This is pretty upsetting to read. I worked at Hannaford for a long time and I was always pretty sensative to people with WIC or EBT cards but I know a lot of colleagues and other customers who weren't. It kills me the assumptions and judgements people make about ordinary families. And it was always pretty frustrating how complicated the state seems to make it. WIC is a great program, but the restrictions and red tape and beourocracy are ridiculous.

Ugh. Just ugh. Please keep us updated as to Safeway's response.

I distinctly remember the year I turned sixteen, as I spent most of the summer tending my mother. She'd been in a horrible accident, was paralyzed on one side, had pins in her ankle, and a rod later inserted into her arm. She couldn't work. We were on food stamps that summer; I remember how we would drive to the store and my mother, unable to walk more than a few steps, unable to care for herself, was so ashamed of being on government assistance that she was often unable to meet the eyes of the cashiers.

We only caught crap a few times, but I will never forget how those few incidents made my mother cry. We honestly and sincerely needed help, and those scumbags made my mother so ashamed of herself, it made me angry to see.

Has she sent this letter to the website Consumerist?
www.consumerist.com
This is exactly the kind of stuff they deal with, and they tend to get great results. The stores don't seem to want the bad publicity being on The Consumerist website generates.

How utterly infuriating and heartbreaking. My younger sister is also a full time student, pregnant, and was just approved for WIC. I hope that she does not endure such insenstive, judgmental, crass bullshit as this. I hope you get some justice, Deanna.

Those guys are working retail for Safeway, as if they can JUDGE.

You are not alone! Thank you for sharing your story. During my food stamp days, I went to a QFC, and didn't have a "QFC Advantage Card" because I was wary of my purchases being tracked. The cashier smugly said, "Maybe you wouldn't need to be on foodstamps if you got an Advantage Card." Any indication you are low income is taken as an invitation for smug bastards like that guy to treat you like trash. What a respectable way to puff up your ego.

That really, really sucks. As if people ENJOY being on WIC. As if they LIKE the fact that they need assistance.

My mom was on WIC when we (my brother and I) were little, and that was even with my mother working and my father in the military. I do not remember the hardship but the hardship mentality has stuck with her- she is very frugal (as am I, which I actually think is good!). She would drink KoolAid and pretend it was juice, and we kids would get the real juice.

No one has any right to treat someone that way. I have been a cashier and people on WIC are not the problem!
Inconsiderate people who hold up the line, put themselves before everyone else, write checks in the express lane, yell at you when their expired coupons don't work- those are the people who need a talking to- not a mother trying to feed her child.

The fact that she even put her groceries in order so as to be convenient to the cashier- I hope the cashier gets fired. I also second the consumerist.com suggestion.

I have never understood where this prejudice comes from. I work in a non-profit clinic that sees plenty of women and children everyday. The mothers don't resort to "being on the system" because they don't feel like working. Often they are working, their significant others are working, and end still don't meet. The stereotype that the poor are "lazy" or "inconvenient" blows my mind. Someone is making money because they are paying people less than what can be lived on. Deep down I think the people like this checker realize that all it would take is a lost job, medical emergency, or broken-down car to put them on food stamps as well. That is the line most Americans walk everyday.

"Those guys are working retail for Safeway, as if they can JUDGE."

For those of us who have or continue to work these types of jobs to support our familes or for whatever reason: OUCH.

agreed with asrai, that comment was just as judgmental /classist as the jerky Safeway employee's response to the WIC checks.

I don't understand why someone would be so rude just b/c the woman is using WIC.

I was a cashier for nearly 5 years and never gave anyone an attitude b/c of how they choose to pay (except for maybe those who JUST realized, as I scan their last item in the express lane, that oh! They need to write a freaking check!)

But ppl on WIC are trying to eat like anyone else. It's not as if I was so damn eager to check-out the person behind you. I'd rather take my time and hopefully they'll leave and I can take a 5 to get off my feet!

That is really unfortunate and disgusting. I'm sure some of that cashier's coworkers are on WIC or foodstamps, which you would think would make him a little bit more sensitive. You would think he'd know that you can work full-time, and work very hard, and still need additional assistance.
I used to be a cashier at a grocery store. We were explicitly told in training to treat customers who used WIC and foodstamps as courteously and politely as any other customer. I did, but I'm sure quite a few of my coworkers did not.

