In one of my more ill-advised monetary pursuits, I took on a job at a local grocery store this summer. I figured that it would be a fun, mentally engaging job full of chances to gain experience and money to be made.

For those of you keeping score at home, this was one of the very few times in my life am I wholly and utterly wrong in every regard. If it wasn't cranky old people, it was customers who quite literally drooled on the conveyor belt. If it wasn't uptight managers and supervisors, it was mind-rending monotony. Indeed, it was always something.

However, I did note that working at a grocery store, one is likely to run across their fair share of...shall we say, interesting people and events. These are but a few of those stories.

(Note: There is a slight chance some of these stories might contain some offensive language or material. Now, I'm just reporting it, I'm not writing it. It's nothing you haven't heard on any primetime NBC sitcom, but I figured I may as well forewarn you.)

Along with selling groceries, our store rents movies and games. All rentals are handled through the service desk, a big counter in the same part of the store as the normal registers. It should also be noted that there is a gigantic sign above said desk reading "Service Desk". You can only rent materials through the desk and not through any of the other registers, a fact lost on the attractive young girl in my line. She was behind another customer, and was holding about four empty VHS cases in her hands. I figured that she would realize that I couldn't help her, and would go to the service desk.

Naturally, I was wrong, and she walked up to me expectantly. I glanced downward at my register, wondering if there was possibly any way I could be holding the movies she wanted to rent down there (Hint: There wasn't). A male companion, who had been off doing something else, noted to her that "You have to take them to the service desk, not here."

She looked at him and looked at me, and said in a voice mildly tinged with frustration, "Oh, what's the difference?"

I couldn't stop myself. Pointing to the aforementioned service desk, I said "They keep the movies over there."

A customer came through my line carrying tons of assorted mouse traps, everything from poison to spring traps to glue traps.

"I'm gonna get that little son of a bitch, I'll get that bastard..."

I rang him up, and said "Have a good day, sir."

"I'll show him..."

I don't think he heard a word I said.

I am of the mind that most people are intelligent, rational individuals. All I want to know is what happens to that when they go grocery shopping.

We had an advertised special for various types of Minute Maid products, as well as the various flavors of Nestea Cool iced tea. A customer asked me if we had any Strawberry Minute Maid, as she didn't see any in the cooler. I informed her that if there wasn't any there, we more than likely didn't have any. I should have known that logic would have no place in this conversation.

"Well, what about that Nestea? Is that covered by the sale?"

I looked at the Nestea she pointed out, very obviously not of the Cool variety. I noted that there was a blatantly obvious sign listing the varieties of beverage that were covered by the sale. Normal Nestea was not covered. Biting back what I really wanted to say, I activated my standard social interaction mechanisms and stammered out the following.

"Well, it doesn't look like it's on sale, because, uh, all of the sale varieties are listed on the sign here."

This, by all rights, should have satiated her. If you guessed that it didn't, you are really getting the hang of the grocery business. "Well," she said after some thought, "could you substitute it?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Are you sure you don't have any strawberry in the back?"

"If we don't have it up here, we don't have it in stock, sorry." I don't remember if she gave up the ghost or I just took my chance to leave her staring at the beverage cooler, but the saga was far from over. Later, she came through my line, where my manager was standing by. Relentlessly cheerful, she asked him if we had any of the type of Minute Maid they were looking for earlier. He told her the same thing. I doubt she believed him, either. So ma'am, if you're reading this, we are baldfaced liars and we had a magical strawberry Minute Maid fountain that never dries up or stops flowing in the back, and as soon as you were gone we had a big party for everyone in the store, the strawberry Minute Maid flowing freely as we danced and sang well into the wee hours of the morn. Sorry to string you along like that.

Occasionally, things will happen that are just so bizarre there is simply no way to react.

Take, for example, the case of the corpuscular young woman who brought two boxes of granola bars to my line. She very loudly and specifically informed me that one box was for her ex-boyfriend, and the other was for her. Without stopping for breath, she added "I'm sorry, that was probably more than you wanted to know." Finally, a customer who at least sort of understands where I'm coming from.

The situation got weirder when her male companion purchased a tube of personal lubricant and nothing else. Now, I was really confused, and to be frank, a little horrified. Despite every gut instinct I had to the contrary, I had to figure this out. What could they be using lubricant and granola bars? Were they planning to do something to her ex-boyfriend? Actually, there were other scenarios I thought of, but they all kind of made me ill. Later on, I saw the same woman jumping up and down and throwing a fit at the crane game in the store foyer. I guess she lost.

It's probably for the best, I think her night would have been gruesome enough without throwing any stuffed toys into the mix.

Then there was the young man who came up to me on a Sunday night carrying, among other things, mouthwash, flowers, and some sort of wine. He had one very simple question for me.

"Where are your condoms?"

He must have been going to a church social.

One day, a newer cashier (who will be referred to as Scott) and I were stationed next to each other. Scott had started a few days after me, and I had been helping him out - I had already had some prior cashier experience, and I learned this new job pretty quickly. As such, I answered all his questions I could. Customers, on the whole, seemed to be understanding and patient with this arrangement.

