the scanner because none of her items are on the belt. There was literally nothing to divide because all her items were in the bagging area and she was paying for them. When I point this out, he says "it doesn't matter, I need it there to help me remember, or I will keeping ringing up your things, then I have to call a manager and it's a pain".
I didn't even know what to say to this, would he forget he was done ringing her up during the time it took her to pay? And does 99 Cent store's POS system keep ringing things up during the entire payment process? That means the customer in front of me could be putting in their pin and I can make them pay for my things by sliding them over the scanner?
The whole interaction was passive aggressive and illogical. I get it, he's not a mind reader. Maybe he was genuinely confused about the grey bottle, but it's strange that he held it up, then used the belt function to get my items closer while lecturing about the importance of the stick. And also, there was that look when I first placed my items down. But even if you took that "confusion" at face value, there was no need for the passive aggressiveness after he asked. And then the best part is, he's wearing his mask around his neck the whole time. Things have never been worse with COVID, there is a state wide indoor mask mandate, and the customer in front of me was an elderly lady, but he's just not bothering with a mask while he's waving a pink divider that cannot divide anything because only one customer's items were on the belt. read more