I'm interested as to the age of the checkout guy. I will shamefully admit that when I was a supermarket cashier from the ages of 15-17, the people with WIC checks did annoy me. I didn't know any better then, and it's incredibly embarrassing to think back on now. I don't know if I was openly rude, and I was never Ms. Pleasant to anybody, but I probably was not very nice, either (though I'm quite sure that I never did anything like this).

With that being said, and with taking responsibility for acting like a shitty person, I have to say that I was also a kid. I think that it is the management's responsibility to teach their cashiers -- very large percentages of which are teenagers, who are by and large selfish little pricks (myself former included) -- about the importance of making sure to never treat these customer's any differently. Of course, this should go without saying, but when you're stuck behind the register and something is going to make your job slightly more difficult, common sense can sometimes go out the window.

I also think that the system was designed for these types of embarrassments. As Deanna mentions, recipients get many checks. Each of them tend to only have a few items on them and on average there was at least 4 checks for each customer that came through. Each of those had to be rung up as separate transactions by law in order to process them. Also, my store had a rule where a manager had to come over every time someone had WIC checks. They had to make sure that all of the items the customer bought qualified (yet another embarrassing facet when they don't, because the rules are very strict). This wasn't an option, the register wouldn't process the transaction without a manager's key. Not only did this take time, it also drew extreme attention to the person using the checks when the manager took more than a few seconds to come over. Which was frequent.

I'm in no way defending this cashier. What I'm saying is that he needs to bear full responsibility for his actions, but he and people like him are incredibly far from being the only things wrong and humiliating about this system.

My brother used to be on food stamps, and I went grocery shopping with him once when he was staying with me. We got food, went to the cashier, she curtly informed us that they did not take food stamps (this was the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I was subletting my professor's apt. for the summer) so we left the food and started to leave the store. The manager stopped us and demanded we empty our pockets and then he searched my purse. Of course we hadn't stolen anything, but it was absolutely humiliating anyway. My brother has been through a lot of rough times and has no degree or steady income, so he was on food stamps at that point. That's why gov't assistance exists! So people can, ya know, EAT. This manager at the Food Emporium was beyond insulting.

I hate that because of this experience I dread ever having to be on food stamps (with student loans and a BFA in drama, it certainly seems possible). So many people are rude, judgmental, and well, assholes.

Cara, thank you for being so honest. We all make mistake and (hopefully) learn from them.

I can attest to the other cashier's story that the WIC checks are already embarrassing because the manager comes, then each check takes forever to fill out, and it's not the person's fault who is on WIC. They are simply not ABLE to make the transaction go faster.

I was a cashier at one of my first jobs and I can say that I can understand the extra hassle being somewhat annoying to someone making barely minimum wage, but that customers who were actually RUDE were much, much more of a hassle than a WIC check.

Ultimately,I understand where the cashier was coming from. I don't think he was thinking "How dare this woman be on WIC, how dare she try to support her family as best she can". I don't even really think this is a uniquely feminist issue. He was rude to her because she was going to take longer than the other customers. People treat me rude all the time for a variety of reasons, all of those undeserved, but I don't cry about it. If need be, I speak to a manager, I don't make a national case about it. Regardless of her personal situation, she was still making the cashier do more work. Even the "rude people who write checks and hold up the line etc" have circumstances of their own. Cashiers shouldnt be rude, but this is not a feminist issue. (waits for the outcry)

I can't say I'm very surprised by this. I work at legal aid in the government benefits unit and I hear a story like this at least once a week. About 2 years ago, CA switched from issuing cash aid (welfare) and food stamps through checks and actual stamps to using a debit card system (Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT). It was supposed to help deal with a lot of this, because you can pay with welfare dollars at a point of sale just by using the same machine that a credit card or debit card user would.

The good part of the new system is that it's a lot harder for the other people in line with you to tell that you are using welfare or food stamps. However, the cashier can still tell, and at places that don't have an automated system to screen for food stamp allowable purchases, the cashier still has to go through each of the items to make sure they're ok. Sadly, this seems to mean that consumers using welfare or food stamps to make purchases are getting the same flak from cashiers that they did before.

