Thursday, October 12, 2006

Just My Luck

G’day and welcome to Thursday. Blogger, my ISP and my own home network have been conspiring to keep me away (posting this from work). I am leaning toward the modem as suspect at the moment but I’m going to re-install the whole network this weekend. I am lucky when it comes to problems, I always get the rare exotic ones the repairman/technician/doctor/hooker has never seen before, “hell it ain’t even in the manual”.

At the register my item will be unpriced, the girl will be new, the manager will be away, the register will jam and there will be a shift change just as it’s my turn. This will be after I carefully chose this line with its one old lady...the one who wants to count out exact change (after she finds her little embroidered purse) then finds she’s 12 cents short, so she puts all that away and pulls out a cheque book. She doesn’t have a store card so she has to fill out the application form and the assistant manager has to come and approve it. But because that’s normally the manager’s job and he’s away as we know, the assistant manager can’t find the forms and has to call the OTHER assistant manager at home. Miss Lady gets all the paperwork in order until they want ID. You see she hasn’t driven in years, not since Henry left us, bless him and of course she doesn’t carry a passport, let’s see…she’s got a library card (you could call Judy down there, she knows me) and her Hell’s Grannies club card (there’s also a tattoo, but..) but alas none of these will do. There is an awkward pause until Miss Lady has an idea. She has a fifty dollar bill she’s been saving for young Tim’s birthday, or would they prefer one of the hundreds she’s also got stuffed in there? Hates carrying change you see. So they hand her $98.48 change from one of those crisp hundreds (lucky for Tim!) and off she goes with her purchase, a toilet brush shaped like a duck.

I place my container of cream on the counter (it used to be ice cream) and the girl has to put in a new register tape and she gets it in backward and the assistant manager is re-summoned and eventually they get it sorted out (were they flirting?) but by then the next girl has come along with her own register drawer and the first girl has to cash out and she can’t find her cash slips and by then I’ve given up and been back home for twenty minutes drawing up plans for baboon armies and wishing I had ice cream.


6 comments:

Ghetto Photo Girl said...

Sounds like you paid the retard tax. Many times over.

SkookumJoe said...

Ironically my internet connection is now working fine.

Anonymous said...

the person behind YOU in the shop? thats me.
by which time they will have run out of all change except quarters....

exile said...

that's why i shoplift

SkookumJoe said...

I tried to buy a couch for $3000 once. The salesman said "that's our most popular model, we're all out for 6 weeks". I said why can't I have that one? He said "I need that for the display, how else would I sell them?"

this is what Amanda and I face daily. Won't someone help us, the perpetually inconvenienced?

Ghetto Photo Girl said...

Perpetually Inconvenienced is playing in Hollywood this weekend. I hear they're a good band.