Why do you hate me Target?

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Frustrating Day Already

Sometimes the day just seems to fall apart before it’s even really gotten going. Like today, when Carla was late to camp because we (I) forgot an essential at home and we had to turn around to get it. 

And then I went to Target to return some ill-fitting water shoes, and decided to pick up a couple more pairs of jean shorts for Carla because she prefers jean shorts to anything else. And there was a big display of Cat & Jack shorts that said “comfy jean shorts $10!” Under the sign were multiple piles of jean shorts, in multiple colors, and I looked suspiciously at some of the tags that clearly said $15 instead of $10… but Target is notoriously bad about many things that involve any sort of detail orientation, so I grabbed two pairs. Target also makes it nearly impossible to see what you are being charged as each item goes over the scanner: the only way to do it is to stand back by the conveyor belt and stare over the checker’s shoulder at their computer. Of course, I missed seeing the shorts scan. And I am terrible at math, so I thought maybe the final price was a little high, but could be in the realm of accurate? (I grew up in a state with no sales tax and have NEVER SINCE been able to figure it out.) I even asked the checker if the shorts rang up as $10 and he looked and said yes. This is a very long and boring story!

As I left the store, I looked at the receipt and one pair had indeed rung up as $15, so I went back in and asked at customer service what the deal was. And they shrugged and said, “Well, the display meant that THESE comfy shorts are $10, but not all of them.” And while I was trying to parse that in my head, I nodded and shoved the shorts back in my bag and left, and then fumed all the way home about not simply returning the shorts when I had paid $5 more than I intended to pay for them. Or at the very least saying what I wanted to say which was, “Well, that is a deeply misleading sign.” 

Anyway! Home!

To discover a giant leak underneath my kitchen sink. All of the cleaning supplies and trash bags and extra Scrub Daddies were completely soaked. 

And while I was removing each item and then drying out the cupboard and trying to diagnose the source of the leak (why? how? I am not equipped for that nor for addressing a leak should I find one), the pest control people CALLED ME BACK.

Which just added to my hatred of this morning because I had specifically asked – via email (after I had responded, via email to an invoice, and he left me a garbled voicemail) – that the guy EMAIL ME INSTEAD OF CALLING.

Not only is he boldly ignoring an explicit and reasonable request, he is trying to retroactively change the pricing terms we had discussed before I had the pest control people come out to deal with a Wasp Situation. And I was Very Frustrated and Sharp with him on the phone, and told him that I didn’t mean to be sharp, but I was dealing with a leak and this was not a good time (why did I answer the phone? why did I bring home the $15 shorts?) and would he please EMAIL ME all the rates that we had discussed, and instead of saying, “Sure,” he said, “Oh I understand completely, give me a call back when it is more convenient.” NO. EMAIL ME. OMG. 

His reasoning is that their rates change, so I guess he didn’t want to commit to something in writing. Which a) is bullshit and b) can’t he simply spell that out in the email??????

I did finally persuade him to email me, but it took an increasingly strident and near-tears additional request.

Oh, and now that I am writing this out, I do think he finally agreed to email me what we’d talked about (EXACTLY) so that I could talk it over with my husband, which in retrospect seems VERY condescending and sexist and jerkfacey. I mean, I was being quite short with him, but wanting to see a list of rates rather than having to remember all the specifics shared during a conversation, especially when I am otherwise distracted, is a reasonable desire and not an example of my poor feminine brain being unable to compute simple numbers. And if I didn’t absolutely adore the guy who comes to do the application of pest spray, I would find a new pet control company in a heartbeat. 

These things are all handle-able. They ARE. None of this is the end of the world, or even, taken individually, that big of a deal. I am not despondent, just frustrated. Frustrated because of these things and because today was supposed to be my one day this week to do some writing. (Does venting to you count as writing?)

Frustrated, too, because I am in a phase where everything seems to be falling apart: our fridge is still on the fritz, which means either an expensive repair or a new fridge; the shade in our bathroom no longer goes up more than a few inches; the WASP SITUATION; there is a stain on our front siding that I scrubbed off last week and has since reappeared, indicating a potential leak inside our soffit; we need to paint/stain/do something to both the trim on the front of the house and the playset in the yard.

And Father’s Day is this weekend, along with two birthday parties Carla is attending, and I am meeting a friend for her birthday tomorrow, so I have a million presents to wrap today/tomorrow and, this weekend, lots of good, wonderful reasons to not be writing. But it is all feeding the frustration. 

And Carla’s birthday is coming up and so there are a bunch of things to think about for that.

And my in-laws are visiting next week.

Anyway. It’s just now ten o’clock and I am already DONE with the day.

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One Bad, One Good

Two short anecdotes for your weekend reading pleasure enjoyment amusement eye-rollment hate read whatever.

One Bad: When the family was here, we all went out to dinner one of the nights. Our reservation was at 6:30. The rest of the family arrived before me – Carla and I had trouble finding a parking spot – but we got to the restaurant at 6:30 on the dot. (I had told everyone else that the reservation was for 6:15 because I am mean.) We walked in and there was a man and his child in front of us. The hostess grabbed some menus and escorted them to a table. Carla and I waited for the hostess to return.

The door opened and a woman rolled in. You know the type. I am not going to describe her, because every descriptor makes it seem like I think everyone with [descriptor] is an ass, when that it just not true. She power-walked right past me to the hostess table. I edged closer, because I was there first, and she had a kind of bulldozery aura about her. She looked at me, “Is anyone here?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, pleasantly, glad that she’d acknowledged my presence. “The hostess just took someone else to his seat.”

The hostess returned. We had been waiting for maybe a minute at the most. The hostess smiled at us, trying to work out who to speak to first, and the other woman leaned onto the hostess table and said her last name and the number of people in her party.

