Never again, Pick and Save! This was the pineapple that broke my back.

Good morning!

It's been a difficult week for the family here. Hubby's father passed away suddenly.  Hubby has been out of town, handling arrangements and helping his sisters clean out Dad's place. I would be there, but there were things here that needed attending to, the biggest of which was getting Peaches' car to pass emissions testing. This involved having to take her car in for some lengthy repair. Since I work at home and she does not, I let her drive my beloved Cube.

This meant I was without a car for a goodly amount of time this week.  Without a car...pretty much alone....dead of winter.  You'd think I managed to clear out my overloaded DVR.  You'd be wrong.  But that's another story.

Anyway, we got the car stuff all sorted and so yesterday I was able to leave the house on my very own in my very own car.  I actually put on pants with a zipper for the occasion.  This was a big deal.

It's not like I went anyplace grand. I went to a couple second hand book stores/video stores to find a copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.  I can't believe I don't own that.  With Alan Rickman's passing, however, I had a yearning to see my second favorite of his films.  (The first would be Blow Dry. Honestly, if you haven't seen it, you should.)  Then I had to go to the grocery store.

I would have had to pass at least two other grocery stores to get to Woodman's, and I was getting tired.  This was, after all, my first foray outside in a few days. I decided, against my better judgement, to go to the dressed up version of Pick and Save...Metro Market.  Metro Market is just a Pick and Save with dimmer lighting and more food on buffets all out in the open so shoppers can just help themselves randomly...drive by snacking.  If I didn't need exactly two things, I wouldn't have stopped, but I needed more clementines and more of those Weight Watchers Snack Size fudge bars.  Seriously nothing calms my irritated stomach more than one of those little guys.  45 calories, and so much more effective than an antacid.  The snack size bars are hard to come by, they are usually sold out, so if I find them, I buy a couple boxes of them because they are the best.  

I get into the store and there are no clementines. Seriously.  Every other store in the WORLD has bags and bags and BAGS of those lovely little mini orange dealies, but not Metro Market. Nope. Must not be fancy enough for Metro Market.  I can get five kinds of brie at that store, but not one clementine to be had.  So I got some pineapple instead.  

On my way to the frozen foods aisle I picked up a couple other items.  I had a very small cart, one of those cute double decker things you're starting to see in stores.  Now, Woodmans has a rule that those carts cannot go outside. I didn't see the same sign for the one I was using,  but I figured, looking at the items in my cart, I could just carry them out, ideally in two bags.

I got to the check out line and I said to the clerk, "If you could put this in two bags that would be great.  I have  a bit of a walk to my car."  

He nodded and passed that message on to the bagger, a girl who looked like she had all the light energy of a mushroom.  I now know the meaning of the words "dead eyes."

I didn't pay attention to her bagging, I was busy watching the items rings up on the screen.  I paid, and I looked at the cart. Two bags in the top deck. All nice and waiting for me.

Awesome.

I rolled the cart to the entry where I picked up the bags and thought, "I don't see the ice cream bars."  I double check and there it is, a third bag, this one with the heaviest items, in the lower basket of the cart.  

Let's talk about this for a moment.  I mean, I asked for two bags, if it was possible. The dead eyed checker never said, "I had to put it in three."  She never said, "There's a bag on the bottom."  (These are all things that other baggers have done.  It's called common courtesy.)  No, instead she put two bags on top and wished me well, never telling me she'd buried the heaviest bag in the bottom.

I was a little annoyed, but what can I expect...it may say Metro Market on the door, but it's really a Pick and Save and that's what I get for shopping here.  I reached for the bag and pull, but because it's heavy, and tall, and she put the boxes with the sharp corners in there, I snag it on the top basket, tearing a pretty sizable hole in the bag.  I set down my other bags to free the third without further tearing the thing.  That's when I also discovered that Dead Eyes managed to arrange the items in one of the other bags so that the top of the plastic container holding the pineapple had broken the plastic seal strip and popped off and there was now pineapple juice pretty much on everything.

Oh good.

I realize she's not a doctor and thus did not have to take the oath that starts, "First do no harm."  And maybe asking that the groceries be put in two bags was too much.  And maybe three didn't fit in the top basket  (no, three would have fit in the top basket). Shouldn't the minimum expectation of ANY grocery shopper be that when they get the groceries to the car, the groceries AREN'T COVERED IN PINEAPPLE JUICE?

Never again, Pick and Save.  Call yourself whatever you want.  I've got Woodman's and soon I'll have a Meijer's and you will long be a distant memory with your overpriced everything and your dead eyed baggers and your check out clerks who have whole conversations with each other while totally
ignoring you.  (That didn't happen this time, but it has...)    Never again! 

