IS IT DISCRIMINATION OR JUST CHILDLIKE IMPISHNESS?
YOU DECIDE.
It's hard to believe in this day and age there could be an international grocery chain, like Safeway Food Stores who brazenly makes fun of paying customers while on the sales floor and in front of other customers and employees, but in fact that does happen! If you have disabilities, are older, overweight, underweight, bald, have birth defects, the staff doesn't like your ears, or you're suspected of being gay, (what in the world does that have to do with what variety of Pop Tarts I'm buying?), you may find yourself to be the butt of very offensive jokes and insults by the grocery manager at store #1553 in Columbia Maryland.
The "mo" of Safeways managers is even kind of gutless. The way the grocery manager communicates his attitudes, and I have to suppose by extension Safeways upper managements attitude, is NOT to address me directly. Instead his chosen method is to hover around the general area I'm shopping in and at least pretend to be talking to co-workers or other customers, when I hear something like this - chatter chatter chatter GAY! chatter chatter - with the provocative term being shouted out at a higher volume than the rest of his conversation. On the very same shopping trip, and in the same manner, I later hear - chatter chatter LOOK AT THOSE BIG EARS. IF I HAD EARS LIKE THAT I'D.......voice trails off as manager walks across the store, hiding behind his managerial position for cover and Safeway executives provide that cover. I think the manager personally wants to make it more like, chatter, chatter, chatter, FAG!, chatter, chatter, but he must be lacking the chutzpah or maybe he was absent the day his Safeway trainers taught their employees that particular customer greeting. Perhaps Safeway should start administering doses of Viagra to managers so they can develop a stiffer backbone, or better yet, just educate your employees in how to keep their secret seething hostilities and bigotries to themselves. Teach them what it means to be "professional." But then again maybe the Safeway executives don't know either!
Another one of managements methods is to show up in an aisle I'm shopping in and pretend, there's a lot of pretending going on in Safeway, to be facing off the shelves very close to me and I can see in my peripheral vision this guy looking me over, I suppose to find something to joke about. This guy doesn't know I've done grocery before and I know very well when an employee is stalling or trying to milk the clock by pretending, there they go again, to be facing off shelves that were already faced off before they arrived.
Pay attention shoppers.
This is what we're paying for when we spend our money at Safeway.
Don't their employees have any real work to do? When I did grocery there was no time for this BS. Maybe if they lowered some managers salaries, they could lower some of their selling prices as well.
In one instance the grocery manager, while I'm shopping in the soda aisle, solicits the participation from one of Safeways vendors to join with him in the finger pointing and derisive commentary and the vendor complied, saying "Yeah. I used to know somebody like that!"
Another example of how these biases are displayed is demonstrated by my experience at Safeway just today. I was the last person in the express line with one package of Ramen Noodles when the dude, who I think is the front end manager because he's always working the front end, pushes another customer and her cart in front of me and directing the cashier to take one more large order first! She had half a basket or more and was put in front of me who had only one item! Their hidden, but not very, hatred of people who may be different than they are, VIVE LA DIFFERENCE, will always come through eventually. My experience with people who have hate for one group, if given enough time and space, will eventually display their hate for other groups. So nobody is immune to hate.
If the store management doesn't have anymore personal class or professional training than this, I'd suggest an investigation into the employment practices of Safeway. After all, if a manager holds these biases and freely dumps his ignorant comments on long time customers, isn't it likely that his ignorance and prejudices color his decisions on who to hire and fire? I think that's very likely.
I'd like to know who the Safeway executive is who authorized their managers to publicly taunt their money spending customers, because if it were up to me, that individual would be applying for unemployment today.
Is it discrimination or just childlike impishness?
It's probably a little of both. It's most likely discrimination brought about by ignorance, childlike impishness and unacceptably low employee standards and poor training. There's no place for these attitudes in any business, especially a major grocery store chain like Safeway. I'll spend my money elsewhere. read more
