Bank Fees: May I Have Another Please?

I came home from work today, and decided to stroll on over to the mailbox to see if there was anything good in there. To my disappointment, which occurs on a daily basis, week after week, there was no million dollar check from a mysterious benefactor that would dramatically change my hum drum existence. What I got instead was an envelope from my banking institution (which shall stay nameless) that said I had important changes to my checking account. For one brief moment, a world of delightful possibilities entered my head as to what these changes might be: a 100% match on all deposits; unlimited checking overdrafts with no fees; a lifetime supply of free checks with cute little puppy dogs, gumdrops and rainbows; access to accounts of other bank customers to “borrow” funds with no expectation of repayment. But alas, my hopes were dashed as I opened the letter and saw no mention of my dream benefits, and instead saw the dreaded words “new monthly service fee”.

I then had a startling epiphany (and definitely won’t be much of an epiphany to anyone else) that I have never received a notice of change to my credit card, banking, savings, investment, ect. account that was of a positive nature. What the heck is a service fee anyway? What does it cost for them to keep my account information in the database? Is there a workforce of IT guys who hand input every transaction I, and every other customer, make and we are paying their salaries. I understand they have to pay other employees, but I am sure my money that they chose to loan out at exorbitant rates more than covers the paychecks for the tellers. They already have so many other ridiculous fees that just a couple of them on my account per year far outweigh the paltry interest they pay on my savings account. Prior to this notice, my account had been a gratis checking account with no monthly service fee, however the bank’s Income Inventor, Fee Finagler, Bolsterer of the Bottom Line, or whatever his title was, had come up with yet another way to separate me from my already meager financial resources. The letter however did mention a number of ways to prevent the service fee and help me attain financial salvation. One was to maintain a daily balance of $1,500 or more in my checking account. How about nope. I have actual bills to pay out of my checking account so it usually does not have that much, especially on an average daily basis, however if they mean by average daily basis once every two weeks on payday then I am set. The next option was to keep $5,000 on average in all your accounts total. This one still doesn’t help me, however if I was a little more frugal maybe I would attain this, but heck, who wants to do that? Don’t we all live up to our means, spending every possible penny and not saving anything? At this point in the letter I was becoming quite anxiety-ridden because I could see I had only one more criteria I could meet to avoid this outlandish fee, and I full well knew that they save the most ludicrous criteria for last. This letter did not disappoint in that respect. The last “criteria” you could meet to avoid the $10 fee was to pay $25 in qualifying account fees (e.g. overdraft fees, excessive withdraw fees). Are you kidding me? So if I pay $25 in fees, I don’t have to pay the $10. How freakin’ kind of you. They actually have the nerve to present this as some type of option that people would chose month after month rather than pay the $10. To soften the blow of this new fee, the creative writers at the bank decided to add to the letter a number of significant things about my account that will not change. Let’s see, 1) free access to their ATM’s and branch offices. As opposed to what? Installing some sort of toll booth system where you pay just to walk in the door or use the ATM. 2) Free 24/7 telephone banking. Super duper awesome. I get access to some automated system that hasn’t been upgraded for 10 years, and costs you nothing to maintain. 3) Your account continues to be FDIC insured. OK, that is something that has been in effect for like the last century, and as far as I know no other banks have discontinued their accounts being FDIC insured, so let’s not try and make this out to be some type of novel feature that you can get at no other institution. After reading my letter, and coming to the disheartening realization I will be paying the $10 monthly fee, I began to imagine many new fees coming in the near future: 1) $5 charge for seeing a teller in person. Teller will smile and pretend like they actually care about you for an additional $3; 2) $6 monthly rope line divider maintenance fee because those things suffer some pretty serious wear and tear day in and day out; 3) account opener fee where they take 25% of your first deposit just to open your account, which is a minimum of $1000 to open (just in case you smarty smarts out there think you will just open your account with $25 to avoid a big fee); 4) and finally, the dreaded annual $25 “bend over and take it like a man” fee. Basically just an additional, extra fee because they can.

