Tales from Pechins

Since my brother spent a summer working at Pechins and one of his hobbies ever since has been complaining about Pechins, I agreed to let him do a guest post about one of his most famous and aggravating experiences.

Have you ever had a moment where you think to yourself, “This has to be a joke?” That pretty much sums up my time at Pechins.

During the long three months I worked there in the summer of 2011, I saw and experienced a plethora of characters that ranged from a mother who said to her toddler, “Listen! If you don’t stop talking about Justin Bieber, I will beat the shit out of you!” to people telling me things that I really didn’t need or want to know about and even to a full-bearded lady (not even kidding).

One of those characters that I won’t forget is Banana Guy.

  

I was working one of the express lanes when this gentleman came through with a bunch of bananas and some other things. I was putting his groceries through the register and into their bags when all of a sudden I hear, “Excuse me…why am I being charged $2.96 for bananas when it is 44 cents a pound?”

I stopped what I was doing and told him that wasn’t what he was paying but that was the weight of the bananas. I then directed him to the actual price of the bananas on the screen, which was about less than half of what he supposedly thought he was paying.

The gentleman replies, “I know that’s the weight, but why am I still being charged 2.96?” 

Yet again, I told him that was the weight and not the price. At this point, I practically walked him through what was on the screen which looked something like this, just to give an idea:

2.96 Lbs. at $0.44/Lb. = $1.30

I went through bit-by-bit with the gentleman, pointing to each number and explaining what each one was and how each numbered worked. I don’t think I could have made it any clearer than I already did.  

After all was said and done, I was hoping that this would help him understand and I could move onto the rest of his groceries and get him on his way. I was wrong. Banana Guy says, “I know that’s the weight and stuff but why am I still being charged 2.96?”

This exchange of him questioning the price and me explaining to him the weight and the actual price continued for about another five minutes. The line that had formed behind Banana Guy was soon gone with the last customer violently grabbing his groceries and in an angry and annoyed tone said, “Oh my God!” and left to the next available register.

Not too long after the last customer had left the line, a revelation. “Oh! That’s the weight!” said Banana Guy. On the outside, I didn’t have an expression what so ever. But on the inside, I was as happy as a new parent who saw their child walk across the living room and heard that same child say, “Daddy” or “Mommy.”

After the revelation, I continued on with ringing his groceries through the register and soon enough, he was out the door.

Afterwards, I had to explain what happened to my fellow coworkers, many of them didn’t believe the absurdity behind it all but believed it happened because at Pechins, anything can happen especially in Fayette-Nam.