Being male and all, I
typically just shove all my troubles down my throat and squeeze them into a
tight little ball until I can’t take it anymore and climb a tower with a
high-powered rifle. But perhaps this website can be therapeutic. Maybe,
just maybe, I can take all my anger and frustration out on my keyboard
and let you – the reader – have a good laugh at my follies. Because you
know, in the absence of Percocet laughter is the best
medicine! Having said that let me
say that the Texaco station at 6185 Windward Parkway in
Alpharetta, Georgia is home to the WORST CONVENIENCE STORE on the
face of the earth! It looks nice enough and even has an Au Bon Pain
inside. But I just can’t go in that goddamned place without some kind
of major hassle taking up half my lunch hour or adding an extra half hour to
my Charlotte travel time. Allow me to explain why: Yesterday I went there
during lunch because I was low on gas, having driven from Charlotte to
Atlanta at top speed Monday morning. I did that
because the sweetest lil' Southern girl in the world was insistent on me
eating a good breakfast before my trip home. While it was absolutely
delicious, I did end up leaving Belmont at almost 9AM instead of the 8AM
I had planned. And thus, for fear of being late to work I didn’t stop
anywhere – not even to pee – on the ride back to Alpha. So the next day I
needed a fill-up. Also, the girl in the
cube next to me at work once bought me a bowl of clam chowder from Atlanta
Bread Company one day when I was low on cash. She really wanted a Twix bar
yesterday and because she was nice enough to get me the soup one day, I was
only happy to get a candy bar for her. And lastly, since
yesterday was the first cold and rainy day of the fall season I really
wanted to get one of those $5 bundles of firewood. I hadn’t built a fire in
my apartment yet and it seemed such a waste to live there for a year and
never use the fireplace. Since yesterday’s weather could only be described
as… well, “English”, a fire seemed so nice and warm against the perpetual
rain and wind we were getting that day. So I go to the Texaco and
fill up. $11.85 in gas and no problems so far. I even spot the bundles of
firewood neatly stacked outside near the door. Awesome! I picked up one of
the overpriced bundles on the way in and made my way to the cooler where I
picked up a Vanilla Coke. I headed over to the candy aisle and got myself a Skor bar and… hang on... wait a minute... where are the Twix bars? They had
the peanut butter ones, but no caramel! I looked around a bit and finally
found the caramel ones in King Size only. They do this to me every time!
They pad their earnings by finding out in advance what I’m coming in for and
stock only the “Bradford Family
size”. As soon as I walk in, they only have the "Patel family size" toilet
paper or five gallon drums of ketchup. Not that I’m being cheap. I’ll
buy Rene a candy bar regardless. It’s just the principle of the
thing. Anyway, I took the
Vanilla Coke, King Size Twix, Skor bar and firewood to the register... and that’s when the fun
really began!
My “Texaco sales
associate” – living proof that someone can still come to America and
get a job within 10 minutes – rang up my $11.85 in gas and all of the other
items mentioned, including 2 packs of Marlboro Mediums – except for the
firewood. For that he punched enough buttons on the register to reprogram
the space shuttle to land in Times Square. He looked puzzled then called
over a coworker. They both looked puzzled together and reprogrammed the
shuttle to land on Bourbon Street this time. They argued over how much the
wood cost, over the SKU for the wood, whether Pluto should really be
considered a “planet” and whether human life truly begins at conception. In
the process, he managed to screw the order up so badly that he voided out
the whole thing and started over. He managed to scan
everything correctly the second time, then called over the store manager,
who pressed a “secret combination” of keys (4+9+9+MISC)
and behold, a total appeared: $15.89. As I know you are an observant
reader, you’ve probably already figured out that $11.85 in gas, 2 packs of
Marlboros, 2 candy bars, a 20oz. Coke and a $4.99 bundle of wood costs more
than $15.89. Somehow or the other, he had forgotten to include the gas in
my total this time. The manager and I both told him multiple times that the
gas wasn’t on the total, but before you could say “Haitian education
system”, the bastard had swiped the card. I ended up signing 2
receipts, one for the gas and one for everything else. Which wouldn’t have
been so bad had he not charged me for three of the Twix bars. I missed this
at first, as I rarely buy smokes by the pack and had no idea what they cost
these days. But when I pointed out that he had charged me for 3 of them, he
kindly pointed to the receipt and said that that was the price.
“$3 for a king size Twix? You’re kidding
me. And besides, what’s this ‘qty’ header just about that column?”
“No, it’s $3.”
“Dude, it says right here, ‘qty’ – that’s quantity. You charged me for 3 of
them!” After staring at the
receipt for several long moments – moments where I was dreading him
crediting my card then running everything through again so that this trip to
Texaco would end up costing me $300 – he opened the till and handed me $2. By this point, I had been at the Texaco for 25 minutes. Nearly half my
lunch hour was gone. |
