He Stood Silently Waiting for an Attendant to Reset the Frozen Register—Then a Hostile Customer Behind Him Accused Him of “Holding Up the Entire Line”
Pexels/Reddit
Self-checkout machines have a way of exposing exactly how little patience everyday shoppers actually have.
One man was simply trying to buy a birthday card when the machine glitched and flashed a request for staff assistance, a common enough issue that several other registers were dealing with the same thing.
While he waited his turn for the single available employee, a woman joined the line behind him, saw he only had one item, and immediately assumed he was the one holding things up.
Within a minute, she started glaring and stomping her foot, seemingly ignoring the illuminated “help needed” light clearly signaling the actual problem.
What should’ve been a two-minute checkout turned into an oddly tense standoff over something completely out of his control.
Read on for the full story.
Weird grocery store experience
I’m not 100% sure what to think about this. But I was buying a card for my friend’s birthday at a self checkout.
However, the machine glitched out on me and said I needed assistance from the staff.
The shopper tried to make the most of it.
So, I pressed the button and waited. It was happening to others, so the one staff member was busy trying to solve the other machines.
No problem.
But then things got ugly.
The issue occurred when a lady came in line and saw I only had one item. When a minute passed, she began glaring at me and stomping her foot like she was waiting for me to buy the card and let her use the self checkout.
I looked at the “help needed” light that was on to indicate that I was waiting for staff, just in case she didn’t see it.
The other lady seemed to have zero awareness.
But she kept getting more impatient.
She just stared at me with this angry look on her face the whole time before the staff got to me and used their card to bypass whatever the machine was doing.
She even took her distaste one step further.
Once I left, the lady stormed to the machine and was complaining about how long I was standing there.
I don’t know, but it was a really strange situation.
Just use a different machine, lady.
What did Reddit have to say?
Someone who works in a grocery store chimes in.
This whole thing was just plain rude.
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This user wishes the lady a very unpleasant checkout experience.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who calls on dozens of whirlygigs to combat the neighbor’s complaints about the fence.
This lady clearly didn’t understand what the problem was.
Glaring at someone for a machine malfunction is a strange way to handle frustration, especially when the actual explanation was lit up right in front of her the whole time.
He didn’t do anything wrong, he followed the process exactly as intended, waited patiently, and let staff handle a glitch that wasn’t his fault to begin with.
Complaining loudly after he’d already left just proves she needed someone to blame.
Patience is a virtue, dear customer.
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