Sarah's A Single Parent, #1: Fit Bit fights, a new gym, "ARE YOU SERIOUS" and family shame averted. ( Hubby makes the blog.)

Good evening all!

So Hubby is being a mountain man for two weeks, visiting his sister in Colorado.  (No, robbers, I'm not alone. My surly adult son, my four attack cats, and my new set of CUTCO knives are with me.)  I'm telling people I'm a single parent, although my children are 21 and 18, and the 18 year old, who is moving out this next weekend  (I'd get misty eyed, but at this point, so much of her stuff is piled all over the house I just want it OUT!)  So it's not like I'm wrangling toddlers and getting kids to school. My kids don't even get up before...two PM.

Anyway, Hubby bid farewell on Sunday...and it's Wednesday.  And things have been...well, you know how my life is normally?  Yeah, now picture it without the adult supervision Hubby brings to the table.

Like that.

Let's start with the Fit Bit.  Two weeks ago I got Hubby and myself Fit Bit Charges for his birthday.  Couples fitness, competition, married shaming, all that fun stuff.  What I found out is that I don't obsess about Hubby and his fitness. I obsess about the Fit Bit on my wrist and why it hates me.

oh no, Sarah, you say, the Fit Bit doesn't hate you. It accurately measures your steps, your calories burned, and your sleep time. And if you input the food you eat, it'll tell you when you've eaten too much.

Yeah, that last part?  I'm not doing that.

I count my steps. In my head. I do. I can tell how many steps it is from my house to several points in my neighborhood.  Fit Bit doesn't count all my steps.  I was at the mall today...Fit Bit didn't count 189 of my steps. I know this because I was counting my steps...out loud. Yep, I'm the crazy fluffy lady at the mall counting out loud. So I didn't feel bad drumming on my steering wheel all the way home (321 steps added) from the mall because, all's fair in Fit Bit steps war, right?

I'll delve more into my Fit Bit battles, I promise, it's going to be epic.

Okay, then yesterday I decided to finally cancel my kids' membership at the 24 hr gym I've been paying $45 bucks a month for them to ignore.  Instead, I got all four of us a membership at a 24 hour gym I can pay $60 bucks a month for all of us to ignore!  (Well, it's 24 hours for the kids, `16 hours for us. The 24 hour membership costs more and frankly, I doubt I'm going to hit the gym past 10 PM ever in my life.  Or before 6 AM. I'm just not that girl.)

So I went in for the great signing up of the membership.  If you recall the battle I did when I joined

Gold's, I wound up making that sales guy cry and get transferred to another store.  It's a story I shared with Pie, the guy who signed me up and thinks he's going to make me thin.

Why do I call him Pie?  Because we had to sign a lot of pages.  When you join a gym for four people, you get to sign the membership agreement four times. And then Pie had to sing four times. Only he was signing his initials and he was signing upside down. So his initials are T.T.  He drew two lines and a single horizontal line.  Pie.  (So when you're at Xperience Fitness in Waukesha...and you see Timothy, call him Pie.  He'll know.)

Look for that to be fun. They are going to have a pool in their new facility. How can this possibly end?  Not BADLY NO!

Then, once again, it's that time of month, the time of month when women my age wonder why on God's Green Earth we need punctuation lessons.  I mean, it's not like we need to know how to writ anything anymore.  We're pretty much done writing.  Reading, not so much, but writing yes.  (Okay, if you think about it, you'll get what I'm saying.  If you don't, well, I can't help you, just keep reading.)  Anyway, so I'm at the big box store in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, and I'm just going to say it, ALL MEN OF WORKING AGE SHOULD BE AT WORK.  So tell me why, why, WHY was there a man in the punctuation protection aisle, blocking most of both sides of the aisle?  I'll tell you why...he was snap chatting someone, sending them pictures of different brands of punctuation protection.  (I noted he wasn't near anything that ALWAYS leaks.  I mean, that's half the aisle on one side. They don't have to restock...because you know, it ALWAYS fails.  Anyway, since he was blocking all of the products I needed to reach, I had to wait for him to leave the aisle, (WITHOUT PICKLING ANYTHING UP...apparently the person he was send pictures to wasn't liking anything he was sending.)  ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW? Middle of the day, middle of the week and this guy in a dress shirt and dress pants and a tie is sending pictures of punctuation protection and BLOCKING ME?  There were roughly 19 people in the whole store.  And he was blocking me in this one aisle.  Really?

But I did manage to save the family from major neighborhood shame.  It's been a dry summer, the grass really hasn't grown that much. Those who mow grass haven't been busy. Until last week.  Yeah, it rained. It rained plenty. And it's going to rain this week. And guess what?  Hubby is gone for two weeks.  Everyone else moved on Sunday, because that's what they do. Everyone except our one neighbor and he's the guy we all say, "whoa, we better mow, that guy just mowed."

