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So here I am with a house full of food and nothing in the way of snackies. The watermelon we bought at the local farmer's market tasted like ass and even though it thumped and resonated like it was ripe...the rind was a solid three inches thick.
So I'm in the mood for something sweet. To myself I think, "Gee Self, there's a 24 hour Wal-Mart within walking distance from you. There is some chocolate there in desperate need of being liberated."
I agree with myself and away I go.
Now as many of you know, Walmart is notorious for having more lanes than the LA freeway system but only having 6-8 of them open at any given time. Ours has 36 and only runs at most 10...and that was at Christmas. Tonight (at 1:30 in the morning) there were only two lines running. This is to be expected and at 24 hour grocery stores (that normally run most of their lanes) they do the same so I thought nothing of it.
Faced with the choice of two lines I analyze the situation. In line 23 there is a woman with two shopping carts filled to overflowing. Not sucky because I can imagine the situation. Mommy and Daddy both get their two-week paycheck on the same day. They have kids who if allowed to go shopping would be all grabby and do about a million of the little things that would get them mention here in this forum...
So the solution is to let them drift off to sleep, have Daddy stay home in case of problems and go grocery shopping for the next two weeks at o-dark-thirty. Makes sense and is not sucky.
Lane 24 has a woman with about 20 items of clothing in the cart. Thinking that this would be the shorter line...I choose that one. Jumping the story a bit, I'll tell you that the woman in 23 with the two super stuffed carts got through before I did...her and the woman with the half filled cart as well.
The reason things were so slow? The woman ahead of me was asking the clerk to ring things up in ones and twos and then deciding on what items to keep and which ones to be put back. Deciding with the help of the person on the other end of the cell phone.
"How much are the Tan shorts?"
"They're $14.99."
"ooh, put one of them back."
And so forth and so on. What made this annoying was the fact that items were requested to be rung up again. One item in question (Just My Size brand of size 6 cotton hi-cut briefs in assorted colors) was added and removed three times before finally ending up in the cart for good.
In fact after everything went on...EVERY GODDAMN THING ENDED UP BEING PURCHASED!
In the middle of all this, every other shopper checking out sees the Le Brea tarpit-like trap I'm in and sensibly avoids my laneand is now backing up out into the main aisle-way. So my clerk looks at me and says that she'll call for another register chap to get me rung up at the "10-items-or-less" aisle.
The woman in front of me will not hear of it and freaks out for the clerk having the audacity to stop paying attention to her during the full two minutes she was debating with the voices in her head (or at least the other side of the phone) on whether or not she needs the third bra.
Well another clerk comes and opens the register. I'm rung up and I'm free to go...except for the fact that my morbid curiosity gets the better of me and I have to stay and watch the proceedings.
Finally the total for EVERYTHING is figured out and it comes to $179.28. Ok the woman starts counting out cash to pay for it. Sadly however I'm not talking about the typical "$50, 100, 150, 170, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 179.30" or even "20, 40, 60, 80, etc". Oh no, she has to count in a very special way. She is counting by ones and fives (that being all the cash she has). Again it's not like "5, 10, 15, etc" but she's counting like this.
One...two...three...(puts down a five) uhm eight...nine...<pregnant pause> sixteen...seventeen...eighteen...(oh wow! She does have a ten! Her only ten.) <really long pause and the smell of overloaded synaptic tissue> twenty-eight...
Imagine a random stream of ones and fives until she gets to $162 whereupon she pulls out a presumably forgotten $50 gift card from walmart and asks if she can use it. The clerk sighs and runs the card and informs her that her new total is $129.28.
The woman then freaks out. "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I only wanted $40 used off of the card. I like to keep a little bit on the card in case of emergencies.
So now a manager has to be paged to straighten out this mess and finally the total remaining is now $139.28. This in the mind of the woman is ok and she starts to pay again...from the beginning.
One...two...three...uhm eight...nine...<pregnant pause> sixteen...seventeen...eighteen... <really long pause> twenty-eight...
then to ice the cake as it were, the person on the other side of the phone call walks in and looks right at her (I know he was the other person since she hung up upon seeing him) and asks what the hell is taking so damn long.
That took 45 minutes of life that the poor clerk will never, ever get back. So the manager tells her to go on break and I hand her one of the business cards I keep in my wallet with the Customers Suck address and tell her to look it up when she gets home and that she is not alone in the retail world. That there are other poor souls out there who need a place to vent before we explode when our idiot waste disposal system blows up and takes our slender grasp on sanity out with it.
