Tempting fate at Sam's Club.

Good afternoon!

Sometimes when I'm out and about I think, "What's going to happen to me today that's going to be blog worthy?"  Admittedly, since I no longer work the Noelle C and Elsie W...I have to look harder for material.  (Although if you want to catch my adventures with Elsie W all in one place, check out "Not While I'm Chewing!")

Most days I don't have to look too hard. Things just happen, as my regular readers all know.  

Take yesterday, for example.  I had to run over to Sam's Club to pick up, what else, a prescription.  That transaction went smoothly. There was no one in my way, no foul ups with the information, and the prescription itself cost $2.00.  

Feeling pretty good about things, I then used the restroom. Normally a place where weird things happen, my experience this time was...completely and utterly un-blog worthy.

I picked up a few items, maybe 15.  More certainly than I wanted to try and push through self check.  (Peaches loves self check. I'm not a huge fan.  I tend to get into an argument with the machine about whether or not all my items are in the bagging area.  It's not pretty.)  So I looked for an open cash register with a person.  Since it was that magical time of day when the lunch crowd is gone and the after work crown hasn't shown up yet, there were only two registers open and both were getting full.  I popped into one line and settled in for a wait.

Had it ended there, there would be no story.

The woman in front of me had a very full cart.  She looked at me and asked if I wanted to jump ahead of her to save time.That's very nice. I do that sometimes, but not generally for someone who has multiple items in a cart.  I thanked her but did not go ahead. There was no rush and thus far everything had been so normal.

Oh if only.

A man walked up behind me holding a couple items. Now, I figure, it's a good idea to be nice to people, especially is someone has already tried being nice to you.  So I told the man he should go ahead of me.  

Pay attention now, because this is where it all starts to unravel.

The man said, "Thank you."

If only he'd left it at that.

But he didn't.

Then he said, "I have two items and I'm paying with cash."

Now, normally I don't pay that close attention to what people around me say, especially since he didn't really seem to be saying it to me so much as making a pronouncement to everyone within a couple of feet of us that he fully expected this treatment as his GOD-GIVEN- RIGHT that he SHOULD go ahead of me because HE only had two things and he was paying with CASH which, as we ALL know is the way people who are always RIGHT should be paying.

Maybe it was his tone of voice. Maybe it was the fact that he underscored how many items he had and that he was paying with cash while the rest of us unwashed were standing there with full carts waiting to pay with debit cards.

Whatever it was, I started timing him.  Because this is how things become funny.

First of all, he did not have two things, he had three things, one of which was the metric ton container of Metamucil.  For which he had a coupon.

But, you may say, Sam's Club does not accept coupons.

Yes, that is correct.  They do not.  Anyone with a membership is fully aware of that fact. 

Except this guy.

Now, had the cashier just said, "We don't accept coupons" and moved on, or had the guy not had his wife with him, this would be the end of the story. But no.

The cashier said, "Do you still want this item?"

This began a discussion between the man and the wife.  Do we really want to buy the bale of Metamucil if we can't save 45 cents?

They decided they wanted the item.

Then the cashier (and note, she's just doing her job) said, "If you spend 20 cents more, you qualify for $20 off your order if you apply for a Sam's club credit card."

This is where I rolled my eyes.  Honey, for 20 cents, don't even mention it.  you have nothing in this building that's under ten bucks and this guy just spent time debating the 45 cent coupon question.

The man's response was somewhat different.  He launched into a mush mouthed rant about how he doesn't have credit cards and he only pays in cash.  

At which point the cashier and I both rolled our eyes.  To each other. It was a great moment.

So she tells him his total, he gives her money, and she has to make change.  Not that she didn't know how to make change, but cashiers today simply don't handle as much cash as I did when I worked the register and therefore they aren't in that smooth money handling rhythm.  the cashier was a little clumsy getting the change out of the drawer and the man was quite clumsy getting it from her.

Total time of this transaction:  5 minutes and 43 seconds.

By this time I'd put my items on the counter, UPC code side up.  I had my debit card at the ready.  We chatted about how great a "free plum day" would be, the cashier, the lady behind me, and I when the bag of plums I bought didn't ring up right away.  She checked my age because two of my items were wine.The cashier loaded my items into a cart, I paid with my card and I was on my way.

Total time of my transaction, with wine and plums that didn't ring up:  2 minutes and 14 seconds.

Yep, the lesson here is that if you are having a smooth shopping experience someplace...don't tempt fate by trying to be nice. Just keep your head down and try to get through it without something blog worthy happening to you.