I agree with hopeisawakingdream above, that this is all based on the horrible misconception that people are poor because they are lazy or because they are morally bereft. I don't know what needs to be done to change this public perception - which would require us acknowledging that our supposed meritocracy has anything but a level playing field - but until it changes, the poor will always be treated like this. And people will always feel justified in treating them that way.

And you should wait for the outcry, dirtybug. First of all, someone has taken the time to share a particularly personal and difficult story with us and you're being incredibly insensitive to it. It's really quite gross. Secondly, as the wisdom that comes with age taught me, they're not "making the cashier do more work" -- they're trying to eat. And those are their options: use the checks, or don't eat. You make it sound like some kind of choice, and that she should feel guilty for eating.

And yeah, I think that the treatment of people using a program called Women, Infants and Children is somehow a feminist issue. Not to mention the fact that hugely disproportionate amounts of single mothers are on welfare. The treatment of low-income women is in fact a feminist issue, and she has every single right in the world to be upset.

But really, I spend way too much time responding to this kind of thing, so I'm going to restrain myself from here on out and only pay attention to the comments that are actually constructive.

@dirtybug:

WIC is a federal program uniquely aimed at women. (It's even in the name of the program.) The program is designed to give them access to food at places like Safeway. The procedure chosen to allow access is through these checks and signatures which inherently take longer for a cashier to process than any other form of payment. As you say, this results in negative treatment due to the extra administrative burden on the cashier. Who is affected by that negative burden? Uniquely, the WOMEN who receive this program. Thus, the construction of the program in a manner that uniquely affects women in a negative way is 100% a feminist issue.

Jeez.

What a horrible experience that must have been. Regardless of what that cashier thought, his role is customer service. I've seen this happen before, the most disheartening examples were fellow military friends of mine who got crap for using foodstamps. I wished just once my friend would have made an issue of it but the effect those kinds of comments can have on a person can be just shattering. I hope you find some sort of resolution working with the store.

Dirtybug, first of all, telling somebody who was humiliated and left in tears that they shouldn't "make a national case out of it" is really fucking rude. And you obviously knew it was, becuase you were aware there would be an outcry. So why was that necessary to say?

The reason this is an issue is because people who are on government assistance are made to feel bad about it at every step of the process. The system is set up to be humiliating. "Sure, you can have assistance, but only if you grovel for it and apologise for needing it at every step of the way".

"The good part of the new system is that it's a lot harder for the other people in line with you to tell that you are using welfare or food stamps."

Indeed.

I've never been on EBT/WIC/food stamps/etc. (which makes me more fortunate, not better, than some) and I still felt sorta-first-hand how those cards can be neat but have room for improvement.

See, sometimes when I swiped my debit card through the machine at a CVS I use a lot the thing assumed it was an EBT (after I selected the "debit" option!) and the cashier would have to reset some stuff so we could complete the transaction. No doubt the machine probably assumed "debit card" during some EBT purchases and similarly annoyed those customers too. However, it's been fixed in more recent years. :)

"Secondly, as the wisdom that comes with age taught me, they're not 'making the cashier do more work' -- they're trying to eat."

Besides, of course not every transaction takes the same amount of time, but buying one $1.00 item with a dollar bill is no more a virtue than needing change back, using WIC, redeeming several coupons during the purchase, considering oneself too elite to touch cash and using a platinum credit card, etc. ;)

I'm saddened by the cashier's response. My heart goes out to you. Feministing, please keep us updated on this situation?

This letter just made me cry. when we were kids, my family was on WIC - and the fact that we were able to eat pretty healthy food in a time when we couldn't afford to go to the doctor or get any kind of primary care did a lot to keep me and my family healthy. shame on those who think they know who people are based on how they pay for groceries.

"Those guys are working retail for Safeway, as if they can JUDGE."

Seriously, STFU. I work retail, and I make damn good money doing it. We need people to work retail, and we retail people deserve respect too.

Ahem.

