Grocery Store Rant

Dear Grocery Store Owner,

Your grocery store is the only store in town that is open 24/7. I get off work at midnight and it is around this time when I do my grocery shopping. About three months ago you hired a new cashier for this night time shift. He is pleasant enough (although a bit confused over doing things like refunds and price checks) but I have discovered to my dismay that he has a lot of friends that have chosen to hang out at the store around this time and there is no way to put it except they are unsavory, creepy and crude. Surely you don't encourage loitering at the store. I wish you would make some visits to your store from midnight to 1 am so you could see what I have to put up with.



I am tired of going to the store and finding the same meth-head street urchins and assorted drunk punks congregating near the door to the store and also hanging out with the cashier inside. On a couple occasions in the last few weeks when I have driven up to the store's parking lot and seen this same motley crew hanging out at the front of the store, I have just driven on past and gone on home. You lost a couple sales those nights. Judging from the recent conversations with some of my female night shift co-workers, you have lost some sales from them too for the exact same reason.



I have never considered myself a shit stirrer but this situation is making me quite pissy. I will give you some examples of some recent late night shopping visits to your store. I pulled up to park in front of the store. There standing by the pop machines near the entrance I saw one of the "regular" creeps. He was obviously wasted out of his mind drunk or high on whatever. As I turned off my car's ignition, he stumbled and walked erratically over toward my car! I froze and wondered what he was going to do. He nearly fell over a few times and then kept walking to my car and then fell over again and fell on top of my car hood. He stood back up and looked at me and mumbled "sorry" to me and then started to walk toward my car door. Then he turned and started walking away thank God! I was thinking to myself that if he planned on getting in a car and driving off, I would call the cops to alert them that a drunk was on the road but he was just a walking drunk that night.



A few nights later I went to the store again after work. I didn't see anyone standing outside and was a bit relieved and thought maybe they all decided to stay home that night. I walked inside the store to find several of these losers inside the store. The young cashier ran over to me and asked me if I was going to be long in the store because he was dying for a cigarette. If this kid isn't at the cash register, he is always outside with the riff-raff smoking. I made my purchases and proceeded to the cash register. Nobody was there. I waited. I waited some more. Finally, I left my stuff on the counter and walked over to look out the front door. There one of his zombie friends saw me and told his cashier friend. The cashier flicked his cigarette away and came in to take care of me. I shouldn't have to go looking for the cashier after several minute's wait.



Another night as I was leaving the store, as I walked past the pop machines to my car, about eight of these same punks were standing there smoking and talking very loudly. I heard the guy (who had previously fallen drunk against my car hood) say something about how he "fucked her ass and fucked her hard". He was saying this very loudly and all of his stupid friends were cheering him on. Niiiice. Ugh.



You know they say that the new Super Wal-Mart that is being built on the opposite side of town will be finished in about four months. They will have groceries there too. I can't wait.

Update: I've had this post in draft since July 4th. A few days later I called the store manager to complain. I told him pretty much everything above except I said "f'ed" instead of saying the exact words that guy used. He was very nice and apologized and said he was glad I let him know about it. I told him I didn't want the "kid" to lose his job and if he would just stop the loitering, the shopping atmosphere would be better.
I suggested that he go there at that late hour for himself. He promised that he was going to "clean things up" and if it kept happening to let him know.

One of my co-workers commented the other night, "You know how you said you would like to complain to the store manager?" "Well, I think someone must have beat you to it...because I went there the last few nights and the only one in the store was the cashier." She added that a new "no loitering" sign was up on the outside of the building. I confessed to her that I had talked to the manager.

A couple nights ago while I was at the switchboard at work, one of our lab techs called asking for the non-emergency number for the police. She was at this same store and a group of guys threw a water balloon at her and it hit her in the face. She said they laughed and she told them she was calling the cops. They ran off but she was still going to call the police. So, I don't know what to think now.

Of course I couldn't say this to the store manager, but I know the names of a lot of those punks because they are "regulars" to the emergency room. I see their names in the newspaper for assorted "crimes" like fighting, theft, truancy, driving drunk. I would not be surprised if the cigarettes and junk food they have while hanging out at the store are due to "five-finger discounts" they help themselves to while the cashier looks the other way. I don't know that for a fact of course. I'm just sayin'.


That's my rant for the week.