A colorful, noisy atmosphere, full of wacky characters! People running and jumping around acting zany and saying the craziest things! It's the Circus!

No, wait... It's Safeway. So it's really not quite as fun. Any circus-folk in the audience can probably back me up on this: People's personality defects, no matter how amusing they may immediately seem, get old real quick. I've been picking on customers lately, so I thought I should turn the magnifying glass towards the other defective collective that make my days and nights so very, very miserable: My co-workers.

The english-as-a-second language co-worker: I can probably be the rudest about these ones, since even if they find this site, they'll never understand it. The store is just crawling with employees who can't string together simple sentences in what is, unless I'm terribly wrong, the official language of the country they live in. Yet they get up every morning and go to work in the service industry. Watching them interact with the customers can be funny, and I play a little game called "Count the Whats". If one of the EAASLCWs can make a customer say "What?" in response to the same sentence 5 times, they win. If the customer deciphers the hidden message before that, they win. There aren't any prizes, of course... you can't give these people nice things. One cashier in the store refuses to use the intercom because she's embarrassed about her inability to speak english. She'll ask other cashiers to page for her, or just shout at clerks across the store. I would love to understand the mindset of someone who believes loud mispronounced shouting accompanied by frantic waves and gestures is somehow less embarrassing than using an intercom. Many of the other EAASLCWs communicate with their fellow employees though a system of pointing and a faint grunting in what may be their native language. Typically, I understand exactly what they want, but it's not my favourite game to play. So I usually act confused and ignorant until they at least try to verbalize their needs using words I know. It may seem cruel, but how else will they learn?

The 16-year-old co-worker: These mortal manifestations of pure cosmic uselessness are the most common type of Safeway employee, and I'm sure you've come across them everywhere else as well. They don't really need money, because they're only kids. They have jobs because their parents suggested they should, and they're about as concerned with job-security as they are with trigonometry. They quickly discover every nook and cranny in which they can hide, and have pre-made excuses ready for when a supervisor points out that they've been missing for an hour. They arrive 5 minutes late and leave 5 minutes early, as a rule. They address customers as "dude" and "guy", even the women. They slouch against any surface lower than eye-level, with zero-regard for the lifetime of spinal trouble they're creating for themselves. And when the sun has set and the store has emptied out a bit, they build rocketships in the bakery. I've never actually seen the rocketships, but I know they're building them, and I understand they can be quite majestic.

The overly serious co-worker: These people are the most irritating of co-workers, because they lack even a basic sense of perspective. Safeway has guidelines and rules than govern the treatment of customers, personal appearance, store cleanliness, etc. The OSCW does not understand the difference between violating a guideline and capital murder. These are people who will follow a customer to the parking lot to apologize on behalf of another employee who didn't say goodbye in the Safeway-approved fashion. They believe that dirty floors are the root of retail failure. They act like wrong kind of shoes on an employee can lead to customer dissatisfaction and reduced quarterly earnings. It should be specified that the OSCW is not a manager. Managers have every right to be overly serious. But these people are just your regular wage-monkeys who paid too much attention to the company training propaganda and decided that it was their personal responsibility to keep the store and all their co-workers in tip-top shape. They can become frantic when a piece of tape that was holding up a sign is removed and leaves a residue of sticky stuff. Ironically, these are the employees who disturb the customers the most, because they won't leave them be and tend to come across as scripted and utterly insincere.

The mentally or physically handicapped co-worker: Before you start hating me for picking on the "less-fortunate", hear me out: In Canada, there are federal laws mandating the employment of the "alternately abled". Regardless of capability, training or intellectual capacity, Safeway pretty much has to hire every drooling misfit who walks through the door, just to meet quota. This leads to employees (Wonderful, fully actualized human beings. Happy now?) who can't do their jobs properly, can't lift things and push things they way they have to, destroy customers groceries, talk to customers inappropriately, can't follow instructions properly, and (since they are also commonly the OSCWs) freak-out, sometimes loudly and aggressively, when things go wrong. Even though the afore-mentioned laws are intended to create equality, other employees are frequently asked to pick up the MOPHCW's slack, on top of their own work. My job is to keep customers happy and satisfied, and to make sure the store isn't in any great disarray. Yet some MOPHCWs are contributing to the exact opposite effects, and being paid the same amount of money. Is that equality? No, that's me getting raped.