Customer Service: Back With An Apathetic Vengeance

Although the recession is allegedly over, there seems to be a new wave of customer service strategies to bolster companies profits and keep customers coming back to their establishments. My recent personal favorite is the drive-thru customer-centered greeting. Starbucks use of this procedure pre-dates the recession (and are therefore not the target of my scathing comments), but many of the major fast food juggernauts, which had never done this before to my recollection, are now asking the all important question, “How are you doing today?” prior to taking your order in the drive-thru. Well, ginormous fast food company, I will tell you how I am doing. I am quite perturbed that you are using this blatantly transparent sham and are attempting to dupe the unsuspecting public into believing that you really care about their well-being, when you have never given enough of a @#*&! about us in the past 60 years to ask how we are doing. The only thing more obvious than your most recent ploy to improve your bottom line during an economic recession is the fact that your employees, who are being forced to ask this innocuous question, care even less than you do about whether or not our cups runneth over with jubilation due to having the greatest day of our lives or if we are one crappy life event away from disemboweling ourselves. This disconcerting level of apathy was on full display tonight when I went through the drive-thru at my favorite Mexican food fast food restaurant, Paco Smell*. (*name of restaurant changed to avoid any potential claims of libel.) I pulled up to the menu and heard from the magical speaker “How are you doing today?” I responded with “I am doing…”, and before I could get a fourth word out (and mind you that fourth word was going to be the descriptor of how the all-important state of my personage was at that very moment), the inconsiderate voice on the other end of the speaker cut me off with, “Order when you are ready.” If you didn’t ask me how I was doing, that would suit me just fine, but to make the query, and then not even allow ample time for a complete response, was like a complete slap in the face. As I pulled up to the window, I wanted to ask if the blatant disregard for my personal well-being came with a free side order of some type of bodily fluid or waste product maliciously added to my food as well. The least the corporate office could do for these obviously socially inept people is to write on the cue card they read from for all customer interactions some simple stage direction: (pause for customer’s answer prior to reading line #2). The only topper to the emotionally disconnected employee is the use of the recorded voice to ask how you are doing. First, the use of the recorded voice makes it quite evident corporate America’s fat wallet CEO’s care so little about the American public that they don’t even give you a real person to talk to. Secondly, and mind you I am not mad about this…I am just getting mad on behalf of a friend, it is totally deceptive for the company to put on some girl with a sultry voice asking some lonely, unsuspecting guy how they are doing, and then after the customer, who is genuinely thrilled that someone in the world may actually care about them even a smidgen, answers and asks the celestial being on the other end of the speaker how their night is progressing, onto the speaker comes Steve, a 40 year old chain smoker to say “Order when you’re ready.” Sometimes I feel like I would be happier if the fast food restaurants, along with their stellar employees, would just be honest about how they really felt about the customers :

OK, maybe not.  How about we just skip the small talk and you give me my bean burrito like old times.

Vegas Revisited

It’s was end of the workday, and a friend and I were engaged in some chit chat killing time the day before the most gluttonous of celebrations, Thanksgiving . Somehow the conversation turned to Las Vegas (and anyone who knows me can tell you many of my conversations turn to Las Vegas as it is my favorite getaway), and I began to recount to my friend one of my most memorable trips to Sin City. It occurred several months before my impending nuptials, and represented a quasi-bachelor party, even though it was never so-named by the three other guys that accompanied me on the trip. The three guys, who I worked with at the time were “G”, “A” and “H”. The first two of the three were married, and the third had a girlfriend. In reflecting back now on this trip I suspect this Las Vegas trip was as much as an escape for them as it was supposed to be a celebration of my time-limited freedom. My coworkers had probably intended for the trip to be a weekend filled with excessive booze, raucous behavior, loose slot machines and even looser women. What I remember of the trip instead of the planned weekend of utter debauchery was the worst gambling experience of all my Vegas trips (I lost $1000, which was no paltry sum for an individual making only $8 an hour, and included several unplanned stops at the ATM for gambling budget refills. My luck was so miserable on that particular trip that if I had played Russian Roulette with a gun with only one bullet in 100 chambers, I would have assuredly had my head turned into a canoe with the first pull of the trigger.), and several comedic experiences.

