Adventures in Shopping

Well, as a general rule, I don't do much shopping except for "drive-by" grocery pick ups. This evening required a run to the grocery store for rolls for Thanksgiving dinner, and since I was going to be out a run by K-Mart for some Christmas lights. None of this should have posed a problem, should of being the operative word.

Walt went with me and we made a stop by the K-Mart on Hull Street for some Christmas lights for the front porch. The store was relatively empty, I don't believe that there were 10 other shoppers in the store. We'd found everything that we had gone in for plus. You know there are usually an extra item or two that you pick up while in the store, just because. Well we found this really cute pair of Christmas slipper socks, but they weren't hooked together. Now you'd think that this would be a problem, but this turned out to be a BIG mistake, at least in checking out.

When I went to check out the clerk rang up each slipper separately!! I told her that they were a pair, and she said, I'm not lying, "I didn't know. They aren't hooked together."

I swear she said this with a straight face! I really believe that she thought that they were suppose to be individually priced.

But the story doesn't end there, apparently K-Mart offers a purchase protection plan on some items and this includes Christmas lights. So when she rang up one of the strings of lights she asked if I would like to add this protection plan to my order. I declined.

She then rang up the second string of lights and then asked me, "Would you like it on this set?"

I really, really, really wanted to laugh, but it was just so sad. I did my best not to laugh and simply declined the offer.

Walt was trying to help out by bagging our stuff, but even then she had trouble accepting help. He held open one of the bags for her to put a stack of items into, but she separated them and put them in one at a time. Of course this wasn't the end of the comedy of errors that went on, but telling too much more may cause me to fall over laughing before I can get this typed.

You would think that the stupidity for the evening would end there, but no...next up to bat was Food Lion. Checking out is just so much fun. After the adventure in bagging at K-Mart, Walter decided to bag our purchases at Food Lion. He told the clerk not that he didn't want the groceries in plastic bags and she said to him, "You don't want it bagged???"

Duh! He was pulling out a paper bag at the end of the counter to put the items into. If she had put the items into plastic we would have come out with 10 bag instead of 1.

Then on the way out we spotted this fantastic parking job in the row over from Walt's truck. The truck was parked almost entirely beyond the parking space. It is amazing what passes for parking these days.