Well he mowed yesterday. Which made us the shaggy grass of the neighborhood.  I offered money to Skippy who was too busy working and moving his friends into an apartment.  So I offered money to Peaches who is busy doing whatever it is 18 year old girls do when they're getting ready to move and they only come home to push things into the living room and watch Netflix.  And bake cookies.  I like the cookie.

so I couldn't wait any longer.  I got the mower out of the garage. This isn't going to be hard, I thought. I mean, I'm watching the boom boom redneck truck guy across the street mow...he's just walking. He's strolling like he's got a noisy baby in a stroller. I can do that.

I know you're supposed to pull a cord.  But the only cord I saw was attached to the arm handle and too short to yank and start anything. So I texted hubby.

here's how that went:

Me: How do you turn on the mower?

him:  Just leave it.

Me:  No. Grass is longer than anyone's in the neighborhood. I need to mow.

Him: Call Heidi and ask if her son needs a few bucks. He goes to school in Waukesha. 

 (Heidi is a friend of ours, but I haven't seen her in a very long time and it would be weird for me to randomly call her and ask if her kid who I really haven't seen in a long time would come and mow my grass when I have two perfectly healthy kids who can't make time to do it.)

Me:  I won't be able to tell him how to turn on the mower.  What's the big secret?  I'm not going to steal your job.  I want to cut the d*** grass!

Him:  No secret.  Squeeze the safety bar on the handlebar.  Pull cord.

Okay, so at this point I'm sort of like Laura Dern in the first Jurrasic Park movie, the part where she's looking at the sick dinosaur and muttering to herself and then she reaches into the big pile of poop.  Yeah, that was me trying to figure out what part of the handlebar the safety bar was.  

But I figured it out and I was on my way.

Ya know, I realize I'm out of shape, but I'm watching boom boom truck guy across the street and he's not heaving and shoving like he's dragging a row boat full of supplies across Antarctica.  (It's been hot lately so I've been watching "Shackleton" on DVD.  Very fun.  Very chilly. Man those guys lived through some cold stuff!)  Anyway, he's just strolling along.  La la la.  

Meanwhile I'm like GRUNT, push, drag shove, GRUNT.  I did a few patches and then had to pause for a lady who was my level of fluffiness to walk by. She looked at me with pity because even though both of us were sweating and both of us were working way too hard for our body types, she had a shot at surviving her exercise.

I sent a text to Hubby.

Me:  I'm mowing.  I may just do the front yard.  Leave the back yard. This is hard!

Him:  Great way to get in steps!!!

Then, two solid minutes later, and this is why he's in the blog, he sends me this text:

Push the bar between your thumbs down. Self propelled.

WHAT?  He was keeping that tiny smidge of info to himself until what, I died on the front lawn?  Hey, guess what, self propelled is awesome!  It's rather like being a kite or something. It goes, you go flying behind it. Like being dragged by a horse.   

But mowing with self propulsion is better than now and I managed to finish the front yard. However, pushing and holding things with my thumbs is not something I'm able to do for long stretches, so the front yard is done, the back yard is not. Doesn't matter. The back yard neighbors sort of don't like us anyway.

There you go.  He's been gone less than 4 days.  And this is what's happening around here.

This week I'm renting a 10 foot UHaul truck and driving it down the road so girl child can move.  I've never driven anything bigger than a mini van before.

We are all going to die.

Okay, Target employee, what is it, you say, you do here?

Good morning!

It may surprise some of you, given how often I've mentioned retail customer service fails, that I spent a number of years working in retail.  Yes, I was a truck unloader for Kohl's.  I worked third shift, unloading the truck, opening boxes, and putting clothes on the racks.  Generally I didn't have much contact with the customers, given that the store closed by the time I got there. However, during the holidays, when the store was open much later, I spent quality time doing "recovery" which is a fancy word for "clean up the mess the customers made so that other customers don't think we're a pigsty."  I spent a lot of time in men's sweaters where customers would, and I watched them do this, unfold a sweater, look at it, and then throw it on the floor.  While I was standing less than a foot away FOLDING SWEATERS.

I'm telling you this story to explain that I understand customer service in a retail setting is a painful, thankless job.  However, I also know that if your job title includes the words "customer service" then you best be of some kind of service to the customer.

Take my trip to Target earlier today.  I have not yet jumped the bandwagon from Walmart to Target like so many people have for a couple reasons:  Prices aren't as good, selection isn't anywhere near as good, and Targets aren't open 24 hours a day, which doesn't actually mean that much to me, but I like a store that cares enough about customers to be open whenever the mood to shop strikes me.

