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coffeeteaandmePreamble-- I have not been idle, I've just been on FaceBook. Which is absolutely being idle, but I *have* been writing and posting. On the app FaceBook Notes. When I realized (about 5 minutes ago) that what I would have normally posted on this fine blog I was actually using Notes for, I tracked back to the date of my last post and put up everything I've written on notes - like five or six entries. Including, lucky you, today's post.
*and now, after a day of delightful crowds and excellent co-workers is marred by a persistent tummy ache that had me lying down between sets, we're overdue for one of my utterly unfounded and narcissistic rants, wherein I perorate enthusiastically on subjects that mean nothing to anyone else, solely to exercise my sarcasm and release a lot of tension while offending no one. OK, probably no one...*
I popped out to the store last night after faire to pick up Iron Man 3 (6 years, iron anniversary, get it?) and hit the grocery for my deeply troubled tummy before heading home. At the door to the Best Buy I am greeted by a portly old security guard doing the power stance in the middle of the doorway, like the heavy in a lame rap video. He steps aside at my unchecked stride and says in a no-nonsense, this-store-is-mine tone, "You have 4 minutes to do anything you came here to do."
Really. Thanks for greeting me so courteously. I satisfy myself with breezing by without breaking stride, assuring him "that's fine, I'm only here for one thing". I wonder in passing if Paul Blart, Mall Cop there would have stepped aside for anyone besides a white woman in a pretty skirt. (just trying to be aware of my privilege)
A helpful young employee exerts his powers to track down the blu-ray for me (not as easy as it sounds), and I check out and get to the Safeway. I locate my few items and decide, what the hell, everyone's on the self-checkout, I'll go to the express lane, which only has one order finishing up. However, in the time-honored "best practices" of grocery stores since I was fresh out of college, the checkout person in charge of the line called EXPRESS is the person who least epitomizes the term. At this hour our woman has stopped any pretense of the claim made by her helpful sign, and goes on to complete a rambling conversation with her customer about the advantages of where her daughter just moved before starting on my small pile of things.
While she's ringing things up, I make a massive mistake, and ask if they have any cloth shopping bags left. In doing this I commit to a course of action that will make this transaction take five times longer than it should, and which, in my sorry digestive state, will feel even longer.
It's not like I haven't been there in Customer Service land. Somehow when a new and inarguably inferior product replaces a better one, store employees can come to respond to the repeated requests for the old product with a natural, albeit utterly unjustified, fit of pique. Our lady stops dead and looks at me as though she has never heard of anything of the kind, and is politely wondering what in all of creation I could possibly be on about. I hang on to my pleasant face, and say the words I really don't need to say: "Last year when I was here, you had very nice cloth bags. I bought three, and loved them, but I accidentally lost two of them. I was told earlier you might have some in the back, do you know if there's any around?" I already knew the answer, but the path had been chosen.
Seeing that it was no good to deny the very existence of the bags (In the past, the words "I have never heard of that" delivered with as passive and vacuous a stare as can be mustered is the response that has had me an inch from grabbing a store employee by her chicken neck and shrieking "It's Guinness! GUINNESS you hopeless cow! You run a beer and wine store with a single lane of instant soup and a rack of gum at the register so you can call it a convenience store; tell me you don't stock it, tell me you're too 'Murican to carry an import, but don't sit on that stool and tell me you've NEVER HEARD OF GUINNESS!!")
Sorry, back to our woman at the counter. Still staring like I'm asking for cappuccino flavored potato chips, she replies "I don't think so, but I can ask a manager."
"That won't be necessary," I say quickly, and am handily ignored while she strides purposefully off to confirm her assertion. While she's gone I ring up a few more things, because I'd really like to get out of here. When she returns she chastises me for touching my groceries and confirms her statement: "We don't have those anymore. But we have *these* bags which work just fine." and she gestures to the brightly colored bags made of recycled milk cartons that have disappointed me so in the past.
"No," I reply firmly, "I like the cloth bags the best. They're very strong, and I can launder them". "Well *these* bags are strong too, and all you have to do is wipe them out." she persists, countering my unreasonable demands for quality, while bagging my half gallon of milk in a plastic bag by itself, and unnecessarily double- bagging the next two bags of items. I start to twitch. I don't feel like explaining that I live in a trailer, and the gargantuan pile of grocery bags that accumulates in my tiny kitchen ends up causing more chaos than I want to deal with.
