This is probably a once-in-a-decade event that has provoked me to write this review.
First of all, I'd like to state that I visit this Ralph's for all my grocery needs (well, ever since the Vons across the street shut down). The prices are great and I can usually find what I need. There's a big guy that works here. He has curly hair and is usually wearing a cap and a vest. He is ever-so-nice and will ask you if you need any help. Checking out is usually very easy unless there's a mean-old-woman in the front who wants to use ALL HER COUPONS but doesn't bring all 10 containers of baby food when she needs to buy 10 to save some money.
With that said, there was one particularly employee that acted improperly while I was watching on December 1, 2009.
The time was between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. when my boyfriend, my brother, and I decided to go for some late-night grocery shopping. As we stood in line to pay, an Asian lady in front of us began to speak to the cashier.
"You look like sawah," she exclaimed, with a smile on her face. The cashier didn't understand her, and neither did the manager, a balding (with thin, wispy hair), middle-aged, tall guy with glasses. I'm familiar with this manager. He's been my cashier several times before. He's a jolly old fella that never talks back to the customer. He was the one who played cashier for the aforementioned lady with the 10 jars of baby food and her coupons.
The cashier, a younger fellow with brownish, wavy hair and a furious set of brows extending from his neanderthal brow bones, wrinkled his forehead and asked his current customer, "Excuse me?"
"You look like sa wah!" She tried to express her words better, to no avail. But she said it with a bigger smile this time.
The manager tried to help out, "Do you mean he looks like a cyborg?"
"Nohhh," said the lady, "SAH-WARH." By this time, I was examining the caveman-of-a-cashier to see what the heck this lady was trying to say. Luckily, Star Wars is one of my favorite movies and I suddenly recognized that my cashier did, indeed, looked like "Star Wars!"
The cashier had wavy brown hair which was cut like Anakin Skywalker when he was a padawan. Add the neanderthal's intense (albeit older) set of eyes and voila! Although this lady's imagination is a bit of a stretch, she gets an A for effort of trying to converse with another person that speaks a different language. My mother would never dare. And now I see why:
After a few seconds of confusion, the cashier said to the lady, "Well, you have room to talk, I guess." Sarcastically, he told this well-meaning little lady that yeah, she's a minority and that if the tables were turned, he'd probably be in trouble since he's a white man. I don't think he meant that she was any better looking than he was, because she wasn't.
The manager muttered under his breath to the cashier, "Maybe it's a compliment?" Ah, the good ole manager. Always trying to make things right. But the cashier wouldn't let it go.
"She's in the wrong country..." he said, shaking his head.
Okay, what the hell was that supposed to mean? I'll leave it open for interpretations, but the last comment was unnecessary and, do I dare say RACIST!?
Look, NEANDERTHAL-GUY, as a human being, if I wanted to say you look like SHIT, I wouldn't say it in front of your goddamn face! The lady was CLEARLY trying to compliment you, even though I disagree with her that you "look like Star Wars." You didn't understand what she said so why did you twist it into a bad thing? AND IN FRONT OF YOUR MANAGER TOO! Los-er! read more