Safeway update

[mdlbear]

Called their customer support number and griped. Apparently it's not store policy to ask for the customer's last name if it's not on the receipt; the clerk was "going the extra mile to make the customer feel welcome", as the rep put it. I didn't feel welcome, I felt angry and threatened.

There have been two occasions on which some sales droid has "greeted" me as I walked into a store and I've simply turned around and walked out.

Am I that far away from the norm? OK, I can't stand the Mac user interface, especially click-to-focus and where they put the menu bar. I don't like to use the phone. I don't like scented magazines, tissue paper, butt wipes, and so on. I don't like hearing perfect strangers mangle the pronunciation of my last name -- it's bad enough hearing them mangle the name of the street I live on (Leigh Avenue, pronounced "lee"). I have no interest in sports. I can't stand "humor" that involves putting people in embarassing situations.

Am I really as unique as I appear to be? Am I that much of an outsider? Sometimes I wonder whether I'm human.

Comments

[telynor.livejournal.com]

You're not inhuman.
You're an intensely private person in an increasingly public world.

Hugs,
G

[mithriltabby]

Greeters don’t actually bother me. Welcoming me to the store and asking if I’d like help finding anything doesn’t suffer from phoniness.

I’ve never learned to enjoy watching competitive sports. I’m amazed at how often people can get a last name like “Rible” wrong, given that it’s one consonant way from the perfectly pronounceable “rifle” and not attached to another few letters like “terrible”. (I’m taking Mara’s last name when we get married. At least I’ll have a different name to be mispronounced.) The excessive perfuming of the world annoys me and sets off the allergies of my fiancee and my mother. And the comedy of embarrassment is too painful for me to watch as well— I prefer absurdity.

We’re perfectly human— we’re just in a relatively small demographic, and there’s probably more money to be made by catering to the sensibilities of a larger demographic rather than coming up with a common denominator that would include ours.

Well, there's two of us...

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I get creeped out by droids who use my name (first or last), don't like the phone, don't like scented whatsits (being more olifactory than most folks, I prefer to choose my scents myself, according to my mood, thank you), the sports that interest me aren't the ones most folks even think of as sports (fencing, ice skating, etc.), and I don't like embarrassing/malicious humor, either.

Sounds normal to me...

[finagler.livejournal.com]

I was in Safeway a couple months ago when the checker asked for the last name of the person in front of me. He looked rather taken aback, and asked why on Earth he should need his last name. The clerk explained that it was company policy to greet customers by their last names. The customer refused, and after he had left the clerk started flaming to me about those "damn paranoid Palo Alto yuppies." I started arguing with him that customers are justifiably paranoid about their privacy given things like loyalty cards and attempts at pseudo-personal targeted advertising, and his false attempt at sounding chummy was useless to us.

Eventually I gave up arguing with him. I just handed him my Safeway loyalty card and left as he said "Goodbye and thank you, Mr. Schneider." I took some small token satisfaction that my name isn't Schneider, and that that's just the name of the last person with whom I swapped loyalty cards.

(Bear -- got a Safeway card? Want to become Mr. Schneider?)

fin

Re: Sounds normal to me...

[mdlbear]

I have one, but since I've gone to the trouble of having them take my name off it I think I'll stick with it for the moment.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Methinks you want that fourth wall to be around you everywhere.

Greeter has to be THE shit job. I keep this in mind when I have to deal with one. I give them the ol' Disney treatment and totally outdo any Mary Sunshine they have to hand out. They're the ones who get embarassed, lemme tellya.

Macs bend my brain backward. They're Macs. *shrug*

Scented perfume samples in magazines are just wrong and should be outlawed.

You ought to have my last name. You should see my mail, let alone have people pronounce it.

You can't be invisible - so if that's out of the question, take it to the opposite extreme.

Life's a banquet - why are all those poor fools out there starving to death?