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At Blogger Central, Monday is grocery shopping day. Out of town as usual, to avoid any more local drama. The stories may be amusing but, while they're happening in real time, they aren't funny.
Yesterday -- President's Day Monday -- I headed out.
I stopped at the Meijer's in Marysville to trade in some empties, and sit and rest and have a pop and a doughnut. That's all. Both Anne and I refuse to shop in St. Clair County, or spend any money there, unless we absolutely have to.
With the food almost gone, I had to use the men's room like no White man ever had to use it before.
This Meijers has two bathrooms. A unisex bathroom by the cafe, where I was, near the south entrance, and family bathrooms for men, and women, at the other end of the store.
The cafe bathroom door was locked. I went to the family bathroom, whose door doesn't lock, and entered. With task accomplished, all that remained was the paperwork. But the toilet paper dispenser was empty. When you have to go, you go and think about TP later, and besides, they have front end people who get paid to make sure the bathrooms always have the necessities. Don't they?
I exited and walked back to the cafe. Neither entrance had a greeter, and the cafe bathroom door remained locked.
I went out to our Jeep and considered my options. I didn't have any newspaper or paper bags, and asked myself, in the parking lot of a big box department store with two bathrooms, why I should have to consider either option in the first place.
Back inside, the cafe bathroom was at last open -- praise the Lord -- and there was at last a greeter at the south entrance. I walked over to him and said "that men's room -- " I pointed in its general direction -- "has no toilet paper in it."
"I can't do anything about it," he said.
"Yes, you can," I said. "You can tell someone. That's not my job. I don't work here. YOU work here. YOU can tell someone it needs toilet paper - "
The greeter, an old dude from The Greatest Generation -- you know, the resourceful folks who grew up during the Depression and can accomplish anything if given a chance -- pointed down the way, towards Customer Service, and said "go down there and tell Customer Service - "
"NO," I said. "I'm not going down there, I don't work here and I'm not a messenger - " (Nor was I going to get in the line and stand there behind the dumb broads who bought the wrong color kitchen curtains and the ditzes who think the place is Las Vegas.)
The greeter then pointed towards the south exit, and said "get out of here."
"What?" I said.
"Get out." He pointed towards the door again.
I swear I'm not making any of this up.
I not only didn't get out of there - I went to Customer Service, where I watched a female return something she shouldn't have bought in the first place, and a large cat lady purchase several sheets of scratch-offs. When my turn for service arrived, I asked to speak to a manager. I gave this manager the short version of what I've just told you.
I wasn't done yet.
On the way out, I took out my phone and opened the camera. Greeter Man was ignoring me.
"Look at me," I said.
He didn't."
"LOOK at me."
Finally.
"Now look at me and tell me to get out of here."
Then I touched the camera icon.
This is the first person you see if, on the right day, you enter the Marysville Meijers, the one at Range and Gratiot, via the south door. Really. It takes no more energy to smile and look pleasant, or at least try, that it does to look and act like a grouch.
Off I went, destination Gratiot and 23 Mile where, at that Meijers, they do whatever's necessary to make their guests feel welcome (that's why we do our serious grocery shopping there in the first place), and where the bathrooms always have toilet paper. But I still wasn't done.
Regular readers may have already noticed that this post isn't sprinkled with the usual curse words we use when describing our encounters with certain local customer service folks who are somehow still getting paid to provide customer service. That's because I'm pasting the link to this post in the Description portion of the Contact Us form on the Meijers web site, where it can serve as account of all this, while supplementing what I'll be telling them over the phone.
Anne and I have really had it with this sort of nonsense. We're going to start taking pictures and posting them. Maybe that will stop it.
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As promised, I did call the customer care folks at Meijers. Then I returned to the store last Friday, to get a couple things, but also to see if Greeter Man was still working the south exit. He was. I asked him, rhetorically of course, not expecting an answer: how do you still have a job here? His response: "I'm not worried about it." Now it's Monday and, after another phone call to the customer care folks and a convo with the store director, the light bulb has come on: Meijers workers have a union (AFSCME). That's how you can refuse to do something a guest asks you to do, tell him to get out, twice, and keep your job.
Now I'm considering going back there to fill out an application. Meijers greeters have the job security of Supreme Court justices. They have their gigs for life unless they really fuck up and do something so horrible that the union can't save them. Like call a black person a nigger, or a FAT chick "fat." But middle-aged White men, you can call them anything and say anything to them, tell THEM to get out, and that's okay.
And BTW - in response to a query posted on another site: yes, the greeter does have access to a phone, it's six feet away from the greeter post, you can't see it in the pic up the page but you can in this one. You can also see Greeter Man using it, presumably for something more important that letting management know that the men's room is out of toilet paper.
I asked him to smile and wave, but he wouldn't.
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