Saunders: At checkout I got chewed out about ignoring COVID risks

The cashier ringing me up at a Harris Teeter in Durham was, at most, 21, and even with voluminous hair extensions, I doubt that she weighed a buck twenty.

That didn’t stop her from smacking my big ol’ self around and shaming me.

I deserved it, too.

Fortunately for me, she didn’t get loud, so none of the customers behind me heard the verbal lashing.

What happened was this: Before entering the store a few weeks ago, I grabbed a cart and the spray bottle of disinfectant the store provides near its entrance. I sprayed down the cart’s handle and wiped it off with a napkin, There was not a trash can to be found anywhere inside the store, so I dropped the napkin into the cart, intending to toss it later. I proceeded to pile potted meat, soda, Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries – I’m on a healthfood kick – and other essential items on top of the crumpled napkin and forgot it was in the cart.

She reminded me quickly.

Cashier: (With the sternness of a prosecutor at The Hague): Is this your tissue?

Me: Huh?

Cashier: Is this your tissue? Did you leave that tissue in the cart?

Me: Uh, what? Oh yeah, I forgot. I couldn’t find –

Cashier: That’s just naaaasty.

She then proceeded to tell me about all of the Covid-related dangers and disrespect her frontline coworkers and she face daily – I’ve written frequently about them – and how she wasn’t making enough money to be up in there risking her life. I thought about telling her that the offending paper was a napkin, not a tissue, but thought better of it once she got on a roll. Instead, I simply said “You’re right. Sorry.”

And as I slunk out of the store, I was. You see, I actually consider myself one of the good guys when it comes to being sympathetic toward “essential workers” who aren’t treated or paid as though they are essential. Among other things, I have cut my visits to the grocery store down to about twice a month.

On a subsequent visit to the store, I asked a different cashier – you didn’t think I was going back to the same one, did you? - why the store hadn’t placed plastic shields up that would actually protect them from customers instead of the teeny-tiny little ones that provided scant, if any, protection.

“That’s a good question. They should come all the way out to here,” she said. This cashier, who said she suffers from COPD, is 71 and has already gotten both of her vaccination shots.

At least 134 grocery workers have died of covid-19 since the pandemic started, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. More than 28,700 workers had been exposed to a positive case. The last thing they need is litterbugs such as I dropping waste in carts for them to clean up.

Here, with apologies to Otis Redding, is my rendition of Try a Little Tenderness (To Your Supermarket Cashier.) Maestro, hit it:

Oh, she may be weary

Them young girls they do get weary

Waiting for your American Express

But while she’s there waiting

The least you can do is not make a mess.

You know she’s waiting, just anticipating

To ring up the things you came to possess

But while she’s there waiting

The least you can do is try not to make a mess.

You won’t regret it

Them young girls they won’t forget it

That smelly deli sampler you left in your cart yesterday

So while you’re there shopping

Remember – put your soiled tissues away.

That’s all you gotta do now.

This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 12:00 AM.