I. Hittin’ Da Club

On our first night in Vegas we decided to visit a den of pulse pounding music, free-flowing, albeit high priced, alcoholic beverages and sweaty swaying bodies that is the Las Vegas Nightclub. For some inexplicable reason we had decided to go to a club that was on the opposite end of the Strip. Anyone who has gone to Las Vegas on a weekend can attest to the deplorable conditions of transportation in the city when one attempts to travel down Las Vegas Boulevard on a Friday night. After nearly an hour of stress-inducing stop and go traffic to travel approximately 2 miles, we had arrived at our destination. We sauntered up to the club and took our place in a moderate length line behind the sacred velvet rope that separates the haves from the have nots. We stood in line for approximately 30 minutes and steadily made our ascent towards “club entrant” status. When we were only a few people from the entrance, we noted a sign describing the required dress code for this establishment. We noticed we had no serious violations until we reached the line that read in ominous fashion “No Tennis Shoes”. Now wait a minute, you are telling me the nightclub, which some would argue is the epitome of questionable moral behavior, and whose unspoken motto is "drink like a fish ‘til you puke, grope random strangers and use the bathroom stalls for other than their intended purposes", has standards regarding my podiatric coverings and because I am wearing a pair of tennis shoes I am relegated to the status of degenerate social pariah? This was the most outlandish thing I had ever heard of. It should be noted that my friends and I have never performed together in any formal musical ensemble, but the chorus of harmonized expletives that flowed from our lips in utter protest to this absurd rule would have made even the most seasoned choral director proud. As two of the four of us were in violation of this rule, we had no choice but to exit the line. That evening we chose to seek other entertainment (covered in detail in the following “chapter”), but vowed to return to the nightclub the following night with appropriate footwear. We found ourselves at the same nightclub the following evening, after making the same hour long drive that we had made the night before. As we moved forward towards the entrance, we made a grisly discovery that we had not noticed the evening before. There, on the dress code sign, approximately two lines below the tennis shoe prohibition, was anothe rule we obviously had not read because we had stopped reading after realizing our tennis shoes would bar our entrance to the club, was the line: Collared Shirts Required for Men. Was this an F’in nightclub or a yacht club? We were perhaps even angrier than the night before, however my fury began to diminish as a I realized I was a non-violator as I had on a collared shirt, as did “A”. The decision was made at this point that as we had made such a diligent effort two nights in a row to go to this nightclub, we would not admit defeat, and instead “A” and I would stay at the club, while “G” and “H” went back to the hotel (yes, an hour away) to obtain appropriate shirts. So “A” and I eventually made it into the club approximately five minutes later, and eagerly awaited the return of our inappropriately attired compatriots. A little background is needed at this point regarding “H” and the conditions under which he was allowed to come on this particular adventure. “H” had a girlfriend at the time who in no way would have approved of a sin-filled trip to Las Vegas, particularly without her presence there to survey his every move. At the time, “H” was a member of the local community college’s band where he so expertly played the trumpet. “H” made his way to Vegas with us under the guise of performing with the college band out of town. To make his ruse as believable as possible to his significant other, “H” brought the tuxedo he wore during band performances, as well as his trumpet. After nearly two hours of waiting, “H” and “G” returned. It took more restraint than I thought was humanly possible to muster not to bust out laughing. “H” had brought along a collared shirt on the trip, but “G” had not, and instead of forking over a few dollars to buy one in a casino gift shop, strutting in comes “G” in “H’s” tuxedo shirt, pants and jacket as if it is the most normal thing in the world. Not only was the wearing of the tuxedo outrageous in its own right, but it became even more comical given that “G” outweighed “H’ by a good 50 pounds resulting a tuxedo whose poor infrastructure of threads, stitches, buttons and zippers were being stretched to their breaking point. “G‘s” tuxedo was so ill-fitted that he had the look of the loneliest guy in high school who, on the day of the prom, had finally convinced his second cousin to be his date to the dance and had to rent the only tuxedo left at the rental shop sans alterations. The majority of the evening was relatively uneventful, outside of yours truly watching “A” (who I remind you was married) dance dangerously close to a female at least ten years his junior, and then engaging in a passionate kiss with said young vixen. My observation of this unsavory act forced me into a moral quandary of whether or not to rat out this cad to his unknowing wife, and as our trip took place before the “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” campaign I had no sage-like wisdom on which to rely to resolve my ethical dilemma. In the end, I never did tell Mrs. “A” about her husband’s 20-minute moment of indiscretion (you may now boo me).