I hope she joins up. That woman has the patience of a saint...no scratch that...an Archangel. She needs to vent.
M
So I'm in the mood for something sweet. To myself I think, "Gee Self, there's a 24 hour Wal-Mart within walking distance from you. There is some chocolate there in desperate need of being liberated."
I agree with myself and away I go.
Now as many of you know, Walmart is notorious for having more lanes than the LA freeway system but only having 6-8 of them open at any given time. Ours has 36 and only runs at most 10...and that was at Christmas. Tonight (at 1:30 in the morning) there were only two lines running. This is to be expected and at 24 hour grocery stores (that normally run most of their lanes) they do the same so I thought nothing of it.
Faced with the choice of two lines I analyze the situation. In line 23 there is a woman with two shopping carts filled to overflowing. Not sucky because I can imagine the situation. Mommy and Daddy both get their two-week paycheck on the same day. They have kids who if allowed to go shopping would be all grabby and do about a million of the little things that would get them mention here in this forum...
So the solution is to let them drift off to sleep, have Daddy stay home in case of problems and go grocery shopping for the next two weeks at o-dark-thirty. Makes sense and is not sucky.
Lane 24 has a woman with about 20 items of clothing in the cart. Thinking that this would be the shorter line...I choose that one. Jumping the story a bit, I'll tell you that the woman in 23 with the two super stuffed carts got through before I did...her and the woman with the half filled cart as well.
The reason things were so slow? The woman ahead of me was asking the clerk to ring things up in ones and twos and then deciding on what items to keep and which ones to be put back. Deciding with the help of the person on the other end of the cell phone.
"How much are the Tan shorts?"
"They're $14.99."
"ooh, put one of them back."
And so forth and so on. What made this annoying was the fact that items were requested to be rung up again. One item in question (Just My Size brand of size 6 cotton hi-cut briefs in assorted colors) was added and removed three times before finally ending up in the cart for good.
In fact after everything went on...EVERY GODDAMN THING ENDED UP BEING PURCHASED!
In the middle of all this, every other shopper checking out sees the Le Brea tarpit-like trap I'm in and sensibly avoids my laneand is now backing up out into the main aisle-way. So my clerk looks at me and says that she'll call for another register chap to get me rung up at the "10-items-or-less" aisle.
The woman in front of me will not hear of it and freaks out for the clerk having the audacity to stop paying attention to her during the full two minutes she was debating with the voices in her head (or at least the other side of the phone) on whether or not she needs the third bra.
Well another clerk comes and opens the register. I'm rung up and I'm free to go...except for the fact that my morbid curiosity gets the better of me and I have to stay and watch the proceedings.
Finally the total for EVERYTHING is figured out and it comes to $179.28. Ok the woman starts counting out cash to pay for it. Sadly however I'm not talking about the typical "$50, 100, 150, 170, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 179.30" or even "20, 40, 60, 80, etc". Oh no, she has to count in a very special way. She is counting by ones and fives (that being all the cash she has). Again it's not like "5, 10, 15, etc" but she's counting like this.
One...two...three...(puts down a five) uhm eight...nine...<pregnant pause> sixteen...seventeen...eighteen...(oh wow! She does have a ten! Her only ten.) <really long pause and the smell of overloaded synaptic tissue> twenty-eight...
Imagine a random stream of ones and fives until she gets to $162 whereupon she pulls out a presumably forgotten $50 gift card from walmart and asks if she can use it. The clerk sighs and runs the card and informs her that her new total is $129.28.
The woman then freaks out. "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I only wanted $40 used off of the card. I like to keep a little bit on the card in case of emergencies.
So now a manager has to be paged to straighten out this mess and finally the total remaining is now $139.28. This in the mind of the woman is ok and she starts to pay again...from the beginning.
One...two...three...uhm eight...nine...<pregnant pause> sixteen...seventeen...eighteen... <really long pause> twenty-eight...
then to ice the cake as it were, the person on the other side of the phone call walks in and looks right at her (I know he was the other person since she hung up upon seeing him) and asks what the hell is taking so damn long.
That took 45 minutes of life that the poor clerk will never, ever get back. So the manager tells her to go on break and I hand her one of the business cards I keep in my wallet with the Customers Suck address and tell her to look it up when she gets home and that she is not alone in the retail world. That there are other poor souls out there who need a place to vent before we explode when our idiot waste disposal system blows up and takes our slender grasp on sanity out with it.
I hope she joins up. That woman has the patience of a saint...no scratch that...an Archangel. She needs to vent.
M
)) was over $2,000.
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