10 Items or Less

Years ago, in my late teens and early twenties, I worked at a supermarket. Wegman's, to be exact. Back then, it was considered a "high end" grocery store- "gourmet food" department and all.

I started as a cashier. I'm not sure if all grocery stores are like this (my experience as a customer would say 'no'), but the cashier's job was very competitive. We were timed for speed and monitored for accuracy daily. It was considered "prestigious" to be one of the "express lane" cashiers. This was when scanners first started appearing in stores, but not everything was scannable. As cashiers, we learned all the tricks of the trade to increase our speed: signing off the register between customers, entering coupon codes with two hands, eyeing up the items on the belt ahead of time so you had a plan of attack.

Our performance "ranking" was published. Ironically, those of us that were quickest also seemed to be "most popular". I remember always wanting to beat Chris and Michele- they were consistently #1 and #2. I was consistently #3. Then to my horror...I had three shortages within a short time. Not surprising- while I was able to increase speed, I was never that great at accuracy (sort of a metaphor for my life :).

I was pulled off the Front End team (how we referred to the cashiers). I was sent back to deli/bakery duty. Where there was even more drama than at the front of the store. And we had much more fun!

What made me think of all this? Back then I often thought that someone should write a sitcom about the goings-on at a grocery store. We were worse than a soap opera behind the scenes. I could fill a month's worth of blog posts with stories from my time there (don't worry, I won't). Let's just say that rule #1 was to not date more than one person from each department. (Kidding- I wasn't that bad!) Anyway, I heard on the radio tonight that a comedy called 10 Items or Less premieres tonight on TBS. Not sure I care enough to watch it- but it got me reminiscing.