Well despite my good intentions and numerous resolutions, I had a meltdown today while out on the town and it isn’t even New Years day yet. After a calm peaceful morning in the temple, I ventured to my nearby Wally-mart store to pick up some supplies for a New Year's Eve party this evening. Little did I know disaster awaited me as I entered the busy store in my Sunday clothes and heels for a quick shopping trip. Encountering a long line at the customer service dept I should have known better. I impatiently waited to return a foot spa soaking, massage apparatus thing made in China (of course) that didn’t deliver it’s proclaimed miraculous purpose of soothing your calm aching feet.
That went pretty smoothly so then after picking up some party items in the grocery dept., I found the shortest line and prepared to checkout quickly. BUT I happened to find a short line because the clerk was new and very young. She checked out my things very efficiently until she ran out of my things and started to check out the next customer’s things. She got as far as 3 sets of boy’s socks before I noticed what she was doing. Then she simply totaled the bill and charged my credit card for the socks which by now had been retrieved from my sack by the original customer who noticed what was happening. But I had been charged for them and my novice checkout clerk didn’t know how to give me credit for the items wrongly charged to me because she was new.
SO she said to me "WELL you’ll just need to go to the Customer Service window and get a refund". When, I mentioned to her politely that I’d already waited once in a very long slow Customer Service window, she (the clerk) got very upset and carefully explained to me that she was new and didn’t know how to fix my bill any other way. So I reluctantly returned to the Customer Service window where the line was longer that it had been earlier. After 10 minutes of so of my valuable time waiting (as I was wanting to go home and change into my more comfortable clothes and shoes), I got to the front of the line. The customer Service clerk told me I could have taken care of this with the checkout clerk. I explained I had tried this but the checkout clerk was new.
After getting my refund, I couldn’t help myself as I passed by the new clerk on my way out of store, to repeat this comment to her for the benefit of her future customers. The very young clerk looked at me like I was some crabby old lady that didn’t know anything and said…”I told you before I’m new and I don’t know how to do refunds”! Well, at that point, I didn’t want to argue and took my tired aching feet and hungry body home with my party goodies.
Luckily I was met at home by a great husband (see his photo above) who didn’t ask why I was late and why I hadn’t cooked his lunch. He actually volunteered to cook lunch-tacos for us and then washed the dishes while I took a looong winter’s nap and resolved-there’s that word again, never to shop at Wally-marts again. But that’s probably a resolution I will break.