On topic? Deanna, that really sucks. The bagger... depends on the store and how many customers there were at the time. I work for a grocery store, and we are perpetually understaffed. The baggers are taught to shift around- if there is a small order on the register they are at, they need to move to a bigger order, because our company won't give us the funds (and some of the baggers make too much money for us to afford) to staff each register. If you were shopping at my store, the bagger would almost certainly leave the register since most people getting WIC are only getting half a dozen items (unless there were just very few shoppers at the time).

Your cashier was clearly a jerk. Maybe its his training, maybe he is apathedic to the world, maybe he's just a snob, but he is a jerk.

I will say this about being a grocery store cashier- the thing that sucks about doing WIC is that because it takes so long to check the items to make sure they are the correct ones (if they aren't we have to send someone to get the right ones, or else the government doesn't give our store money for the purchase, and half the time the WIC customer is pissed off because he/she wants to get home and they don't care if they are ringing up 'cheese' or 'cheese food') and because the paperwork takes a little longer and it can be confusing on the computer, or at least it always was for me. The thing that sucks, though, is that it does take longer, and who gets mad at you? The other people in line, who want to be home twenty minutes ago and have attitude about retail workers and don't want to pay for their groceries when they could be already driving home and they hate the rising prices. They always direct any and all anger at the cashier, which isn't fair, but its an accurate picture of the grocery industry- five of ten of the things that make or break a grocery shopping trip have to do with the check out. It would be fantastic if they streamlined WIC as they have EBT food stamps in my state, but I think it is harder with WIC because the items are so specific whereas the EBT food stamps are for almost every item in the store classified by the government as "food" (which isn't all the food products in the store, interestingly enough). I can imagine that if the items were wrong, it would be like when an EBT customer thinks all the items they purchased count, and then we have to figure our what items didn't count as 'food' and either remove them or replace them- another long process. Unless the WIC customers get very good at picking out items, I don't know how easy it will be to streamline the process.

My mother was on WIC when I was younger because we had a foster child. I don't have many clear memories of it, but I remember even then that there were only very specific types of things we could buy.

I am also interested in how the company responds. My guess is, if they are anything like my store, they will send a gift certificate with a standardized letter.

I worked at super target last summer and I never treated people with WIC or EBT cards any differently from other costumers. The screen looked the same with EBT as it would a debit card so I never actually knew if someone was using an EBT card. The only time I ever was annoyed with someone using an EBT card was when this costumer used it to buy 12 cases of soda and then started screaming at me because the cost went over $1.30. The only reason I knew she was on food stamps was because she was like "Its food stamps!! and I only bought food so why should I have to pay!! Then her male companion just gave me the money. I was more annoyed at being yelled at than anything which is probably why I still remember it so well. I think part of the problem with the WIC checks is that the store actually gave you a speed score and if a costumer was too slow, you actually got in trouble. I never paid attention to my score though but some of my coworkers took it really seriously.

I recently started working for WIC and this story is really just very upsetting to me. What gets me most is that cashiers/managers/ others who antagonize WIC clients are essentially taking food out of children's mouths when inevitably some women decide that having more nutritious food is not worth all the shame.

Ah, Deanna, that flat-out sucks. I'm sorry. I am glad you are taking up the issue with Safeway. I can't help but think that there might be others who are being subjected to similar disservice there. Good for you for having the grit to speak up and not internalize it.

Oh and, yeah, it is possible to work your ass off and be poor. I recently found out I am eligible for food assistance because of the low pay for my new assignment teaching college classes.

I have the utmost respect for people who can get through school while parenting.

I don't understand why cashiers get so annoyed with women on WIC for the reason of it taking longer. When I was a cashier, I was trained to serve the person I was with until their transaction was through. If a line started to form, I was to call for another cashier. If another one wasn't available, I apologized and told the line that I would be with them as soon as possible. A customer is a customer regardless of how they are paying.
If I ever witness a cashier giving attitude to a woman on WIC, you can believe the manager will here about it.

MelKnee:Please note that I'm not defending the cashier. But there's a lot of people who don't understand why taking longer is bad. I'll explain it.