Except for one.

An elderly gentleman came through my line with a cartful of groceries. As was my duty, I started ringing him up. He noted to me that he had eaten one Milky Way bar out of a package of about four or five due to a blood sugar problem. As my younger brother is hypoglycemic, I understood his plight and rang up the package. Everything went smoothly until I attempted to ring up another product - potato chips, I believe. The product hadn't been entered into the scan registry, and I had to put it in by hand.

"What's the matter, don't you know the price? You should take a walk around the store and get to know what everything costs."

Right, so I'll just memorize thousands upon thousands of different prices for the multitude of varying products we carry in the store, because I certainly don't have anything better to do with my time. Ignoring him, I continued along, and Scott asked me a question about how to ring something up properly. I stepped across the lane and showed him how, which prompted the old man to ask me a question.

"Wait, are both of you new?"

I informed him that, yes sir, we are both new.

"Well, that's just great. Two new people who don't know what anything costs."

By this point I was starting to get annoyed, but one of the problems with working for someone else is that you have to be nice to the customers, or they don't make as much money and you get fired. So I basically took his verbal assault in stride, nodding and saying "Uh huh yeah you bet sure." Meanwhile, I was secretly hoping his stupid tractor hat would catch on fire. He was far from done, however.

"I swear, it's like I spend half my life in this store, just trying to get out. And you people don't know what anything costs."

He may have said more, I don't know, because by this point I had stopped listening to him entirely. Then I tried ringing up some coleslaw. It didn't register with the scanner, either. As I tried to remedy the situation and put the price in manually, he decided that he was going to finish off his performance as Mr. Righteous Customer the only way that would fit.

"You know what? That's fine. I don't want it. I've had enough of this, it's like I'm trapped in here, and you can just keep it." With that, he walked out the door, leaving me dumbstruck and with scads of groceries left unpaid for - including the package of candy bars that he had eaten from.

So yeah, basically, while he was busy playing the part of a 60 Minutes-informed, "By God I'm Always Right" consumer, he, er...shoplifted.

I really don't like that guy.

Apparently, after this article was originally posted, one Mr. Justin "Houn" Calhoun of Mega Man Network fame decided that I had it easy, and sent me a few of his own grocery store stories. As a special treat to you and me both (you, because it's something to read, me because I can update without doing any real work) I have decided to post those stories along with my own. You be the judge.

So, my second day working at the Crackmart (it shall henceforth and forever more be referred to as the Crackmart), I was on Swing Shift, 3pm to 12am. I was working with Rich, this really cool guy who gets a little pissed off some times. So, when this one Crackhead dropped the bottle of wine he was trying to steal, you can see where Rich would be a little irritated that he had to mop it up. I guess it was even more irritating that the guy grabbed another bottle while Rich was getting the mop, since Rich took off after him down the street. I did the 911 bit, and it was somewhat as follows:

Me: Hi, this is the Crackmart, we've just had a shoplifter.
911: Could you describe the individual, please?
Me: Black male, about 6'3", wearing a black coat and a big green cast on his arm. He took a bottle of wine, and the guy I work with just ran north up Crackmart Street chasing him... wait, no, now they're coming back this way...now he's pushing Rich...now Rich's nose is broken.

Welcome to the Crackmart, we hope you enjoy your employment here.

One of my favorite things to do while working at the Crackmart was play head games with shoplifters. Really, anyone with a little time and creativity can have a blast at the expense of the scum of society. One of my favorites was "Voice of God". Simply wait until you see a would-be thief pocketing a beer on the Security Camera, then get on the in-store intercom and say, "This is God. You know, that guy that created you. I'm PRETTY sure one of my Commandments was 'Thou Shalt Not Steal'. Care to test it?" Other fun variations included, "Attention, shoppers, but if you would direct your attention to the moron stealing beer in the back, be sure to point and laugh at this fool on his way out," or even, "Gee, you can't even steal properly, how fucked up is that?"

Another large aspect of the Crackmart, besides the constant attempts at thievery, was the nightclub scene. You know, 17-19 year olds dressing up in the trendiest outfits cash can buy, hitting some hot dance floor, and hoping to get laid. And it seems that the one thing that all Clubbers have in common is that you can't go to the club unless you smoke. A lot. So, naturally, you tend to sell alot of cigarettes, considering that they are about double-price once you get INSIDE the club (assuming you are cool enough to get inside - maybe buying the smokes at the Crackmart was to insure you wouldn't get stuck outside during a Nic Fit.) So, smokes are big business for the Crackmart. And the stupid bitch who orders the cigarettes has NO CLUE what people actually smoke. Now, being on the front lines all night, I can attest that Crackmart Shoppers are Camel Lights people. Even if it's not Camel Lights, they will GET Camel Lights because they are ALWAYS on sale. So, you'd think we'd have lots of Camel Lights in stock, right? No. Instead of 20 cartons of Camel Lights, which truthfully might not be enough, we get 5 cartons of Lights and 15 of Regulars. WTF? I thought the point was to sell things the customers would want to buy, not the shit no one wants...