Chewymom

We don’t rent movies terribly often. When we do head over to Movie Gallery to pay our late fees pick up a new movie, we usually end up with one or two teen-and-older videos, and the mandatory kid video. Last week was no exception, and DH picked up The Incredibles for DS9 and DD4’s viewing pleasure. Have you seen it? If not, skip this blog post, because I’m about to give away part of the ending.

At the end of The Incredibles, Jack-Jack, the baby, discovers his super-powers. One of them is the ability to turn himself into a fireball. Like so:

Well, today at Lowe’s I discovered my super power. I got in line with my three quarts and one gallon of paint, plus a few new brushes, painter’s tape and four plastic paint dishes. I was rung up, and I headed out to the van. Where I discovered my two empty 5-gallon water bottles. Dang-it! I had forgotten to return them for a credit and get more water.

I unloaded my purchases and headed back in to shove the jugs into the machine and get my tickets for $5.00 toward more water bottles. Since our new house has no kitchen, but we are enjoying swimming over there, DH and I had decided it might be wise to have something to drink in this one-thousand degree heat, so we had bought a water cooler to keep on the back porch. Plus, it’s a nice touch for the workers.

So anyway, I put the bottles in the machine and got my two tickets. I then heaved two full jugs into my cart and swung around to the self-checkout. Where Minnie, the cashier who stands and watches the four self-check registers, told me to go to a regular register. I looked puzzled, eyed the lines at the regular registers, and argued, “I’ve been able to self-check these here before. Why has that changed?” She rolled her eyes and motioned for me to go ahead. Nice.

I heaved each jug individually onto the scanner, rolled it around to the impossible-to-reach barcode, and scanned both jugs. I scanned my first coupon. $5.00 off. I scanned the second. Coupon not accepted. Huh? Grumpy Minnie gave me a smug look and told me to go to a regular register.

I heaved each jug back into my cart and walked past all 15 registers, 13 of which were closed, and went to the same register where I had bought my paint. The lady there said, “I’m sorry–the register has locked up! You’ll have to go to another register.”

“GREAT!” I exclaimed. “I tried to do this at self-check, but the lady there won’t let me.” The cashier, conveniently also a customer service person, walked me down there and told Grumpy Minnie to let me check out. So Minnie told her it wouldn’t accept my coupon.

“WAIT! She told me not to check out here before I even had a problem with the coupon!” Nice customer service lady ordered Minnie to ring me up herself. Seems Minnie had that capability all along. She just didn’t feel like having to earn her pay by doing something like work.

Minnie grumbled her way through the checkout, and I exploded into a giant fireball. Just like Jack-Jack. I am now a super hero.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 7:34 am and is filed under This and That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.