I feel Dirty

 Okay. I think of myself as an honest person, but after today, I'm questioning that. 

One of the things that William needs for his bedroom at his mom's house is a desk, and I wanted to price one. Tim wanted to go to the Home Depot. The nearest one is up in New York State. I asked him if we could stop at a store to price desks, and he agreed. 

His bed at his mother's is modern, metal, industrial looking, and I found a desk that was very modern looking. I also found a very cool industrial style metal chair for $30. We loaded them both in the cart. On the way up, he noticed a lamp he wanted, so we tossed that on too. 

At the register, the cashier rang up the chair. She rang up the lamp. Then she tried to ring up the desk. There was no barcode. She called for her manager. The manager came, in no particular hurry. The cashier explained the problem, and the manager picked up the large carton turning it this way and that, before deciding that the cashier knew what she was talking about. The cashier watched impassively, eating her peanut M and M's from a large bag beneath her register. 

The manager said she'd go look and I went with her to show her the display desk with the tagged price. She pointed to a box beneath and said, "This is not the same." I moved the top carton and said, "No, it isn't but these underneath are", pointing out the brand name. This is what we have up front." She agreed, and got the sku from the display tag and came up front, where she called out the number from the tag. The cashier punched them in the register and said, "That's not enough numbers." 

Once again the manager agreed and left, presumably to look the correct number up in some store system. Once again, we stood at the register waiting for her to come back as the cashier munched on her peanut M and M's, ignoring us.  Finally, the manager did return, and she gave the casher the number. She punched it in and gave us our total, "$43." I was confused, but figured that Tim had paid for something while I was back with the manager so that the cashier could continue to ring up other customers while waiting for her manager and I to return. 

Walking across the parking lot, I mentioned that the total had shocked me until I figured out that he'd already paid for part of the order. "No. I didn't," he snapped, "and we are not going back into that store again. They've got a cashier standing there munching away and a manager running around, and if they can't figure it out between the two of them, that's on them. I'm not wasting any more time on it." 

He had a point, but I was still feeling guilty. We put the stuff on the truck. Tim decided he was hungry. I wasn't, not really. I just got a drink and a wrap, and William didn't want anything. The place was not really busy, but they seemed to be struggling in the kitchen.  We were waiting on quickly, but it took quite a while to get our order. They handed Tim the tray. He looked down and said, "We didn't order any fries..." and was told 'keep 'em." He also had ordered a fish sandwich. He got a chicken sandwich with bacon which was much more expensive. He ate, laughing. "I wonder what they will do for us at Home Depot!"

You will not believe this, people. 

Home Depot carried some windows in sizes that our Lowe's at home would have to special order. We wanted a small high window for the bathroom, and we found just what we were looking for. Musing, I said, "You know this would be just the right size for over the kitchen sink too." He was fine with that. So we got two of them. 

Something we'd also discussed is that he thought we did not need a big double hung in the laundry room. He wanted a shorter window. Lowe's hadn't had what he was looking for, but browsing there at the Home Depot, he found what he wanted. I thought it would be fine, and so we laid that on top of our cart as well. 

Tim picked up other things that our Lowe's didn't carry or that were cheaper there. I looked at what they had for plants. William fell in love with a $30 five foot skeleton with glowing eyes (he had the cash at home in his wallet.) Our flat cart was pretty well stacked. 

We got up to the cashier and she began to ring stuff up. She was having all sorts of problems. She was scanning the UPC code instead of the Barcode and the register was beeping wildly.  She was flighty and fast talking, and didn't seem able to understand what she was doing wrong. She called for her manager, and leaned back to wait. I used the silence to try to explain once again. "You're scanning the wrong codes. This is what you need to scan." I pointed it out to her. I pushed the smaller window on top and pointed to the two bar codes. "We've got one of these, and we've got two of these ones, and this is the bar code for those."  

About that time, her manager and another person came walking up. "Hi Damiannnnnnn!" she sang in a very flirty way.

"Hi," he said shortly. 

"We found the bar codes," I said.

"I was scanning these..." she giggled. "We're okay now."

I said, "Did you scan all three windows. You should have two of these and one of that," indicating. 

"Do you want to come train for us?" Damian asked me. 

We were on our way home with a truckload of stuff, several hundred dollars worth, and I was examining the receipt. 

The girl had charged us for three small windows. 

We stared incredulously at each other.  "That's about enough shopping for the day," Tim said.