The weather lately has been completely unpredictable. One
minute the sun is shining and the next, huge black clouds roll in and dump
enough water to float an armada.
The other day, when I left the house to go shopping, the
weather was hot and dry. While I was in the first store, however, it started to
rain so hard, I could swear I saw animals lining up in pairs and searching for Noah. So I invested $4 on an
umbrella, just so I could continue my day of shopping without ending up looking
like a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest.
As it turned out, the rain was only the beginning of my
problems that day. It seemed as if every store I shopped in was experiencing
some sort of minor disaster.
In the first store, for example, the clerk rang up my
purchases (and my umbrella), then said,
"By the way, I can't give you a receipt. My machine stopped
printing them out, for some reason."
"Well, could you write one out for me, then?" I
asked. "I'd like to have proof I was here, just in case I have to return
something. "
He took a slip of paper, wrote the name of the store, the
date and my total amount on it, then handed it to me. Nothing was itemized. But
not wanting to aggravate the people in line behind me, I accepted the makeshift
receipt and left.
By the time I reached the next store on my list, the rain
was coming down so hard, I couldn't even see the store, so I was glad I'd
bought the umbrella. I opened the car door, stuck the umbrella out of it and
pushed the self-opening button. Nothing happened. I pushed it harder. Still
nothing. So I banged the button hard on
the edge of the car door. The umbrella sprang open...and the handle fell off.
There's an old saying that you get what you pay for.
So I made a frantic dash into the store, sans the umbrella.
By the time I entered, I was dripping a trail of water behind me and looked as
if I'd just gone snorkeling with all of my clothes on. I made a beeline for
their umbrellas. Not learning from my
previous mistake, I grabbed a $3 one. It wasn't a push-button model, it was an
old-fashioned manual type. So I figured at least it would work.
While shopping, I noticed a sign that said if you bought
five packs of tea-biscuit cookies at $2 each, the store would give you a $10
gift card! I've never been known to pass up free cookies, so I grabbed five
packs.
When I left the store, I dug my newest umbrella out of the
bag and opened it. It was about the size of a dinner plate and the material was
so thin, it looked like tissue paper. But it kept my head dry. Unfortunately,
it didn't keep my butt, which stuck out farther than the umbrella, dry at all,
and the back of my jeans ended up soaked.
Even worse, and I didn't discover this until I got home, not
only was my bag of cookies full of rainwater...the expiration date on the cookie
packages was the next day. I've been known to indulge in cookies before, but
not five packages in one night (I've come pretty close, however). But at least that
explained why the store was so eager to give them away.
At the next store, I was dashing across the parking lot, my
tiny new umbrella over my head, when a huge gust of wind came along and turned
the umbrella inside out, bending the spokes. So once again, I arrived dripping
wet in a store...where a blast of air-conditioning hit me and turned me into a
giant goosebump.
Although I was tempted, I decided not to buy another
umbrella. With all of the money I was spending on cheap umbrellas, I figured I
could have hired someone to follow me around all day and hold one over my head.
I already was soaked anyway, so a little more rain wasn't going to make much of
a difference at that point.
Once again, something also went wrong at this store. When I
got home, I found a phone charger in my bag. I had no clue where it had come
from because I'd never seen it before. It had cute little flowers and a cactus
on it, and said, "Let's 'stick' together!" I checked my sales slip,
hoping I hadn't been charged for it.
No such luck.
The last store I went to was Walmart. The rain reached a new
high by then, coming down in sheets. So
I sat in the car and waited...and waited some more. Twenty minutes later, the
rain had slowed down to a loud roar, so I bolted into the store. By then, even
my bra was carrying pools of water.
I stocked up on everything from groceries to dog toys and
cosmetics, then, with my shopping cart heaped full, went to the checkout. The
clerk scanned all of my items and bagged them, and I strategically stacked them
in my shopping cart. I then handed her three coupons. She scanned the first one
and the computer made a weird sound and the screen went blank. My total was gone, my list of items was gone
- the screen was just blank.
Looking panicky, the clerk hit several buttons to no avail,
so she put in a frantic call to the manager. He arrived, pushed a couple
buttons and the screen came back on, saying it was ready to begin
scanning. The manager, looking very
uncomfortable, smiled weakly at me and said, "I'm really sorry - this has
never happened before. But we're going to have to unpack all of your items and
scan them all over again."
I could read the lips of the customers in line behind me and
believe me, they weren't saying, "No problem, we can wait!" In fact,
I was pretty sure they were about to form a lynch mob.
I honestly couldn't help myself. I burst out laughing. The
clerk and the manager just stared wide-eyed at me.
"I'm sorry," I said, as I began to un-bag all of
my items and put them back on the counter to be re-scanned, "I've just
been having a really crazy day."
The next day, I brought the first umbrella, in pieces, back
to the store, which, unlike the other stores where I'd gone shopping, is right
here in town.
"Do you have a receipt?" the manager asked me.
I handed her the handwritten receipt on scrap paper. She
gave me a look that silently, yet clearly, said, "What the heck is
this?"
I told her the clerk's machine had stopped producing
receipts the day before, so he'd hand-written one for me.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, then muttered,
"He's not going to be here much longer." She then gave me my $4.
I'm not going to bother returning the other umbrella or the
stale cookies. I figure it will cost me more to buy the gas to return the
umbrella than it's worth. And the cookies were free anyway (as I said, you get
what you pay for) so the birds always can eat those. But I will return
the mysterious phone charger.
I'm just going to wait until there's a drought.
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