Monday, 6 July 2015

When All You Need Is Some Chocolate

The other day was one of those long, difficult and confusing days that only year end/tax season can give you. The kind of day where you're already trying to not cry because of some family drama (over a cat of all things), and by the end of your workday - for your day job - you're going to have three hours of extra bookkeeping to do at some point tonight - you're feeling like you've been through only the first of several wringers in a commercial laundromat.

So when Hubby called to request that I stop on the way home to get cream for the coffee, and some munchies for the game, and suggested that I get a treat for myself, I thought, ooh. Lindor chocolate.

I stopped at this Save-On Foods on the way home. Don't be fooled by the misnomer, by the way. I picked up the cream and some potato chips, and I wandered around until I finally found the bulk bins that house the Lindts. It took a while because I had to go through the book aisle to find them. Poor me.

The dark chocolate balls were on sale (exciting!) and there was a NEW flavour, citrus, which sounded tantalizing. The citrus balls were not on sale, so being the honest soul that I am, I wrote down the bin numbers for both chocolates.

I made my way to the express till, the line up for which was only slightly less long than those of the other ten tills that were open. Which is all of them. Every single till was open, and they were all at least five people deep.

And, I got the new girl.

Usually this isn't a problem. Usually.

Since the chocolates were the most important purchase, they were the first on the belt. I dutifully informed the cashier that one number was for the dark chocolates and that the other was for the citrus. She put the two dark balls on the scale and punched in the SKU. Then she punched in the SKU again. She was reaching for the one citrus ball when I pointed out that she'd just charged me twice for the dark balls. It even displayed so on the till screen.

"But there are two," she said with a perplexed look on her face.

"They're sold by weight, not by each," I replied. "And you just sold them to me twice."

The look of confusion only increased as she looked at the screen, and read back to me the per gram amount as if it were the amount I were going to pay. "See," she said. "It's only that much, and there are two."

At this point I realized three things:

1. She did not understand the difference between sold by weight and sold by each, nor that if it was by each, she wouldn't have had to put them on the scale.
2. She didn't even know how to read her till.
3. I was not in the right frame of mind to try to explain any of these concepts to her in such a way that would a) teach her b) without making her feel like a useless idiot. I wasn't even in the mood to bring over a supervisor and hold up a long line of tired looking folks just so I could have a fucking chocolate.

"Take them off," I said.

She looked perplexed again. "Just take them both off."

She did, and she managed to scan everything else in without too much trouble, and I know what you're thinking: so you had to pay for some chocolate twice! How much difference could it really be? Buddy, Lindt isn't cheap shit. It makes a huge difference!

Anyway, on my way out I thought I'd stop by the service counter and say, "Hey, so, some training for your tellers before you throw them to the wolves by themselves on an express till at the just-got-off-work rush would probably be cool." But the line up there was even longer.

So I left and walked out to the car, and just as I was starting it Hubby phoned to see if I was okay (because I was taking so long. Stupid book aisle). I said yeah.

"Are you crying?" he asked.

"I needed some chocolate," I said. "And I didn't get any."

I then related the whole story.

"Just come home and have some supper," he said.

So I did. And afterwards he went online to fill in the customer satisfaction survey, which was requested at the bottom of my receipt by the way. I eventually got an automatically generated "we'll get in touch with you" emails. I'm still waiting. . .

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