How to tell if he was checking you out or just checking you out
By MADISON SEEMAN — meseeman@ucdavis.edu
There’s a new man in my life. He’s smart, he’s easy on the eyes, he’s employed — it all started at Trader Joe’s. In one intense moment, we locked eyes as his coworker stuffed my chocolate bananas into my Snoopy Baggu: the rest is history.
We’ve all had that one fairytale Trader Joe’s customer-employee moment: light but charming small talk with a side of heartstopping eye contact that will have you skipping all the way down Russell Boulevard.
Maybe your heart skipped a beat as she handed you a yogurt sample, maybe you nearly collided as he was stocking the Ube Mochi Pancake tower or maybe they were checking you out (in more ways than one!).
The famously charming employee culture at Trader Joe’s calls on their employees to be almost ruthlessly charismatic as they ring up your orange chicken — conversation that’s aimable, well-intentioned and occasionally overwhelming in the chaos of the Saturday afternoon rush.
The scramble for eggs, the chaos for kimbap; Trader Joe’s on a weekend afternoon is a battlefield, and, in the midst of it all, the brave employees of Trader Joe’s make a career out of mixed signals and small talk that toes a very flirty line. Tell me I’m reading into it all you want, but no Safeway employee has been cheeky enough to wink at me.
That said, I think I found “the one.” I know believing your Trader Joe’s cashier is into you is equivalent to thinking your therapist might want to be friends with you, but this was different. This was flirty: coy, even.
He started by asking me about my day (which was 10 times better the moment we started talking). Then, he asked me what I was having for dinner, and I won’t lie — I blushed. I mean, just ask me out at that point!
The rest was a whirlwind. I had him check out my groceries again a couple weeks later, and I could tell by the fluorescent sparkle in his eyes that he recognized me. He even asked me what my major was — more like he’s “majorly” interested.
And then, the unthinkable happened: Last week, we bumped into each other outside of the newly renovated walls of that liminal grocery store. One thing led to another, and, in a legendary feat, I turned my cashier crush into my Friday plans.
The date was magical. He asked me how my day was, what I was planning on having for dinner later and then we had a really heartfelt conversation about the weather. He held my bag, which was sweet, although he wouldn’t stop reorganizing it so the most fragile items were at top. I couldn’t help but feel it was all too familiar.
“He’s treating you like you’re a customer,” my friends told me after. Okay, so maybe he just doesn’t know how to talk to people outside of work. It’s like those kindergarten teachers who accidentally use their baby voice on friends — they just can’t turn it off! Nothing a little bit of training can’t fix.
But her words started to eat at me. Does he only see me as a customer or is he just a Trader Joe’s employee to his core? Does he really care how my day was, or is that one of the only questions he knows? When he tells me the 2025 National Grocers Association Best Bagger award was a UC Davis college student, is he still imagining that wooden partition between us, ringing up apples and bananas as fantasy-me pulls out one of my borderline rotted tote bags? Can he ever turn it off? Could a Trader Joe’s employee ever truly love a girl like me?
Maybe he’s really flirting, or maybe his time at Trader Joe’s has possessed him with charming yet slightly impersonal and incredibly repetitive mannerisms — we all have our quirks. It’s possible I’m just another customer to him, but I’m charmed: cashier questions and all.
Written by: Madison Seeman –– meseeman@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
