Shifting Gears

This evening we ate dinner at church and then Burl wanted to go run by Home Depot to check on a riding mower on which he was trying to negotiate a lower price (it’s gone….he lost) and since it was right next to Wally World we ran in for a few groceries.  Here’s how our checkout experience went this evening:

Wally World Cashier (WWC):  Did you find everything you were looking for? (NOTE:  Sentence ended in a preposition!)

Me:  No I didn’t this evening.

WWC:  LLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG  PAUSE

Me:  So was that a rhetorical question or were you actually interested in whether or not I found everything I needed?

WWC:  I was just making conversation.

Me:  If you really don’t want to know the answer to the question, why do you ask?

WWC:  Dunno – just trying to be friendly.

Me:  I understand you wanting to be friendly and I appreciate that (note my effort to avoid sarcasm) – but if you don’t really care, I would rather you not ask.  I had a coupon for a free package of Orville Reddenbacher popcorn snacks – it’s only good at Wal-Mart and it expires September 30th but I couldn’t find them.

WWC:  We sell more Pop Secret.

By now Burl and I were just shaking our heads and wondering if anything could penetrate his thick skull.  However, I do have the name and phone number of the store manager and plan to call him tomorrow just for fun.  It will be interesting to see if he has anything semi-intelligent to say.

If this whole scenario weren’t so pathetic – and so typical of customer un-service – it would actually be rather funny.  Too bad it’s the norm these days.

Oh well, hard to mess up a great day that yielded a couple of hours of pool time.  With a forecast of sunny skies and 80’s for the next several days, our pool is staying open.