"Thanks, no."
"And you know laundering the bags doesn't necessarily help. People have been getting horribly, horribly sick from reusing bags. Just don't put any meat in them." she continues.
Now I'm really lost. I don't know what the hell she's advocating here. She's shooting off into some dark corner of her own brain, fuelled by back-fence biddy chatter, and I just can't follow. I try being jolly.
"Well, that's why I like bags I can launder. I like your bags the best. I was hoping to buy more of them from you."
"Well *these* are very good bags too, I was only trying to explain, you know." She manages to actually sound affronted. Now she's getting insulted about my stubborn refusal to be open-minded about new and alternative bagging methods, and my small-minded clinging to this whole "cloth bag" fantasy that she was tricked into having to admit even existed in the first place. She's ready to debate this thing with me all night if need be.
Honest to God, this only happens to me in D.C. Is it the proximity to Congress that creates this whole atmosphere of debate? I'm all about a good argument, but I'd like to decide how I carry my own things, thank you very much, and the check-out line isn't the place to have my carefully thought-out opinions called into question. I pay for my things and roll my basket over to the service counter, where I might find a sane manager.
While I'm talking to her, and she's at least succinctly, if not regretfully, saying they have no such bags anymore, and in the five stores she's worked at in the last four months she has seen none of them, I re-pack the five bags of groceries into two reasonable, carry-able bags. As I finish this the check-out lady (who has watched me, obviously undercutting her authority, bitch that I am) comes sailing over, waving two items she failed to bag (you had one job, lady), saying loudly, "Ma'am, you forgot these items! Ma'am, you left these at my register!" for all the world as though I had littered on her front lawn.
At this point I've had it. This is now over. I open my mouth in surprise, and start to effuse, "Oh, you are so sweet, thank you, thank you for being so nice - *nonononono*, please don't bother -" as she picks up one of my discarded bags from the cart and starts to shove the items into it - "it was so nice of you to bring these over, thank you so much!" I enthuse, quickly stuff the items into one of my other bags and hit the door, successfully ditching the unhelpful lady and her less than helpful bags.
Now I know why the self-checkout lanes are so popular here. Holy crap on a cracker.
*and now, after a day of delightful crowds and excellent co-workers is marred by a persistent tummy ache that had me lying down between sets, we're overdue for one of my utterly unfounded and narcissistic rants, wherein I perorate enthusiastically on subjects that mean nothing to anyone else, solely to exercise my sarcasm and release a lot of tension while offending no one. OK, probably no one...*
I popped out to the store last night after faire to pick up Iron Man 3 (6 years, iron anniversary, get it?) and hit the grocery for my deeply troubled tummy before heading home. At the door to the Best Buy I am greeted by a portly old security guard doing the power stance in the middle of the doorway, like the heavy in a lame rap video. He steps aside at my unchecked stride and says in a no-nonsense, this-store-is-mine tone, "You have 4 minutes to do anything you came here to do."
Really. Thanks for greeting me so courteously. I satisfy myself with breezing by without breaking stride, assuring him "that's fine, I'm only here for one thing". I wonder in passing if Paul Blart, Mall Cop there would have stepped aside for anyone besides a white woman in a pretty skirt. (just trying to be aware of my privilege)
A helpful young employee exerts his powers to track down the blu-ray for me (not as easy as it sounds), and I check out and get to the Safeway. I locate my few items and decide, what the hell, everyone's on the self-checkout, I'll go to the express lane, which only has one order finishing up. However, in the time-honored "best practices" of grocery stores since I was fresh out of college, the checkout person in charge of the line called EXPRESS is the person who least epitomizes the term. At this hour our woman has stopped any pretense of the claim made by her helpful sign, and goes on to complete a rambling conversation with her customer about the advantages of where her daughter just moved before starting on my small pile of things.
While she's ringing things up, I make a massive mistake, and ask if they have any cloth shopping bags left. In doing this I commit to a course of action that will make this transaction take five times longer than it should, and which, in my sorry digestive state, will feel even longer.
It's not like I haven't been there in Customer Service land. Somehow when a new and inarguably inferior product replaces a better one, store employees can come to respond to the repeated requests for the old product with a natural, albeit utterly unjustified, fit of pique. Our lady stops dead and looks at me as though she has never heard of anything of the kind, and is politely wondering what in all of creation I could possibly be on about. I hang on to my pleasant face, and say the words I really don't need to say: "Last year when I was here, you had very nice cloth bags. I bought three, and loved them, but I accidentally lost two of them. I was told earlier you might have some in the back, do you know if there's any around?" I already knew the answer, but the path had been chosen.