We can add one more thing to the list of reasons I don't shop at Target as much as I might.  See, when you go to Walmart, you see the Walmart people working.  Someone is always unloading something, shelving something, or working a cash register.  At Walmart they don't howl, "GOOD MORNING" at you from ten feet away because corporate told them to.  They are too busy working and you are too busy shopping for that sort of nonsense.  If you pass them in an aisle, they'll ask if you need help, but otherwise, they leave you alone until you get to the check out counter and then they are all business.  They don't comment on what you buy (yes, Woodman's checkers, I'm pointing at you.  It's called Neuro water.  Yes, it works, and you've been selling it since you opened.  I would like all Woodman's checkers to STOP STARING AT MY NEURO WATER AND SCAN IT AND PUT IT IN THE DOGGONE BAG) and they don't try to make idle chit chat. They also don't chit chat with their bagger (Again, Woodman's, did I need to know how many people didn't show up to work today and how you feel you should be getting time and half for coming to work on a Saturday?) because most Walmarts have that wheel of bags and the checker bags everything for you.

Target...well let's just say Target's not that efficient...and after today I'm thinking it's because they're too busy paying people to provide NO SERVICE AT ALL.

Here's how this went down:  I bought three items.  Three. My plan was to be in and out of the store in under fifteen minutes. No cart, no list.  I found my three things and, in spite of the very agressive stockers who kept trying to greet me every six feet I walked, I made it to the check out lines.  There were three cash registers open. Three.  On a Saturday morning.

A side note:  Why do big box stores bother having 20 lines for check out when they have no intention of ever opening more than three?  Exactly one day a year, Black Friday, do they have all the lanes open.  The rest of the time it's three.

Anyway, so I look at the lanes.  Lane nine is closest and it looks like the shortest lane, however the checker is an older guy who has checked me out before (that sounds bad) and I know he's not the fastest price gun in the west.  Also, the woman he's currently serving seems to be giving him quite a bit of problems because he's struggling to get her order checked out properly.  So, knowing this is going to take more time than I'm willing to spend, I take a step toward another line.

That's when it happens:

"Oh, Ma'am, I believe line 9 is your best choice."

You've seen these people at Targets, and I know I've had to deal with them at Sam's Clubs.  These people with clip boards who watch the lanes and direct you to the shortest one.  At Sam's Club they scan your items so that your check out time will be faster.  It's a scan scam, don't let them do it. All that does is lock you into a lane no matter what.  Letting them prescan you takes away your choices. Don't do it.

This woman, however, didn't have a scanner.  Nope, her job was only to watch the lanes and direct us.  Except there just weren't that many people waiting.  I mean, yes, the three lanes each had three people in them, but that was it.

But she sounded really sure of herself, so, in spite of my better judgement, I got into lane 9.  And stood there for four minutes while Dexter tried to get this one woman on her way.  The guy in front of me has been in this lane so long he's doing that "Are you serious about this" dance people do when they're stuck in line.

I'm in this line another couple minutes when the lane watcher radios for help.  "Kirsten I need you to come up front please."

So, Lane Watcher can tell people where to go and she can order checkers to come up, but she can't open a cash register herself?  I see this as inefficient and stupid.  Especially when...

A woman got in line behind me and Lane Checker says, "Oh, Kirsten, it's okay.  We don't need help up here."

Really?  All three lines just got LONGER. And Dexter is still struggling with this woman.  (She has nine items.  I don't know what sort of transaction she's trying to do, if she's paying in pennies or what, but she has nine items.)  But no, apparently, the lines are longer, and that's okay with Lane Checker.

A couple ladies walk past Lane Checker with items, and they are looking for a lane.  I want to wave them off mine.  Lane Checker says, "Lane 9 is your best choice."

I want to yell, NO IT ISNT!  I'VE BEEN HERE ALMOST TEN MINUTES.

The women say, "No, we're looking for self check."

Lane Checker says, "We don't have that."

Well, Target, you should!

Back to my lanes.  Now the guy ahead of me is going through and almost done.  I'm next.  Whoo hoo! I look at the other two lanes and see that, not only are they empty, but the people who got in those lanes AFTER I GOT IN 9 are long gone.

And then I hear this:  "Kirsten, we need you up here after all."

WHAT??????????????????????????


Someone walks up to Lane Checker and asked her something. I didn't see the person, but I like to imagine it's the Bobs from "Office Space" asking her the question we all want to know:

 And she says, and I'm not making this up....

"This is my job. This is all I do. I watch the lanes and tell people which ones to go in and then get checkers up here when we need them."

If I hadn't been working with Dexter at this point, trying to get my own order checked out,  I would have yelled over the woman behind me, "WELL YOU'RE VERY BAD AT YOUR JOB!"