Wild world at Wally World

A couple of interesting things.

Today I was doing a little shopping by myself, for groceries mainly (though I also picked up a copy of "Phantom of the Opera") and when I got to the checkout, the lady there was elderly, lisped, had thick glasses and appeared to be hard of hearing. I smiled at her and she asked how I was doing, whether I had found everything all right etc. I answered pleasantly while loading my groceries into the cart. I noticed however that when she scanned the two packags of Oreos, that she got one, but I didn't hear the other one give the "beep." Simultaneously as she scanned it another register had given the sound and I wondered if perhaps she had mistaken that for hers. When I had finished and paid and received my "receit" (inside joke), I checked and sure enough, there was only one "cookies" on the receipt. I waited while the elderly lady checked out another person and then went up to her and showed her while I said "I think you only scanned one of the packages of Oreos I had." The lady who had just been checked out said "Oh, you'd better watch out, he's being honest!" and then smiled and went off. The elderly lady peered through her glasses at the receipt, putting her finger upon the bag of oranges and saying "yeah, I'm not sure if that's the correct price or not." I told her she misunderstood and pointed down the the cookies saying that I was talking about the Oreos, the cookies. I repeated this several times and she finally asked me "oh, so you only want one?"
I said no! I wanted both packages, but she had only charged me for one. She didn't seem to understand and gave me a strange look and said "well, if you want to return it, you'll have to take it to customer service." I told her I DIDN'T want to return it, I wanted to pay for it! She had missed it when she had been scanning the items. She said "well that doesn't matter, you'll have to take it to customer service."

I was feeling rather exasperated, having tried to explain myself several times. I wanted to shout out "I'm trying to be honest here!" She finally obliged me by scanning it and then letting me pay for it. "Thank you!" I said. As I left, one of the people at customer service said "was she trying to take your oreos?" I told her no, she had missed one of the packages when she was scanning them and I was just trying to make sure I paid for it. She didn't understand either and I had to repeat myself a couple of times before she understood what I was saying. Am I just not able to communicate properly or do people just not comprehend honesty these days? The first lady (being checked out) understood immediately!

Another interesting thing that happened as we were driving home from church Sunday afternoon, is that as we went past a gas station, my brother suddenly jumped straight up in his seat and said "That guy just drove away with the pump!" And it was true. A jeep with three guys in it had apparently forgotten to take the nozzle out of their vehicle and ended up driving a short ways with the nozzle and hose, breaking it off at the pump! They stopped and I'm sure were a bit sheepish about the whole thing :)