Seeing that it was no good to deny the very existence of the bags (In the past, the words "I have never heard of that" delivered with as passive and vacuous a stare as can be mustered is the response that has had me an inch from grabbing a store employee by her chicken neck and shrieking "It's Guinness! GUINNESS you hopeless cow! You run a beer and wine store with a single lane of instant soup and a rack of gum at the register so you can call it a convenience store; tell me you don't stock it, tell me you're too 'Murican to carry an import, but don't sit on that stool and tell me you've NEVER HEARD OF GUINNESS!!")
Sorry, back to our woman at the counter. Still staring like I'm asking for cappuccino flavored potato chips, she replies "I don't think so, but I can ask a manager."
"That won't be necessary," I say quickly, and am handily ignored while she strides purposefully off to confirm her assertion. While she's gone I ring up a few more things, because I'd really like to get out of here. When she returns she chastises me for touching my groceries and confirms her statement: "We don't have those anymore. But we have *these* bags which work just fine." and she gestures to the brightly colored bags made of recycled milk cartons that have disappointed me so in the past.
"No," I reply firmly, "I like the cloth bags the best. They're very strong, and I can launder them". "Well *these* bags are strong too, and all you have to do is wipe them out." she persists, countering my unreasonable demands for quality, while bagging my half gallon of milk in a plastic bag by itself, and unnecessarily double- bagging the next two bags of items. I start to twitch. I don't feel like explaining that I live in a trailer, and the gargantuan pile of grocery bags that accumulates in my tiny kitchen ends up causing more chaos than I want to deal with.
"Thanks, no."
"And you know laundering the bags doesn't necessarily help. People have been getting horribly, horribly sick from reusing bags. Just don't put any meat in them." she continues.
Now I'm really lost. I don't know what the hell she's advocating here. She's shooting off into some dark corner of her own brain, fuelled by back-fence biddy chatter, and I just can't follow. I try being jolly.
"Well, that's why I like bags I can launder. I like your bags the best. I was hoping to buy more of them from you."
"Well *these* are very good bags too, I was only trying to explain, you know." She manages to actually sound affronted. Now she's getting insulted about my stubborn refusal to be open-minded about new and alternative bagging methods, and my small-minded clinging to this whole "cloth bag" fantasy that she was tricked into having to admit even existed in the first place. She's ready to debate this thing with me all night if need be.
Honest to God, this only happens to me in D.C. Is it the proximity to Congress that creates this whole atmosphere of debate? I'm all about a good argument, but I'd like to decide how I carry my own things, thank you very much, and the check-out line isn't the place to have my carefully thought-out opinions called into question. I pay for my things and roll my basket over to the service counter, where I might find a sane manager.
While I'm talking to her, and she's at least succinctly, if not regretfully, saying they have no such bags anymore, and in the five stores she's worked at in the last four months she has seen none of them, I re-pack the five bags of groceries into two reasonable, carry-able bags. As I finish this the check-out lady (who has watched me, obviously undercutting her authority, bitch that I am) comes sailing over, waving two items she failed to bag (you had one job, lady), saying loudly, "Ma'am, you forgot these items! Ma'am, you left these at my register!" for all the world as though I had littered on her front lawn.
At this point I've had it. This is now over. I open my mouth in surprise, and start to effuse, "Oh, you are so sweet, thank you, thank you for being so nice - *nonononono*, please don't bother -" as she picks up one of my discarded bags from the cart and starts to shove the items into it - "it was so nice of you to bring these over, thank you so much!" I enthuse, quickly stuff the items into one of my other bags and hit the door, successfully ditching the unhelpful lady and her less than helpful bags.
Now I know why the self-checkout lanes are so popular here. Holy crap on a cracker.
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-09 02:30 pm (UTC)Your check out experience sounds like my recent experience with contractors, a leaky wall, and electricity!
no subject
Date: 2014-09-11 01:11 pm (UTC)Epilogue
Date: 2014-10-03 09:11 pm (UTC)I would have avoided the Safeway after that, but I had to go back just once more, and parade my Trader Joe's bags in front of them...:)