Everyone has done it. You go into a retail store with a specific product in mind, find the item, and purchase it. No problems right? Easy and straightforward right? WRONG. I don't know what it is in the air or the water but the last two days have been shopping NIGHTMARES.
Incident #1
Location: Home Depot, West Little Rock
Time: Yesterday 12:00noon
Co-worker buddy (CWB) & I had gone to get a new grate for his BBQ grill. We found the grill without any problem and proceeded to pay for it at the self-checkout machines. He was using a debit card like he had on numerous occassions in the past. For some reason, even with the assistance of the cashier, we were unable to get the machine to accept his debit card. She even went as far as to run it in her own machine (like CWB was voluntarily going to give her his PIN) to no avail. We had to leave the store, go to the bank, and then come back to complete the transaction with CASH.
Time it should have taken to complete the shopping event: 10 minutes
Actual time it took to complete the event: 25 minutes
*****
Incident #2
Location: Walmart, West Little Rock
Time: Today, 12:15 pm
Same aforementioned grill. CWB now needed a new propane tank. How difficult could that be, right? You bring your old one, exchange it for a new one, pay for it and you should be on your merry way. 1) We thought you didn't exchange the tank until they were ready to get the new one out of lock up. But that's too logical. You had to bring your old one into the store with you. That required CWB going ALL the way back to the car to get it, and then after bringing it to the store, only to find out his was obsolete and they wouldn't take it. But they did say Home Depot might accept older tanks.
So off we go to Home Depot - nope. They didn't accept the tank either. Back to Walmart to purchase a new tank. Easy right? Just tell the cashier that you wanted a tank, they scan the barcode in their notebook, and send someone to get the tank out of lockup? WRONG. The first cashier CWB went to didn't know how to do it. Had to call a manager that never showed up after waiting for a LONG time. Ended up waiting for the cashier next to him who knew how to ring it up. But then we had to wait umpteen minutes for someone to come get it out of lock up. Actually, CWB had to go and find someone to do that as well after we had waited for a while.
Time it should have taken to complete the shopping event: 10 minutes
Actual time it took to complete the event: 25 minutes
*****
Incident #3
Location: Best Buy, West Little Rock
Time: Today, 1:00 pm
After being severely frustrated, we thought a last stop to Best Buy might soothe our nerves. CWB found a DVD he wanted to buy so he proceeded to pay for it. And he even had cash this time. Found a lane without any people waiting and prepared to sail clear through. Not so fast. That lane didn't accept cash payments. WTF?????? Only accepted digital transactions (i.e. credit/debit cards). So we ended up having to wait in a longer line to pay CASH for one stinkin' DVD.
Time it should have taken to complete the shopping event: 1 minute
Actual time it took to complete the event: 10 minutes
Sometimes you just can't win.
****
Overheard at Best Buy:
Store employee : "HP makes really really good computers, just make sure you get the extended service plan."
[Author's note: Ummm...yeah, if they make such GOOD computers, why do you need a service plan???]
Excuse me while I go and pound something into oblivion. Frustration doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. More like, "resistance is FUTILE." I think I'm going to make that my life's motto. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Addendum - Incident #4
Location: Harvest Foods, Little Rock
Time: Today, 4pm
Received a call from CWB later this afternoon telling me about the icing on the cake. He had stopped off at a grocery store on the way home to get some meat to grill. The grocery store was almost completely empty, making CWB one of the only shoppers in the store at the time. He picked up what he needed, paid for it and proceeded to leave the store. He then realized he had forgotten to pick up some soda (which was on sale - 4 12-packs for $10) so he dropped the stuff off at the car and came back into the store to pick up the sodas. Turn around time: Probably only about a minute.
He went back to the exact SAME cashier that had checked him out not more than two minutes prior, soft drinks in hand. The cashier told him that the sale price on the soda was only valid with an accompanying $10 purchase. CWB was like, "But I just bought $30 worth of stuff. You checked me out." The cashier responded, "How do I know that? I see so many people everyday - I don't remember every face I see." CWB belabored his point some more saying how he was the only customer in the store, how he just walked out with $30 of groceries not more than a few minutes before that. The cashier finally relented and said he'd guess he'd make an exception in this one case.
Umm...yeah. What's the matter with people these days??
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