The lonely house-wife co-worker: These are women in there late 30s and 40s who don't really need to work, but want something to do with their days. So they come to work at Safeway, where they chat about house-wife type things with anyone who will sit still. They chat about pets, kids, books, tea, comfortable shoes, crafts, shopping, whatever. It doesn't matter how appropriate the topic is, or how loudly they're talking, as long as they can express some little tidbit or anecdote from Reader's Digest. They love to discuss their husbands, for better of for worse, and when another LHWCW has left the room, they will discuss her husband for a while as well. In the long run, the LHWCWs aren't hurting anyone, and some customers seem to prefer them. And sending one of them on break with one of the 16-year-olds is the perfect way to torture those little punks. It's a well known fact that teenagers can't handle stories about tea.

I was walking down the hallway at my college today when I saw a guy wearing a novelty t-shirt with huge letters. I also like reading people's clothes, especially if I can look really conspicuous while doing so, thereby embarrassing and annoying the wearer. So I sidled closer and the garment's message was revealed to me: Mean People Suck. A little trite, a little clichéd, perhaps. But thought provoking. Because I always figure that mean people aren't actually trying to be mean, they're just oblivious to their own inability to function as human beings. But who sucks more? Someone deliberately going out and kicking puppies, or someone to whom it just never occurs that puppies may not appreciate being kicked. A Safeway courtesy clerk is a kicked puppy of the metaphorical sort, and so I thought I should examine the kickers (shoppers) who deliver the most staggering blows and attempt to divine their secret motives.

Puppy Kicker No. 1: The Sadist
Analysis: These customers only ask for carry-outs when the whether is terrible. These people make a big show of checking the windows before accepting or declining the offer of help outside. "Nah", they'll say,"It's stopped raining, I can go out myself.". The implication is clear: They only want you to go outside if you'll get wet, or cold, or maybe catch some sniper fire. What is their motivation to this attitude? If it's raining, the courtesy clerk will get wet while the customer sits snug in their car. That would almost be acceptable, if not for the fact that at least 9 out of ten customers help the clerk load their car up, so they're gonna get wet anyway. Dragging a clerk along for the soggy trip just increases the number of wet people by a superfluous 100%. This seems, on the surface, to be abject mean-ness. But I think that maybe the intentions are good. The puppy kickers honestly believe that two people, one of them a highly-trained courtesy-clerking professional, will form such a dynamo of grocery-loading productivity that the task will be finished before a single drop of water can touch their flesh. So these people are just stupid.

Puppy Kicker No. 2: The Scourge of the Forest
Analysis: The customer who asks for double paper bags. A more-annoying subset asks for double-paper in plastic. Now this is a terribly mean thing to do to a courtesy clerk. It takes almost 3 times as long to pack a bag like this, and that's a conservative figure. You get paper-cuts, you usually have to hunt for paper bags before you can start, you run out of room at the till and in the cart to put the bags you've packed, and the cashiers never help you pack because it's so awful and awkward. But the Scourge of the Forest is perhaps the most oblivious of the puppy kickers. They think they're insuring stronger bags, even though paper inside paper adds exactly no extra strength. They think that their crushable goods will be safer in paper, even though I'll crush the stuff myself out of spite. They're just plain deluding themselves, striving for some grocery-safety nirvana that does not exist. These people are also stupid.

Puppy Kicker No. 3: The Comparator
Analysis: The Comparator is always identifiable by their unique cry: "This is cheaper at Wal-Mart". Depending on the season, they can also be heard to exclaim: "The aisles are arranged differently at the other Safeway", "All the other stores stock my favourite brand of Iguana polish" or "Everywhere else sells lottery tickets." Not to be confused with the Price Bitcher, the Comparator is only interested in pointing out the differences between every retail establishment she visits, not necessarily seeing anything done about it. As long as you know that you've taking 13 cents out of her children's college fund by daring to charge more than SuperStore for Kraft Dinner, she's happy. She is not ignorant to the pain she inflicts, she is actually trying to make you feel guilty. She's kicking the puppy just to hear it yelp. These people are Mean.

