Cashier Biography
Checkout line at the grocery store
the cashier a lady of seventy or so
wearing a wig. On the job
somebody’s got to pay for
the four weddings in the family this year
oh my goodness what that costs
She can tell you. It’s
every workday at odds with the job
slap the counter when the register runs slow
hiss at bar-code-sticker-naked produce
and when the customer questions
bread under the cans of peas:
You repack it if you don’t like it
it’s not an OK answer but one day
she will say it and slap the counter
7/24/19
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
I worked a supermarket checkout on the night shift during my undergraduate years (I always had night shift jobs as a student) and I remember counting up how much I was making and focusing on what could buy with it (usually groceries or textbooks) as each hour ticked past. It made dealing with difficult customers that bit easier.
Yes, but what about pleasant customers who are dealing with difficult cashiers? This poem is derived from numerous encounters with a certain lady at the grocery store. I avoided her line, needless to say.
Yes! I have a cashier that I avoid even if her line is shorter. She’s so crotchety and miserable all the time.
Yes. I think in every store I go to often, I get to know the personalities after a while and then there is where the strategy comes in as to whose line to try for and whose to avoid!
I always pack my own groceries in my own bag. Much safer. Very few know how to pack correctly. (K)
I know. I do my own bags too, especially since the pandemic and I bring my own bags, they don’t always want to pack them, and I have gotten in the habit of doing it myself.
I fully relate to this one. There are hazardous moods and stresses on both sides of the counter ( or these days in the self serve corral where one man had to deal with me telling him to move farther from my loading counter — he couldn’t handle what I thought was a reasonable request :))
Yes. Why shopping is so stressful I do not know but there is all that maneuvering, even in normal times, and now, the added pandemic stresses.
It is easier when there are not many shoppers…I try to avoid obvious crowd potential but otherwise it is a matter of luck.