II.  The Obligatory Strip Club Visit

After the first nightclub attempt was a total debacle, not to mention a complete waste of time, of course we went to a strip club. Don’t roll your eyes at me in that holier than thou way. In fact, it actually was not a strip club…it was a gentlemen’s club. It said so write on the front of the building. And I ask you what is more gentlemanly than objectifying a woman that is gyrating around a pole while you stick dirty dollar bills in small patches of material that cover her nether regions? Many of you will not believe this, but the idea for the strip club was being pushed exclusively by the other three guys. I definitely enjoy the curvaceous outline of the female form, but when given the choice, the casino wins hands down in the competition for my bankroll. Sure, those horrendous displays of gaudiness they call mega resorts were not built on winners, and more often than not you leave Las Vegas with a dejected look on your face like someone just kicked your dog, but at least there is a chance of winning. With those twisted temptresses of the gentlemen’s club , no matter how much money you put in you know there is not going to be any type of “payoff”. We ended up going to a well-known venue for our male bonding excursion. The upside was that we got in free, but of course upon entering we sat down and purchased our required over-priced, watered-down drinks made with shoddy liquor. At least the establishment could maintain some level of integrity and honesty (as much as is possible for a house of lap grinding) and put straight forward signage on the marquee that reads: “ Free admission with the purchase of two $15 dollar drinks made with one part Alberston’s brand vodka and four parts dirty tap water.” After watching a couple of dancers, I began to wander around the place wondering if all they had was half-naked women, or if they had something else fun like, you know it, video poker machines. I found some machines at the bar, and slid in a $20 bill. I then began the left, middle, right gazing that one is accustomed to seeing at a professional tennis match , but instead of watching two competitive gladiators on Center Court at Wimbledon, my watchful eye shifted from my group of friends (who I just knew at some point were going to pull the old take off and leave me there prank otherwise known as the “we thought you were right behind us”), to my video poker game that was greedily wrestling away my $20 from me fifty cents at a time with absolutely no mercy, and finally on to the crowd of money hungry “performing artists” that were willing to nuzzle up with even the slimiest, perviest, most unfortunate looking guys if the price was right who I wanted absolutely no part of. As the last of my $20 was eaten by the video poker machine, and I began to think I would have been better off buying another $15 dirty water vodka tonic, I noticed “G” going towards a back room with one of the dancers for a private showing. Time passed slowly at this point as I was quite ready to leave, and I figured after our friend got his private dance we could move along with our evening. However, ten minutes passed, then another, and another. I was now beginning to worry that “G” has crossed the sacred stripper line, had touched the girl in some inappropriate way the bouncer did not take kindly to, and was lying in the back alley pummeled to the ground in a heap with a large gash in the side of his head. After what I estimated to be approximately 40-45, our friend proudly strutted from the back room, and we made our way out. As we made our way back to our hotel, past the saddened face of an obvious underage young man who was pouring out a case of beer, one beer at a time, as a police officer watched on, “G” regaled “A” and “H” with his tawdry tale of titillating temptation. I ignored the story for the most part, however did overhear “G” telling how the exclusive “VIP room” as he called it, did not have a chair for his purchased pleasure performance, but rather had a bed on which he lay while Vixen, Sierra, Diamond, Bubbles or whatever her name was, writhed all over his body. My only thought was of the numerous microscopic creatures on the unwashed bed linens that were probably dancing along with the beat of the DJ’s chosen music. “G” at least had some restraint, and did not make up some exaggerated manly chest-pounding story about how the poor dancer was at the mercy of his powerful testosterone laden body and absolutely ravaged him, breaking the most sacred of taboos in stripper world, “thou shalt not bang the customer.” “G” informed us that all clothing stayed in place, and that it was basically a recumbent lap dance. What came next almost made me speechless. “G” revealed that his 45 minutes of heaven (not sure if he was referring to his state of bliss during the performance or if maybe that was her name) had cost him $250 dollars in dance fees. I am not saying that I support prostitution, but holy heck’n fire, we could have driven to the neighboring county and visited a house of ill repute for only a little more money. “G’s” willingness to drop this kind of money for the kind of service he received was tantamount to buying a $10 Snicker’s bar, tearing off the wrapper, rubbing it on your face a little and then throwing it in the trash without taking a bite. Of course, in my mind, I just saw 25, $10 bets on the blackjack table that had just been thrown away . A true tragedy. To each his own I guess.


