How to Converse With Your Local Grocery Store Cashier While Checking Out

Imam from Memphis, Tennessee,
home of Elvis Presley
"Property" means wives and children

Is it because trouble follows me everywhere or because I make trouble wherever I go? Is it because people are liberal and I am not, therefore when I speak they’re automatically offended? Maybe it’s because grocery store managers tell checkout cashiers to make friendly conversation with customers about the food they’re buying. I don’t know, but it all went terribly wrong tonight, not so much for me – I rather enjoyed the “conversation” – but for the cashier, whom I suppose was just trying to be friendly while making comments about my food.

Now I feel badly! Maybe he wasn’t bragging after all! Maybe he was just following orders: “Be friendly. Talk about the food customers are purchasing. If you like something they’re buying, tell them so. Tell them about your life and places you’ve been where you tasted food like the food they’re buying. Make their shopping experience here at our store memorable.”

And it was! Although it was supposed to be the other way around, with him making a memorable experience for me, not me making my shopping experience memorable for him. But he started it, so I just played the game.

I went in to buy one roll of tin foil but among a few other things picked up a bar of dark chocolate with marzipan. The young guy at the checkout held the chocolate bar in his hands looking at it then told me in a bragging way how good marzipan chocolate bars are because he’d had one when he was in Germany four years ago.

He simply could have said that he’d had a dark chocolate marzipan bar once and that it was good, and left it at that and the rest of the conversation never would have taken place. But no…he had to tell me WHERE he had it. “In Germany! Four years ago!” (I see this cashier there all the time. He’s a college kid who gives the impression that he knows more than the average shopper in his checkout line.)

So I merely asked if he had noticed a lot of Muslims when he was in Germany. He said he didn’t really notice because he “never looks at things in that way” and that Germany was wonderful and beautiful. He totally ignored the question. Therefore instead of mentioning people (Muslims) I decided to make the question less politically incorrect by using the name of the religion: “You know…ISLAM. Did you see a lot of indications of ISLAM in Germany when you were there four years ago?”

At that point he kept his eyes glued on the cash register and icily said, “I don’t know. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me.” By that time I was disgusted with him (after all, he mentioned Germany first), so I said in return, “I bet it would bother you if they were STABBING you.”

Along with the receipt he gave me a below zero cold stare and as I walked away with the groceries and the next person came up to his register I heard him say to her, “Some people!”

But I read about Islam. I write about Islam. Every day I’m at the computer reading Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, or Gates of Vienna with European reports of stabbings (over 3,500 stabbings in Germany in the first 10 months of 2017), rapes, honor killings, suicide bombings, threats of mass murder - all committed by Muslim migrants and never reported by the MSM. Yesterday I read a horrifying news article where a migrant had beaten then dragged an 87 year–old German woman on her face across cobblestone streets until her entire face - nose, lips, cheeks - was shredded beyond recognition and wonder in amazement how someone could go to Germany – even four years ago – and not see a thing. Nothing at all! Not one Muslim, nothing out of order, no Germans complaining. However, we don’t have to fly to Germany or Belgistan or Finland or Sweden or France to know that something isn’t quite right in the world with the sudden appearance of millions of Muslims in the West. Just go to Tennessee.

As a result of too many grocery store type situations I always ask myself why I do these things. Maybe the young guy will think about what was said if he ever hears a news story about a terrorist attack in Germany or honor killings or FGM or “culture enrichers” stabbing people over there every day. Maybe it will somehow help him to put two and two together.

On the other hand possibly I need to take etiquette lessons. Maybe carry a roll of masking tape in the car and put a piece over my mouth when I go anywhere. I can behave charitably and somewhat semi-graciously when a situation calls for it. Otherwise, aren’t we supposed to somehow “plant the seed” of truth in people’s lives? Maybe I should do it in a more kind manner, but how do we tell another person these things? Do we keep our mouths closed and carry knowledge silently within us so that others remain ignorant? (I repeat, I did not start the conversation.)

I suppose what I need to do is the next time in the grocery store I’ll get in his line and be a gracious person and if I don’t buy a chocolate marzipan bar, maybe he won’t mention Germany. 

The best ever super market check-out scene is from You've Got Mail.