It's all about performance. Getting a WIC person (or any other complicated transaction) coming through your line slows things downs, and makes your "SPM"..Scans per minute (You think I'm making this up?) Go down. Your SPM goes down, you don't get that raise, maybe your hours get cut back...

Maybe you get fired.

Again, not that I'm defending the cashier, but that sort of behavior is the result of customer-antagonistic corporate policies in the name of efficiency.

What an asshole. I work at Target, so I understand being afraid of how the customers are going to react to having had to wait longer than usual,but this woman didn't have a choice in how she would pay for her groceries. It's not like she's paying with WIC to get her kicks. He sounds like a classist, but if his hang-up really had to do with the fact that he had a line forming, all he had to do was call for backup. If his store is hideously understaffed like the place where I work is, all he has to do is thank the other customers so much for being patient, and explain to them that you were having some "Technical difficulties."

If this kid (and I'm assuming he's a kid) doesn't want to help people, he shouldn't be in customer service. Or, if he has to work in a retail job of sorts, he should request to be put on the back stock team or the truck team, where interaction with people is limited.

Lame. This cashier clearly didn't do his job. As a CUSTOMER SERVICE representative, he should be courteous to every customer, regardless of how they pay, if they're rude, or any other circumstances. It's unfortunate that this is an issue. It's important to bring up the stigma that comes along with being on government assistance, but this particular case is one to speak to a manager about. Corporate has no way to check whether or not each 15 year old sophomore in high school they hire as a cashier is a tool or not. I'm glad that no one is calling for a boycott of Safeway... I feel that sometimes we attempt to use that tool too often and then fail miserably, making it even less of a threat than it was before.

Thank you so much for everyone’s support. I needed to see if it is a big enough issue and if sending a letter was the right thing to do. Everything that everyone has said has made me even more glad I sent the letter. I haven’t heard anything yet but I will keep everyone posted. Also to give a little more of a mental picture I would have to say the cashier is in his mid to late 40's in age. A little bit about me is I am a preschool teacher going to school for Registered Nursing while raising my four year old daughter and my 7 month old son. By all means I work my butt off for every Penny I earn and no matter what policies or requirements of any store are no one should be subjected to any type of humiliation. I understand how everything works in grocery stores with baggers rotating and so on but on this past Wednesday they were not at all understaffed. The line I was in only had me and my boyfriend behind me. I wish I could just paint a mental picture to everyone on how this man made me feel. Usually I am not the type of person that would go down without a fight but it was pretty heart wrenching and at that point I had felt ashamed to be on WIC and embarrassed. But I am not taking it anymore so thank you everyone who has helped see that this is an issue and doing something about it is the right thing! I am still going to except my WIC as long as it is available to me and when I do go to a store I am still going to be the same person that puts everything in order and be polite to work with every cashier I run into. I will not be ashamed of a program that’s buys formula for my son and milk and cheese for my daughter but I will be ashamed of people that are so close minded to it. Thank you so much
Deanna

Thank you, Karmakin. I have never had to work with SPM. I can understand that would add pressure to a cashier. It still doesn't excuse the crappy attitude of the cashier in the OP.

Slightly OT, but one thing I felt I should add:

Unfortunately, even if the cashier were forced to go on food assistance, there's no guarantee that his classist attitude (assuming that's the problem, and it sounds like it is) would lessen. I know several people who have been on welfare at one time in their lives, and though the bulk of them are understanding towards those poorer than themselves, some just say, "Yes, but I had good reasons for needing government assistance." As if most people don't!

"Your SPM goes down, you don't get that raise, maybe your hours get cut back"
HOLY CRAP.
Sorry for the language, but my job doesn't seem nearly so bad now. Our cashiers are not judged that way, so I guess maybe we are doing something right as far as customer service.

That said, I used WIC for a very long time, along with food stamps, and I never perceived any rudeness on the cashier's part towards me. And it seemed like the WIC checks in Oregon have everything on them so you only have to validate one overall check, but maybe I only used one at a time? I was able to use it at a small neighborhood store though and no manager was ever needed, even when I used one at Safeway. I'm really thankful, cause that sounds horrible. =(
And I may just be oblivious to people being assholes around me, I tend to make excuses for people.