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Price
Check, Register Twelve
Marcy Dumond Being a cashier is hard work, and it’s boring, so Tammy was constantly inventing ways to amuse herself. She would ask for a price check when she really didn’t need to. She would just hold her thumb over the UPC code and pretend that the item wasn’t scanning. She would do this several times. “BEEP. BEEP,” the scanning device would say. “Price check on twelve,” she would holler into the intercom in a nasal voice. Price checks were usually good for at least five minutes. She also liked to feign problems with the checks and the credit cards. And giving out incorrect change was one of her hobbies. She did this very carefully so that her till would reconcile properly at the end of the day. She had a Robin Hood attitude about the change -- take from the rich, give from the poor. Sometimes the poor would come back and return the excess change. Sometimes it was hard to tell the rich from the poor. Now that fellow with all the gold jewelry -- was he rich, or was he poor with poor judgment and poor spending habits? She liked to “accidentally” forget to pack certain items in the bags so customers would have to make an extra trip back to the store to get their stuff, or forget about it. Sometimes when they did come back, they had a little hassle showing that they had left the stuff at the counter. Tammy also liked to slow down and have problems with the people with only one item but rush through the people with lots of items. She made it seem that in general she was a fast cashier and that the problem was the luckless person with the one item. She even spread the problems out so that she didn’t get a reputation for creating problems. Often Tammy would time the transactions. She would survey the line and plan her next half-hour or so. Price check, seven minutes. Normal checkout, four minutes. Another normal checkout, but a lot of groceries, eight minutes. She pegged number four in the line for a check refusing to be read in the check scanning gizmo and allotted seven minutes for that. Maybe by that time, number five in the line would bail out and go to aisle eight. Or possibly, Ricky, the manager, would open up another register. Tammy sometimes made it a game to play tricks on as many people as possible without calling attention to herself and causing another register to open. As far as Tammy knew, the customers would fare no better on another register. She never discussed it with any of the other cashiers, but she assumed that they were doing something to amuse themselves and pass the time and keep their sanity. Nobody ever accused Tammy of malfeasance. She had developed her maddening techniques over the course of her six years at the store and was a virtuoso after eight hours of steady practice each day. Still, all the problems Tammy wickedly created failed to amuse her or pass the time. The seconds just crept by as slowly as ever. As it got closer to the end of her shift each day, time seemed to almost stop. The day the store took away the free coffee, Tammy expected the customers to be a little edgy and less predictable. As she planned her usual carefully measured dose of aggravation for the customers, she cast her eye back over the line and noticed that number six was a fellow she called the Postman. The Postman was a retired postal worker who had a tremendous grin on his face at all times. He seemed sincere about it when he was working, but after he retired, his smile seemed a bit strained. Tammy saw him look at his watch. He was in a bit of a hurry. Normally Tammy would have at least considered singling him out just because he was in a bit of a hurry, but often her ordinary routine took care of the person in a hurry. A few price checks for the customers ahead of him and he would have suffered enough. She even might let him get by with a normal checkout, depending on how he behaved. She saw the Postman stray from the line in the direction of the former home of the free coffee. Maybe he wasn’t in such a hurry since he thought he had time for coffee, but now he was going to lose his place in line over nothing because the free coffee had been discontinued. There was a little sign on the coffee counter saying: “No more courtesy coffee due to budget cuts.” Tammy had just called for a price check when the Postman began to let out a moan. “Oh my goodness, I’ve finally pushed one over the edge,” Tammy thought to herself, but in a split second she decided that it was the lack of coffee and probably some other stuff in the Postman’s life and that it wasn’t her fault. Meanwhile, the Postman’s moan got louder and louder and became a roar. Megan Richardson came out from behind the Customer Service counter and said, “Mr. Murry, what’s wrong?” Megan knew his name because he wrote checks at the store. Tammy tried not to remember names. Mr. Murry continued to roar, and he pulled a pistol out of his pocket with a shaky hand. Megan’s mouth was open and she didn’t close it. Mr. Murry stopped roaring and stood still except for the shaking gun. Tammy ducked down in her little station at the cash register, and there was a rustle of customers dropping to the floor. The store was silent except for the Muzak. Tammy prayed for forgiveness for all of her wickedness and promised never to resort to such tactics again if she survived. She promised to get another job and move on with her life and do something constructive for the world. Tammy turned her head slightly and realized that she could see what was going on. The reflection of a TV monitor at the entrance of the store appeared in the glass of a little two way mirror near the floor of her checkout area. In the reflection, Tammy saw Deputy Anthan appear behind Mr. Murry and gently take the gun. The deputy put the gun on the little counter formerly occupied by the free coffee. Then he grabbed Mr. Murry in an elaborate hold around the neck, while pinning his arms behind him. Mr. Murry and Megan still did not move. Someone turned the Muzak off, and there was silence for a moment, then a wail of sirens. Tammy poked her head up and saw a swarm of police vehicles pull up in the parking lot. In a few minutes, Mr. Murry was loaded into a police vehicle or an ambulance, Tammy could not tell which. Some of the customers left. There was a little powwow with the managers, and they decided to leave the store open and headed back into their offices on the mysterious second level of the store to discuss whether they should reconsider the coffee policy. Within thirty minutes, Tammy was ringing up the remaining customers. On the third customer’s groceries, the scanning device said “BEEP. BEEP.” Tammy tried again, and then hollered into the intercom,”Price check, register twelve. |
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