My personal brand is determined by a lot of things but one of the important ones is how I deal with difficult or stressful situations. Even amongst the chaos of recent news stories, my personal brand is still active. It doesn’t matter if I am quarantining, social distancing, working, or even just searching for toilet paper. In this country we have a law against yelling “FIRE” in a crowded building despite having free speech. This is because people would surely be hurt at the least, if everyone panics. Even in 2020 we are still accountable to these rules.
Coronavirus is serious, but panic just adds to the number of those that will get hurt. Sometimes it’s a hurt that is physical like trampling, but it’s not just your body that can be trampled. There is also the emotional pain of having people take their anger out on you, or the cold shoulder toward anyone with allergies.
My side of the register sees tales of the former example of pain, despite how mundane, which is still hard to take. Cashiers still working now are asked “Where is the toilet paper?” Which is fine, nothing wrong with a question but, some of the follow up questions get a bit prejudicial. These can include but are not limited to “Don’t you people stock?”,” When is your next truck?” and, my personal favorite, ”Why don’t you save some for the people who come later in the day?”. Let me drop a little knowledge from the other side of a register.
I SCAN things and tell you how much you owe. I’m not in charge of inventory, distribution, limits, or even stocking the shelves. I feel it bears repeating; I SCAN things. If you want to ask manager level questions go find one. Trust me, you’ll have better luck at it than I would. However, to answer the first question mentioned, you see this thing you are doing, coming to the store and looking for toilet paper? Yeah someone had that idea already.
Shocking, I know, a brain larger than your own. Look I’ll let you in on a big secret, you know why stores are closing early? TO STOCK! Which means, in the morning the shelves are about as full as they are going to be. Rant aside, that’s your best bet for the somehow corona defeating toilet paper.
The other tale from my side of the register is not even a jab to employees, as we are sadly used to all kinds of emotional and psychological abuse. No, this was towards a fellow shopper. With the schedule I’ve had I couldn’t put a date on the incident, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I was approaching a woman seemingly in the danger range of the virus. She was decked out for doomsday, mask, gloves, hand sanitizer around the neck.
I was headed over to find out why she was blocking the adjacent machine, when I saw the “please help” light go off. Two birds? One stone? Yes, I believe I will. Being that social distancing wasn’t popular yet, it felt that much colder.
The encounter with her was pretty normal, distancing from me like I was made of fire, barking orders at me like the dog I apparently look like and, then at the end we heard a cough. The woman ducks behind me like I’m a human shield and we both got the good news that it’s not the virus. Then we got the not so good news that she had skin cancer. “I don’t want that either! You can stay right there”.
I tried my best after an 8-hour shift to explain that cancer doesn’t work that way. To no avail, she paid for her groceries and ran for the hills. I apologized to the poor ostracized woman; we are all people. We all have lives, love and feelings, no matter how bad things get we have to remember our fellow humans on the next self-checkout, on the next aisle over, and on the other side of the register. My personal brand is still active, I’m moving forward . . . Achieving Excellence!!!
By A’donte Sharpe