Puppy Kicker No. 4: The Price Bitcher
Analysis: Nothing makes The Price Bitcher more angry than to charged more than the arbitrary value she's invented for any product she wants to buy. If you were to tell a price bitcher that Safeway was selling 800 kg of salami for 15 cents, she would storm the store, grab her 800 kilos of meat, go to the till and smile at the cashier in the gruesome fashion of someone daring a cashier to try and charge them wrong. Upon discovering that her groceries will actually cost a reasonable amount of actual money, she will flip and start screaming at people. She will demand to see the manager, then demand to be given her entire cart-full of groceries for the 3 wads of lint that the flyer she saw (that she is unable to produce, or even accurately describe) said it would cost. No amount of logic or evidence will sway The Price Bitcher. If any price somehow managed to associate itself with a product in her evil brain, she will not be satisfied until she has taken advantage of the savings. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of their shopping that that they will try to buy a product, but ask for it to be taken back if it costs even 50¢ more than expected. How could you be so poor that the extra half-dollar expense can invalidate the need you thought you had for cheez-whiz? I could understand if the price differences were two or three bucks, but 20-80 cents is the common differential that causes people to send stuff back. In their minds, they must be thinking "Well $4.85 is reasonable for two pounds of beef, but $5.12? I'm no sucker!" Needless to say, The Price Bitcher is one of the more ubiquitous and troublesome of puppy kickers, and arguably intentionally mean. But often, their sheer comedic value blunts the edge of their mean intentions. Watching them turn all red and huffy can be quite a treat. But they're still mean.

Puppy Kicker No. 5: The Weaklings
Analysis: These customers will make you lift anything over 3 pounds for them. They will stop you in the aisles to put rice and dog food into their carts. Once at the tills, they will ever-so-politely request that you fetch them 3 bags of water-softener salt, 2 cases of pop and a jug of spring water. Even though they're apparently unable to lift even one of these items themselves, it doesn't occur to them that you may have trouble getting them all in the 3 minutes they'll be at till. The Weaklings hold up the lines waiting for product, can never accurately describe the brand or type of the items they need you to retrieve and usually necessitate several trips. The don't even respect the simplest of God's Laws: If you can't fucking carry it, you don't deserve to buy it. Safeway isn't selling cinder blocks and sofa-beds. I'll bet the heaviest product in the store weighs 22 kg. Unless they're wheelchair bound or 11 years old, they can suck it up and carry their own crap to the front of the store. If you want help out, that's a whole new ballgame, but my job (in a just world) should not extend to doing their shopping for them. After careful thought, I must concede that the weaklings are not just mean. They are also stupid. Because they've been brainwashed by other stores into thinking that a grocery store is a warehouse where you present your tickets and get your goodies. That's not the way it works at Safeway, but we have to bow to their whims for fear of alienating the dumb bastards. A deadly combination: Mean and Stupid.

Wow, it's a tie. Safeway customers are equal parts evil and functionally retarded. Just like the Bush administration. I guess that in the long run, it doesn't really matter which it is, because we puppies are still gonna get kicked.

Honesty is always the best policy. At least that's what those bastards over at the influential Honesty Council would have you believe. But the fact is, honesty in retail is a sure-fire way to find yourself at an unemployment office with a black eye. It's a lesson that I've learned quite well in the past 5 years, and so I'd like to share with you some common lies you're probably hearing at your local grocery store, and the nefarious truths that they hide.

What I say: Can I help you find anything today?
What I mean: You're offending me, just by looking so helpless. I can't put you out of your misery, so I guess I'll just try and get you out of the store as soon as possible.

What I say: Let me go check in the back room for that product.
What I mean: We don't keep stock in the back room. That's a myth. And you know what? Even if I find your product back there, you can't have it.

What I say: Oh yes, ma'am. The signs here can be confusing.
What I mean: The signs sure are confusing when you're illiterate. And fat. You're also fat.

What I say: Of course we can exchange that.
What I mean: Oh my god! You opened the chicken that you bought 3 weeks ago and it smelled funny? Forget giving you a refund, I have to ALERT THE FUCKING PRESS!

What I say: Can I give you a hand out with your groceries?
What I mean: Can you please carry your own damn bags? If you can't lift 12 pounds, you shouldn't have bought so much.
What I also sometimes mean: Please, please, please let me out of this hellhole! I need to go outside for just a few minutes, or I'll kill someone.

What I say: Yes, sir. That product is very good. I highly recommend it.
What I mean: They don't pay me enough to actually shop here. Roll the damn dice. If a bad cracker purchase is gonna wreck you, maybe you should be putting in some overtime instead of pestering me.

What I say: Have a good day, beloved customer. See you soon.
What I mean: Your death would not bother me in the slightest. Unless it occurred in the parking lot.

Now I could go on forever, but I think it would be funnier as a recurring feature. I'm sure Nick would also like to take a stab at it, and I should leave some material for him. In closing, I'd like to mention that these are my thoughts only as they relate to rude, inconsiderate, demanding customers. 90% of customers, I love. I'd raise their children for them if I thought it would help. But a few bad apples spoil the whole damn bunch, as they say. Don't you be a bad apple, or you'll face the full blistering wrath and fury of my unspoken thoughts!