jajalala

My beloved roommate and I go shopping every Sunday morning usually, and there's a particular cashier that's always on shift when we check out, and he seems to delight in messing with us (though I imagine he must mess with other customers too?? Is this how he normally is, or do my roommate and I look like clowns???)

Sometimes he pulls a "joke" where we get all our stuff on the conveyor belt, and before he scans us he's like "Actually I need to go on break now, sorry," and then he turns off his light. And like!!!!! I am very bad at telling when people are joking (and I used to work as a cashier at a grocery store, so I am quite lenient towards cashiers. You need a break but forgot to put your sign up before someone put their groceries on the conveyer belt? No problem, it happens!) so I'm just like "Oh damn, sucks for us but have a good break!!" Then as we're being sincere about it he laughs and is like "Haha no it's just a joke" and turns the light back on. Maybe after the second time we should have started identifying this pattern, but at the same time??? Why is he pulling this joke on customers?? Sometimes it goes on for a whole minute or so?? And I would hate for the very rare case that it's ACTUALLY his break for us to be like "Haha no skip your break and check us out instead." My roommate and I don't really laugh at the joke, we more are just generally confused by the behavior, so it's not like we're encouraging it???

Anyways that, in combination with some bad masking habits he has (always has the mask under his nose) makes my roommate and I literally try to avoid his line at the registers when we can. Our past few grocery trips have been uneventful, but then today he was open with NO line... and we couldn't pass up a perfectly free register, so we took a gamble. Surely we can get through an uneventful customer-employee interaction, right?

Nope! I bagged the groceries while my roommate paid, and the cashier seemed a little confused by it... then at the end of the transaction, he leaned forward to my roommate and was like "How old are you?" And when my roommate said "twenty-three" he was like "Wow! I thought you were more like seventeen!"

So we left the grocery store and were like "?????????????????" We're still not sure why he asked that! Again, I used to be a cashier, and I cannot fathom the idea of asking a customer their age??? Just out of nowhere??? (Especially since neither of us were buying alcohol or anything!) Like it's a slightly personal question and unnecessary!!! And then making comments on their age??? What??? Anyways, we discussed for awhile and now we're wondering if this dude thought I was my roommate's mom?? I think generally I pay and my roommate bags, so maybe the cashier got used to that and made assumptions?? And I'm on the taller side and wear a sort-of older women's coat and a "mom" bag... But I always ask my roommate for the phone number for the rewards program (I don't have an account with the store), so like???

I know I'm writing this quite aggressively, but I'm mostly confused and confuddled! This man is the most mundane bane of my existence right now! Which ahaha is a very tame bane to have, but occupies my mind (and my poor roommate... being told "you look seventeen!" did inflict some psychological damage not gonna lie).

Anyways prayers that next week my roommate and I are able to get our groceries without incident.