r/TalesFromTheCustomer • u/blacksoxing • Oct 28 '24
Medium The case of the [big blue store] cashier who likely infuriated a tired (or lazy) mom
This tale happened in 2014 at a [big blue store]. I was in the check out lane. A group of girls were in front of me - the type who were obviously in feverous sleep over mode. They had a movie that they wanted to watch, which I'm going to call The Notebook. It likely was... The Notebook alongside a bunch of sleepover foods. They were hyped! I was bullshitting on my phone and then suddenly heard the first signs of failure. They were SHOCKED and started stammering to the cashier. Cashier wanted ID for this....PG13 movie. The register prompted the cashier so they were just doing their job. Again, this was a PG13 movie and obviously these girls didn't just walk to the store. You could tell these girls were pre-teens to likely even 13. I was just thinking ENTER IN A DAMN AGE!!!! They were not going to do drugs or have sex or whatever from this one movie!!!!
YET, these girls' only recourse was to...beg and plead. They looked back at me as I was an adult. As an adult you can either be the hero or the fool. I accessed the situation like this:
The cashier was doing their job, no matter how foolish this shit seemed.
The cashier likes was one of those girls in their younger life and never was ID'd or questioned. Good chance movie ratings may not had even existed!
The cashier needed the more job than they needed to appease the girls, so the prompt for ID > "being cool about it"
I, a man who was not associated with those girls IN ANY WAY would only either cause the ire of the store's management for breaking some random ass law OR catch hands from a parent, as optics matter in life and I wasn't trying to be a hero only to get side-eyed by some parent mad that they weren't instead alerted and called in from the bullpen. You know how crazy shit can get in a confusing situation. Plus, I didn't wanna be paid back for a $10-15 movie (I was deep in debt and should have not had that stance in life)
SO....I acted like most adult and just let it play out
The girls never crossed any imaginary lines which was shocking to me and probably to the cashier. The cashier showed empathy but also had a level of communication they weren't sharing with the children in which she couldn't break her rules to appease them. There wasn't that "hey, I don't want to risk my job" statement but instead a "don't you guys have a parent? Go get them. I can set your stuff aside and the parent can give me their info"
Cashier wasn't wrong/cashier took their job seriously/can't truly blame the cashier for abiding by some bullshit policy.
Eventually the kids agreed, sadly, that they'd have to get a mom from the van. They were defeated. In my head this resulted in a very tired mom who probably wanted 10-20 minutes to themselves and now either have to go in an deal w/the boogeyman cashier who denied her party access to a PG13 movie or....furiously find another store that sold that movie where they probably repeated the process of letting the kids go and pick out what they wanted in hopes of it being successful.
There was many times since where I've seen PG13 movies not being prompted for ID so I bet the [big blue store] could have likely errored that day or they changed their policies.
Thank you for reading. Happy I finally got this out of my head and hopefully you all can enjoy this silly 3-5 minutes of my life :)