Monkey Number 1 Says

Morning y'all - long time no chat.  I thought I'd try and get blogging again with a wee rant regarding customer service these days.  

Last week I had to pick up a padlock for a storage locker Erin and I had to rent in order to store away all her candles, girly soaps, satin pillows and other things I wouldn't allow in my home.  (Yeah, I know - I'll catch shit for that one!)  Anyhoo, wander into ye olde Crappy Tire on 8th.  I've been frequenting this license to print money shit hole for as long as I can remember.  So I peruse locks, and settle on one for about ten bones.  There is a shitload of them hanging there by the way.  

Make it up to the till, and it comes through at $18.  I'm in no rush, so I apologize - thinking I may have misread the signage, or grabbed the wrong item and offer to go and re-check.   Sure enough, there it is - I'm right; and they are wrong.  Return to the till and inform the grade two dropout that $10 is the price.  Now, let me make this clear - this gal is none to bright, not a flicker of intelligence in her eye.  I say eye cuz I think one of them may have been glass, or maybe coal.  Anyhow, she repeats that $18 is the cost.  I politely tell her that is NOT what the posted price is.  She wanders off to check, thinking I'm some sort of drooling, short bus traveling type.  

Anyhow - no shit here; she's gone for about five min.  and there is a lineup starting to form.  You know the type; kids with bottles of ether and fistfuls of Crappy Tire Money.  So seriously, she's gone for AGES, and I wander back to the section marked 'Security' and there she is, knee high in padlocks - rearranging the entire display!  I almost want to laugh out loud, but instead ask her what she's doing.  She agreed that the display had been 'sorted wrong' and that I was right, and the till was wrong.  I remind her that she was, in fact, running the till - and that some kids seemed rather twitchy to rush out behind the dumpster with their cans of ether.  

The following, also, isn't a joke...she replied 'Oh yeah - shit!'  So I follow said bimbo back to the till, almost killing myself trying to get over the locks she'd laid out in no apparent order.  So, I'm assuming I'm gonna get the lock for the price it was marked, and get this: she rings it through and requests the full price...AGAIN.  Now I'm fed up, I tell her I'll pay what it was on the shelf at, and not a fucking cent more.  She'll need the manager to authorize this, she tells me.  Out comes the radio, an anxious back and forth, and said flunkie appears and tells me that if it was a $5 difference, she'd be happy to do it, but with such a shocking difference (Egad!) she just can't.  I am almost speechless, I want to swear but don't.  She tells me it was a mistake.  Can't I understand this?  I can.

I tell her that sending me out of the store without my lock is a mistake.  I tell her sending out a loyal 21 yr. customer is a mistake.  Shopping there that morning was my mistake, one I won't make again.  I left, got it at Home Hardware in Westsyde, felt good about supporting my 'Hood, and enjoyed the conversation I had with the old fella who runs the joint. 

 Lesson learned I suppose.