(For a Simply Snickers prompt on “hope” and “happens”)
What’s in store for us at the store? Although this certainly may not be the case in every supermarket or mega-store, the following lines describe what happened to us during one of our recent local outings.
Buyers, best beware! Apparently, good manners have gone missing in the local marketplace.
Perhaps it’s time for some of us to take stock in our selves, instead of just the shelves. What happened to common courtesy? Maybe good manners have simply been carted off, like so many lost memories and mysteries of the past.
A False Start at the Supermart
(A Story in Song on a Store That's Gone Wrong)
Whatever happened to customer service?
I stopped at the store and, Heaven, preserve us!
A quick trip transformed me into an ill mood
With retailing rudeness and bad attitude.
As I walked in the door, a uniformed girl
Swerved a bevy of carts into me with a whirl.
"Hey! Watch where you're going!"
she snarled with a scowl,
Then uttered a long stream of verbage most foul.
I wanted to turn and stomp out of the store,
But I wondered:
would it be much better next door?
Above the door, words flashed in neon so bright:
"In our place, the customer is always right."
I gathered my items and crossed off my list;
Asked a stocker for help, and he held up a fist.
My patience unwinding, I raced with my cart
To the least lengthy checker,
who seemed so street smart.
With four-inch-long talons, she dialed her phone
And started to gab in a zone all her own.
Behind me, a baby decided to wail,
As the chatty cashier gnawed her long pinky nail.
Thus frustrated, glanced I at all of the rows,
Attempting to check out, or else come to blows.
Yet each of the registers offered no hope,
So how was a shopper intended to cope?
The guy in line seven had broken a jar,
And the one on eleven was simply bizarre.
But right in between them, cashier number ten
Was arguing prices with two older men.
At this point, I clung to my last final nerve,
For it surely was more than I'd come to deserve.
Then I heard a voice, though perhaps in my mind:
"Need an etiquette cleanup on aisle number nine."
Gee . . .
Next time, I think I'll go shopping online!
Related items:
Behind the Curtain: Fitting Room Etiquette
Courtesy Cleanup
Customer Courtesy
How to Make a Reusable Grocery Tote Bag
In the Market for Manners: Etiquette for Shoppers
Movie Manners
A Mug Shot
Public Etiquette Enemies
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“When I was a boy of 14,
