But tonight I was at Albertson's buying some junk food and breakfast. I thought I'd only get one thing, but I ended up with a whole armful of food and also wanted to get milk. So I went up to a girl who worked there, standing next to a closed register. She looked around college age, a few years older than I am, and was wearing her Albertson's attire--shirt and everything.
I politely asked her, "Excuse me, I have my hands full and I was wondering where the uh...things..that you use to carry...stuff..not shopping carts...are....." ...Yes, I temporarily forgot the word "basket," sadly. heh, but anyway. When I first approached her she kind of glanced at me from the corner of her eye but after that she didn't even look at me and just walked around, trying to get out of the register area. So the whole time, while I was being inarticulate but polite, she ignored me and moved away from me. Finally she muttered something incoherent under her breath, something along the line of "I'm on my break," and walked away. So I asked this other girl behind her and she helped me.
I mean, I can understand that if she's on her break she wouldn't want to help people--I'd do the same. But it annoyed me how she had to be rude about it. As I walked up to her and said "Excuse me," she could have just said "Sorry, I'm on my break right now. You can ask her," while looking me in the eye and acknowledging my presence. Or maybe she just thought I didn't deserve any respect because while pretty much every other customer in the store was either a parent or a child, I was a preppy-looking 16-year-old girl.
The more I thought about it the madder I became, so I asked a guy also around college age if I could speak to the manager. He said there wasn't a manager around so I just told him about it and he was very nice and explained that while it was no excuse, they were understaffed and it had been a bad day for them so far. Then as I was leaving he helped put my basket away. At least there's some nice people in the world.