Confessions of a Convenience Store Manager

"Excuse me, sir? How much is this?"

Anyone who has ever worked in retail has heard that... it's when a customer picks up a piece of merchandise that has a pre-printed price (from the manufacturer) prominently included on the package, and waits until the clerk is busy doing something else before asking that stupid question. (Yeah, I hear ya: "The only stupid question is the question not asked!") Believe me; as a former convenience store manager, I'm here to tell you there are LOTS of stupid questions!

Oh! Before I take you down this particular Memory Lane... this is the answer I gave once to that particular stupid question:

"Lady, if you need to ask, you obviously can't afford it."

Of course, I mumbled that under my breath before saying, with a forced smile by the way:

"Oh! I'm sorry... Frito-Lay must have used a bad ink that day when they printed the bag. Yes, I guess it is hard to see the big orange lettering inside a black burst graphic on top of a yellow background. Ah! Here it is... 99 cents!"

Ah, yes... the stupid things supposedly smart people do and say. I'm often curious to know how we as a civilization have digressed to such a point. Are people really that stupid? Or, have we all just gotten so used to other people doing a lot of the meaningless and simple things for us that we have forgotten that we even have common sense? Maybe, just maybe... we've just gotten lazy. Now that's sad... too lazy to think. As my "Pops" likes to say: "Damn good thing breathing is automatic or a lot of people would die!"

I'm sure there are lots of examples of this human condition. Just look around and within 30 seconds you'll probably see one, or two... or quite a bit more. I could go on for hours just recalling the examples I've seen... just in the past few months... but I reckon my fingers would cramp up on me after awhile. So... I'll restrict my, uh, "observations" to the convenience store industry of which I am more familiar.

Case Study #1: The 'no checks' policy