In the fast food place this evening...

[djean111]

86. My grandson works in the Deli department of a large and really nice grocery store.

First job, saving for college because he does not want any student debt.

He has been called retarded, deaf, insulted, an asshole because he would not box up fried chicken breasts and charge for wings, one woman lunged over the counter and tried to slap him because her order of wings would take another 10 minutes. She was escorted out.

Everything that happens in the Deli is recorded, because there really are some asshole lying customers who are always trying to get stuff for free.. People change their mind about what they ordered and lie about it. People get their order, then go to the other side of the store and complain to customer service, because they will then get their food for free. Management reviews the recordings, and no one has ever been reprimanded, customers just lie. Management can also observe what is going on from an upstairs window; it is sort of like working in a casino .

This is in an upper middle class neighborhood. He said a particularly rude crowd - the people who stop in after church on Sunday. Act as if the deli workers are not quite human, at times. The rudeness cuts across class and race. But sometimes he meets some really nice people, too.

He is supposed to smile through it all for $9 an hour, 17-28 hours a week. And he does, but he told me he never thought that some people would just be so rude and demeaning to other human beings. He is 19, and this is quite an education for him, dealing with the public for the first time.
Sometimes it gets to the workers. He will come out of the store at the end of a shift with slumped shoulders, not because he was working in a hot greasy dangerous kitchen for six hours, but because some people just are nasty and it is depressing.
The bright spot - anyone who lasts a year in the Deli - and most of the other employees will not work there, it is too stressful - has quite a good item on their resume.