“Excuse me,” I said, more tightly this time, but still aiming for pleasant, “we were here first.”

Instead of saying, “Oh, whoops, sorry” or “Oh, man, I thought for some reason you WORKED here, even though you are wearing a coat and are accompanied by a young child!” or “I completely forgot my manners! What was I thinking?” she gave me a superior little scoff and said, “Well, I have a 6:15 reservation.”

“I have a reservation too,” I said. I was firm. “And I was here first. You can wait your turn.”

At this, she put her hands up defensively, pasted a Deeply Surprised But Also Bitchy Look on her face, and said, “Well, I’m not going to argue with you.”

The hostess, clearly relieved this little exchange had not escalated further, escorted me and Carla to the table where our family was already sitting.

Fin.

Except… NOT fin, because… WHAT? I am still bewildered by the whole interaction. And flustered, because I absolutely hate confrontation. And really, would it have mattered if we had allowed her to go first? No, it would not have mattered. Maybe the gracious thing to do would have been to let her manhandle her way into being seated first. But she was so BRASH about pushing in front of us! And so… unapologetic about it! There was NO WAY she didn’t know that we were in line before her. Absolutely zero. And then she acted like I was being ridiculous or argumentative for asserting that I was there before her? What the what?!? We are living in a SOCIETY!

I am trying to teach Carla grace and patience and forgiveness, of course, but I am also trying to teach her to be aware of other people and to take turns and to stand up for herself… and I guess I chose the latter options to model for her in that moment.

The second worst part – after having to get into any sort of confrontation at all – is that it felt/feels like such a big deal. My heart was pounding. I felt like I was being ridiculous – justified, but still, like I was engaged in a playground argument of the first grade maturity level. (“It was MY turn on the swing.” “Nuh UH, I was here first!” “Nuh UH, I was!”) I felt like my voice got overloud and squeaky and my indignant meter had been ratcheted up way too high.

Why can’t I be easy-breezy during a confrontation? Why couldn’t I have smiled pleasantly and said smoothly and cheerily, “Oh, you know, we were here first!” and then just not engaged her anymore? Why, instead, am I still feeling vexed and embarrassed a week later?

Side note: She said that she had a 6:15 reservation and we were definitely there at 6:30. So she was LATE. Which does not give her any excuse to line hop. But it makes me extra irritated. Lateness on your part does not constitute submission to your will on my part.

One Good: Remember when I was complaining about Target the other day, and how I had to drive all the way back to the store and wait for some security person to review my transaction just so I could get a refund for an item I did not buy?

(Brief detour which will have you further wondering why this falls under the “one good” heading: Remember how in the same post I also mentioned that Target is always making errors in what they charge you? Well, I went to Target this week and bought Home Alone 2: Lost in New York PURELY because it was on sale for $6. And then it rang up for $9.99. Fortunately, I caught the error. But SHEESH, Target. GET IT TOGETHER.) (Also, when the cashier keyed in the adjusted price, she had to choose an option on her computer screen to, presumably, explain the reason for the adjustment. I didn’t see all the options, but the one she picked was something like “customer disputed price.” Well, yes, I disputed the price. Because it was incorrect. Why is there no option for “item scanned at a price that was different from what was listed on the display,” huh, Target?)

Home alone 2.jpg

Why this is the only point in this ridiculous post I am choosing to illustrate with a photograph is beyond my powers of understanding. Also, why didn’t I buy ELF as well?

Anyway, I went to Whole Foods to pick up my Thanksgiving turkey. While there, I also added a few other things to my cart, and when I checked out, the amount that the cashier told me I owed seemed… like a lot. But I was in a hurry and I was really fretting about how I was going to brine my turkey by myself and, after all, the turkey was expensive and Whole Foods in general is expensive (and I don’t normally shop there, so I’m not really familiar with HOW expensive) so I figured the total was probably right and I had just underestimated the total of what I was buying.

I should have looked more closely at the receipt right then, but I didn’t. Instead, I drove home, unloaded my bags, and then looked at the receipt. Which is when I discovered that they had double charged me for my turkey. My enormous $44 turkey.

Listen, please forgive me when I tell you that I overlooked an extra $44 being added to my receipt. It is one of my key failings as a human, that a) I have no idea what things cost and b) being in a store suddenly renders me incapable of doing simple math and c) I get flustered easily and don’t take the extra twenty seconds in the store to just make sure I haven’t been overcharged. It drives my husband CRAZY, believe me, and if I knew how to fix it (budget in advance! or at least have some idea of what it will cost to buy the things you are buying! or for the love of peanut butter just take the extra twenty seconds to check the receipt! yes, you are right!) I would do it, but it seems to be a part of my brain that doesn’t work.

(By the way, I recognize the immense privilege glaring through the above entire paragraph – please know that I do.)

ANYWAY, I was so upset with myself. This was not a charge I could overlook. And if I would drive back to Target to reverse a $12.99 charge, then I was DEFINITELY going to drive back to Whole Foods to reverse a $44 one. But I didn’t have time. (I didn’t know, then, that our Thanksgiving would be moved back by an entire day and that I, in fact, had a whole extra day’s worth of time.) I had to brine the turkey and wash potatoes and chop herbs and finish cleaning the guest room and and and.

So I called the Whole Foods and told them about my problem… and they simply LOOKED UP MY RECEIPT and refunded my extra turkey charge immediately.

It took five minutes. Which includes the time I spent berating myself for having to make an unscheduled additional 45-minute roundtrip drive to and from Whole Foods. I did not have to leave my house. No one in security had to review footage of me not buying two turkeys. I got my money back. It was marvelous.

The end.