gordonzola | Family of trouble

I knew it was a family of trouble but I really needed to go on break. It’s not that I didn’t think my co-worker couldn’t handle it, it’s just that it’s nice to have two people around with the crazies. I don’t even know what set off my internal retailer alarm, but there was something. I think it was the amount of space they were taking up for three people and the fact they were shouting back and forth at each other. Still when I left they hadn’t actually done anything wrong that I knew of.

It was two adults and an early-teen child. The man was using one of our sit down carts (they’re called mart carts). They seemed to be moving on so I told my co-worker I’d be back in a couple of minutes. She was post-frazzled when I returned. Evidently they weren’t leaving, they were settling in. They kept grabbing cheese samples with their hands even after my co-worker told them not to. She actually had to remove the plate they were so actively not listening.

But then dad got out of his mart cart and put his daughter in the driver’s seat. He was teaching her how to drive it in front of the cheese cooler, the most narrow aisle in the store. The cart jerked back and forth nearly hitting other customers because this was Saturday afternoon, the busiest part of the busiest day of the week. My co-worker had to come out of the cheese area and lay down the law, "You can’t do that here! Stop!"

Finally they moved along. A few minutes later the Front End Coordinator came over. The FEC, despite being a wonderful launching pad for jokes about feces, is the person who, among many other things, deals with problems that come up in the store on any given day. They give shoplifters the boot, talk down extra irate people, call the ambulance or cops when needed, etc. Anyways, she asks us if we saw the family of trouble. It seems dad was wearing something loose-fitting enough that his business kept popping out and the customers were complaining.

She found them and pulled the wife aside, describing the problem. She was unfazed and unembarrassed, simply promising to "take care of it." And she did.

Meanwhile we were brainstorming all sorts of ways we could have handled the situation worse. We could have gone the more hippie food co-op route and said something like, "While tragically society tells us that our bodies are shameful and need to be hidden away, we must ask that your penis and scrotum remain inside your clothing. If you need pants, please see a male worker. Someday perhaps we can all enjoy body freedom and we are working for that day."

We have been working on it as a store, but historically there have been incredibly passive aggressive pages made over the intercom. You know, instead of going up to the person gorging on some expensive bulk food , making an announcement that eating in the store is prohibited. Like I said, we don’t do that anymore, but it is in our collective memory.

I pictured a combination of that passive aggressive page combined with the daily "lost cart" page. The one that asks customer to check and make sure that they actually are pushing the cart with their groceries in it and not someone else’s. You’d be surprised how many people lose their carts.

"Attention customers just a friendly reminder. Uncovered genitals are against store policy. Please take a moment, look down and check your genitals. Are they covered? If not, please take corrective action. Thank you, just a friendly reminder."

Another co-worker with a flair for pithy phrases said it best with her version though. It was pretty much the same except started with the phrase, "Customers, are you feeling a personal breeze?…"