“I work at a grocery store in the prepared foods department, where I portion out entrées and sides from a display case, weigh, package, and serve them. Tonight, for whatever reason, I had tons of customers order things from me when I was trying to close. This is nothing new to me, though it is super irritating as I like being on schedule, and this set me pretty far behind. Therefore, my mood wasn’t the best. While I was still closing, an older couple came up to our prepackaged case (right next to mine), where they picked up one of the already made meals. The woman asks, ‘Excuse me, can you heat this meal up for us?’
I told her, ‘No, I’m sorry, and even if I could, all of our equipment is turned off for the night. There are some customer accessible microwaves in the café that you can use, if you’d like.’
This is our standard reply, I get this question all the time. The woman shakes her head and turns around to leave, and her husband looks at me and says, ‘That’s what your job is, isn’t it? Your job is to make people’s lives more difficult!’ he snarls.
I simply apologized and went back to closing, but not before getting a glance of the man glowering at me. So I apologize to this man for having a precooked and packaged meal all ready for you, and a microwave in the same building for you to heat it up in one minute. I am so, so sorry. It really makes me sad that some people can be so spoiled.”
