So there I was....and so were about 100 other people, all waiting helplessly on line for approximately three numbed-out cashiers. Then I remembered: this is how it ALWAYS is when I go to Safeway. It has about 30 checkstands, but Safeway deliberately keeps most of them closed and purposefully understaffs its stores. Instead, the burden is placed on the customers to waste the better part of their evenings while they wait on long lines like caged animals. Safeway is the anti-customer experience, a hellish glimpse of a day in the life of an apocalyptic future that I hope never materializes.
The experience is usually not complete unless, when you finally make it to the front of the line, your cashier is relieved from duty and replaced by another, who arrives -- slowly, begrudgingly -- with her own cash drawer and has to get set up by the manager, thus prolonging the agony even further. And Safeway trains their cashiers to make an effort to address you by name when they hand you the receipt, always mangling the pronunciation with great insincerity, and basically delivering the coup de grâce to yet another painful episode.
Last night I never made it to the cashier. I waited on a long line for 20 minutes, only to discover that at least 10 more people around the corner had formed a second branch of this line for the same cashier. This ensured at least another 20 minutes of waiting. Just then, a man walked by, muttering "Hell, I've been on line here so long that I thought I'd left the store already!"
That did it. I left my basket standing in the aisle and left the store. Sorry, Safeway...if you want my business, you have to treat me like a customer, not a prisoner.
