Christine Tjia

All of you out there, who are Cashiers or ever have been on in your life - You have my utmost RESPECT!!!

I hv always be irritated when the cashiers in supermarket made mistakes. Be it it's some teeny weeny ones like keying the wrong amount for my credit card transaction or bigger ones like not able to scan the products properly (as if it's the cashier's fault, eh?). The wait made me impatient and you can see me standing with one leg open and arms folded in front of my chest, lips twitched one side, left eyebrow up (I can only raised the left one, hehe!), glaring at the cashier - observing his/her every move in anger. That is me - before 27th June 2010, the day I was a cashier myself.

It really isn't an easy job. The pressure of the queue behind the customer you are serving is nerve racking. The customer's eyes following your every move - from scanning the product to getting the change or even pressing the credit card swipe machine is intensely distressing.

You can imagine my panic when I press the wrong amount after swiping the customer's visa card. Instead of keying $36, I keyed $0.36! With repeated apologies, I keyed another transaction of $35.64 (the difference). How silly is that!!

There are times that I had to run across the hall to get a similar product with the price tag since I couldn't find the bar code of some products (and also because of the limited work force on the day). And of course, how can I forget those nasty customers with out-of-the-world kinda remarks - holding a brief up in the air and asking herself,


"Is this really worth $3?" 


Oh cummon, are you for real !?! It's only freaking $3 for goodness sake!!!

Because it's a warehouse sale, the air is filled with dust. I could feel the creeping itch on my face, the dirt on my fingers and the particles through my nostrils are despicable. I was fine by the day but when it goes to the night, my calf is screaming with pain. I couldn't sleep because it wasn't aching (I can take aching) but it was so painful that it was driving me to the verge of tears. Thank God, there's an affordable massage promotion at a stone's throw away that can "chopped" my pain away!

I guess, I wasn't used to the long hours of standing. But that isn't all. The dust made me breathless and difficult in sleeping because whenever I tried to breathe (which is like - every few seconds), there's this wheezing sound and it irritates me to the core but yet, I couldn't stop it. Doctor said I felt the impacts later at night because of the difference in temperature, which didn't really convince me but then again, I know zilch in medical.

Oh well, in a nut shell, with a sigh of relief - I'm glad it's all over and to think of it, it wasn't so bad after all! Hey, I now know how to operate those swiping debit and credit cards machine and being a cashier myself made me think twice before glaring to another one in future!