I'm an 18 year old male and this is my first job, working as a cashier and I've been doing it for 6 months or so now. Besides my manager being a fucking prick, i'm feeling really worn down by the interactions I have with customers at the moment.
It feels like people view me as subhuman, i'm not actually a person who has a life, i'm just a tool to help buy your shopping. People throw their bags at me, or just drop coins on the conveyor belt and expect me to count it up for them. They act like its my fault when something scans in at the wrong price, and seem to have no empathy for mistakes I make. This is definitely not the whole demographic of customers I deal with, there are lots of normal and really sweet people I deal with, but the stuff im talking about is really common.
I just got home from my 6 hour shift, and with about 30 minutes to go (my brain is quite frazzled at this point by the repetition and brainlessness), a man comes up, seems nice enough, doesn't respond to “how are you” but that's relatively normal. I start scanning his items, and have to manually input the price of some meat he bought (meat hasn't scanned in months due to back end incompetence), and continue to scan his shopping until im done. I tell him the price and set up the machine for him. Mind you, he can see the prices of everything im scanning in on the outer screen. As soon as he pays for it he says “take a look at the reciept”, and i'm like oh okay, i ask “whats wrong” and he says “look”. Both times in a really condescending voice. “I notice i've scanned the meat at $3.15 instead of $31.50. I say “ohh i see it sorry about that, thanks for catching it for me”, and he says “go fix it” in a really fucking condescending voice. So i fix it and charge him the rest.
He knew I messed up the price of the meat before he scanned his card. He went out of his way to make me feel humilated and stupid by letting me make the mistake and not telling me. He further was an asshole by telling me to read the reciept, instead of letting me know what i did. I'm really exhausted from being treated like this every day.