*am disrespectful to supposed authority
*am impatient with incompetence
*have overt eye roll tendencies
*refuse to suffer fools gladly
*often rely on thinly-veiled sarcasm
and my favorite flaw (I can have a favorite, right? or is that a flaw?)
*ignore the Meijer customer rulebook
over the years, I have religiously developed this flaw, or as I prefer to call it, axiom (first time to use that word!). a recent visit to Meijer reaffirmed my inability to shed my carefully crafted/tested axiom (just like saying it! ax-iom, axi-om, ax-i-om)...
before I said goodbye to the wacky world of fishing aisle, a nagging thought struck me, "what if barrel swivels are important?" having no idea what I was looking for (or why), I grabbed one of the smaller than the palm of my hand bag of barrel swivels. see pic below.
mid-way through my unlimited u-scan check-out experience, the computer screen yelled at me to, "please place item on belt."
the itemized on-screen list indicated that the last item I scanned and placed on the belt was the baggie of barrel swivels. my eyes darted to the belt, not there, and nowhere to be seen.
my heart sunk, my palms sweated, I desperately searched for the barely-a-gram-in-weight baggie before...
too late. my heretofore happy-green lane light snuffed out, replaced with the dreaded red blinking light.
I was now at the mercy of the Podium of Power.
a nanosecond of hope dashed when I realized the current Steward of the Podium of Power was the third-string player in Meijer's world of cashiers. *gulp and overt eyeroll*
he glanced at his Podium's screen, looked my way...
in my desperateness (always playing beat the clock), I waved with a smile, even a little "oops" chuckle as I pointed to my glaring red blinker above my lane.
SotPoP tapped his screen acknowledging that he was on his way to help...
my smile widened, I even let my eyes sparkle. that's called: sin-cer-i-ty
he walked from the PoP...
I whispered, "good, good. that's right, over here..."
then he ducked into a different blinking red light lane.
DOOMED!
and no, I'm not being dramatic. that other Meijer customer's dilemma was that she wanted to void out an item and argue about whether it was or was not on sale!
Meijer newspaper ads were searched, phone calls to the department were made, and subsequent 'can you hold?' minutes were burned-- do you have any idea how many years I was now sentenced to wait?!
and that's the exact moment my Meijer axiom kicked in.
ignore the Meijer customer rulebook
in the past, whenever there's been a problem that only a Meijer associate could solve (and there were, of course, no associates to be found), I went to the closest in-house phone and started dialing numbers; certain that someone would pick up, or the Watchers via security camera would alert an associate that a customer dared to pick up a phone. #alwaysworks
but my tried-and-true solution couldn't save me here. while Sid and Nancy argued, my desperateness level ratcheted up several notches. I turned to my Sherlock Holmes skills to analyze the Mystery of the Missing Bag of Barrel Swivels.
"the belt swallowed them." (7 seconds, a new PR for my brain)
I lifted the first section of conveyer belt. nothing. right about the moment I hefted the longer/heavier second conveyer belt section, Sid went silent and began the process of extricating himself from Nancy, suddenly interested in my red light. ;)
and there it was, the precious little bag of something that helped fishing somehow, and miraculously ended my suffering.
I am always loathe to promote bumper sticker triteness, but I do recall this one:
"we all have flaws. the end."
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