Just As I Thought

The War with the Other Customers

Maybe I’m just impatient.
I zipped out to Bed Bath & Beyond a little while ago to get a shower curtain for the new house.
First off, they don’t seem to make plain shower curtains anymore, much less white ones. I picked up a plastic liner, figuring that I’d find the curtain elsewhere.
Next: what register is open? The registers are kind of back to back, staggered, and there are no lights or signs to tell you which is which and what is open. You must stand on tip toe to look over the stacks of candy and cleaning products (as seen on TV!) to glimpse a head bobbing behind a partition.
At register 1, there were two women who had found the shower curtains hilarious; calling boyfriends or husbands on their cell phones and laughing outrageously. I figured that they were drunk. I stood behind them for 1 minute until I had to find another register.
At register 2, there was a woman trying to return something. It involved reams of paper and a dozen receipts, as well as a lot of conversation. I steered clear.
At register 3, a woman was buying 3 boxes of knives. She pulled out those ubiquitous BB&B coupons that litter our mailboxes. She had a coupon for each box. The coupons quite clearly state one coupon per customer per visit but that didn’t stop her from making a stink. She figured she’d buy each one separately. Then, she wrote a check.
This reminded me of shopping years ago, when writing a check meant leaving a DNA sample and references. That still applies today. When the clerk drew a cross on the check and started writing down ID numbers, I knew that I was done for. The manager had to come over to look at the check.
It had been a total of 10 minutes trying to check out, and there was only one person in front of me at any of three registers. They were all still there 10 minutes later. I dropped my basket where I stood, told the manager that this was getting ridiculous. She blamed it on the customers, saying that the woman’s check was bad., I told her to let me know when the normal customers like me shopped there, and I left.

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