The 2012 holiday season officially started for me this evening, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
My friends and family know I like to bake cookies for Christmas, and my mis-adventure started with a good-hearted attempt to acquire some ingredients for a new Nestle Toll House recipe I saw on Facebook. My wife and I are heading to my hometown Friday, and I figured I’d take some treats. So, I headed off to the small supermarket down the road to collect the ingredients, including the special Nestle refrigerated cookie dough.
As soon as I walked into the store, I was reminded it was less than two days until Thanksgiving. The place was unusually busy, and folks were loading turkeys and loaves of bread into their carts. I only needed a few things — and naturally the super-special cookie dough wasn’t stocked at our small-town grocery.
Ready to check out, I headed to the 10-items-or-less lane. But the line was pretty long and not moving very quickly, so I made my big mistake. I scouted around for a checkout line that might be moving faster and fell in behind a woman in a regular lane who didn’t have too much in her cart.
The cashier rang up her Thanksgiving fare and announced that she owed $32.28. After fumbling in her purse, woman announced to the cashier that she needed to go to her car for her debit card.
Ack! Will I never learn that moving to a line that looks like it’s moving faster ALWAYS backfires?
After a few minutes, the woman returned, handed the cashier a wad of cash and asked if she could write a check for the balance. Yes, she could, he replied. But then she realized she didn’t have her driver’s license. Sorry, he said, can’t take a check without the ID.
By now, I’m just smiling. I’m not in a hurry, and I’m feeling sorry for this woman, who now has to ask to have one or two items returned to reduce her bill. We needed to wait another minute or two for a manager to approve the revised bill, which totaled $28.22.
“How much did I give you,” woman asked while the cashier held the cash.
“$28.”
Back into her purse she dove, her fingers finally emerging clutching two dimes and two pennies. Finally.
All I could do was smile at the cashier and mention that jumping lines always ends badly for me. The woman in front of me was having bigger problems than a slow check-out line.