How I love thee, Hy-Vee customers

As you may or may not know, I am once again employed at HyVee. After nearly a three year stint with Best Buy, I came crawling back to the friendly smiles in every aisle. As it turns out, no one wants to hire someone for a three month period, except HyVee. As it also turns out, even if I lie that I'm not going back to school, I still won't get hired.

So, to make a long story short, Hy-Vee offered to pay me $8.00/hour to do catering, and without a better offer on the table, I said yes.

Now, the catering part of it isn't so bad, actually. I am responsible for our operations at MCI Wednesday through Friday. My shifts fly by without doing much difficult work at all. It's even, dare I say, fun.

Of course, Wednesday through Friday does not a full work week make, so when I'm not catering to MCI, I work in the Kitchen. Again, this isn't a dream job, and for anything below $8.00/hour, I wouldn't put up with this shit, but HyVee hit the magic number and alas, I do indeed put up with it.

Working in the Kitchen normally sucks because I am the bitch who doesn't know anything, so usually I get stuck with doing dishes and bussing tables. Tonight, however, Dawn saw fit to let me do the salad case. It's better than doing dishes, but the downside is there is a lot more customer interaction. So around 8:45 an older couple wanders up to the case and they want dinner. Well, considering the kitchen officially closes and night, and we're minutes away from removing the food from the hot case, they should be lucky we have as quality of a variety as we do. Hell, many HyVee Kitchens close at 8 PM.

The gent asks for a four wing dinner, and unfortunately, we're out of wings. I inform him of this, and he says, "Now what am I gonna do?" Normally customers joke around like this if they can't get what they want, so I assumed that was his intent and I nervously laughed. The look in his eyes made clear rather quickly that he wasn't joking. So then he points to the Mediterranean Chicken Breast and asks how many breasts he gets if he orders that. I inform him that he gets one breast, plus veggies. It's the same size portion he would get at a restaurant like Applebee's or Friday's and they would charge his ass $8.95 for it.

"You've GOT to be kidding me!", he says. I respond, "I'm sorry sir, the portion size is one breast, plus veggies." So then he again says, "So what am I gonna do now?" I begin to offer him something else and he says, "Maybe I'll just go home and put a gun in my mouth." I am trying so hard not to laugh at an old man who is literally pouting like a 2 year old because we don't have the food he wants or won't give him enough of it. His wife then tries to calm him down and he says, "This place is going to hell!" I have to turn my back as a laugh escapes from my lips.

He demands to see my manager, and I was more than happy to refer Dawn his way. She's a single mother with two kids, and she treats anyone getting out of line like she would a little kid. It's hilarious; she doesn't take shit from anyone. She flatly informs him the same thing I did and they turn and walk toward Italian Express.