III.  Nighttime Injuries and Sunrise Revelations

You know that surreal feeling you have after an excessive amount of alcohol consumption, and despite having been asleep for several hours, you wake up and are still drunk, resulting in immediately devolving into extreme panic mode believing you have done serious brain damage and caused a permanent state of inebriation ? Well, I had that exact feeling as I awoke at approximately 4 a.m. after our evening at the nightclub. Needing to utilize the facilities, I stumbled from the bed towards the bathroom in a drunken stupor , and only took a few steps before kicking the edge of the bed resulting in me losing my balance and slamming my knee into the ground causing a relatively minor, although very painful, abrasion to my knee. (It was not until several years later that I had the revolutionary idea that would have saved me from an unnecessary injury. What is this amazing invention you ask? I present to you Bed Floor: the ultimate in hotel patron safety. I am sure there are many of you out there who have been traveling out of town, consumed one too many Mai Tai’s/ Cosmopolitans/Martinis/Alabama Slammers/Heinekens/shots of rubbing alcohol for those in a desperate position, and having returned to your hotel room in a deteriorated state, lost your balance taking a full force face plant into the carpet resulting in a giant rug burn on your forehead leading to your traveling companions referring to you as Mikhail Gorbachev for the duration of your trip. Bed Floor is a complete renovation of traditional hotel room decoration, and involves the removal of all existing furniture of the hotel room that could possibly lead to injury and the placement of a giant mattress in the room that covers the entire pre-existing floor reducing the likelihood of injury from a fall by nearly 100%. I understand that this idea has barriers, mainly the issue that walking on a mattress can be very difficult requiring serious balance and concentration for even a sober individual, thereby making it almost impossible to stand for an intoxicated person. Rest assured that members of our research and development team are engineering a mattress that is firm enough to balance and walk normally upon, and using a combination of back-up car crash sensor and Sleep Number bed technology, can sense an individual losing their balance and their body moving at a high rate of speed towards impact resulting in the mattress instantaneously becoming as soft as a mother’s bosom to cushion and cradle an individual’s falling body. Investment opportunities for Bed Floor are still available. Interested venture capitalists can submit their investment amounts and bank account information at www.bed floor.com) After a relatively satisfying night of sleep, minus the knee injury, I awoke and began to discover some of the crazy behavior that alcohol can cause. On the table in the room sat a potted plant that I now remembered “G” stealing from the decorative table which sat outside the bank of elevators. As I further began to regain my faculties I noticed that the television was on at a somewhat high volume, and had apparently been left on throughout the night as the other members of the traveling party were fast asleep. I feverishly searched for the remote control to silence the television, and after nearly a minute of searching, I found the remote submerged in a pool of melted ice in a half full ice bucket. Needless to say, the remote had lost its functioning capability, and I was required to turn off the televising manually, which I had not been forced to do since approximately 1986 when I was ten years old and had one of the classic old school televisions with the dial that was used to change the channel and a knob to control the power. Just great, a charge to my credit card for a broken television remote (which actually never ended up happening thank goodness). Throughout the next hour, the sleeping beauties that shared the room with me began to wake up, one by one, and we packed up our belongings for the long ride home. At that point, I noticed in the entryway on the floor that our bill had been slipped under the door. My eyes immediately zeroed in on the fact that one of the deviant members of the group had ordered themselves some adult entertainment on the television the previous evening after our return from the nightclub. I was not going to be paying for this and demanded to know who had ordered it so that I could be reimbursed. “H” immediately acknowledged he had ordered it and said he would take care of it. He then picked up the phone, called the front desk, and brazenly informed the female desk clerk that his children had accidentally ordered an adult movie, and without so much as a crackle in his voice that would give away his obvious fabrication, asked that it be taken off the bill. Despite the fact this clerk had probably heard this story countless times before from every guy whose irate wife/girlfriend had noticed the ordering of “Goodwill Humping” on the invoice, this more than kind clerk agreed to remove the charge from the bill. I never returned to Las Vegas with this group of friends, but despite my many other trips to Sin City, this was by far the most memorable of them all.  OK, maybe second most memorable right behind the Vegas trip where I was cited and released for lewd acts with a Madame Tussaud's wax museum figure at the Venitian Hotel, but that's another post altogether.

What Is Going On With A&E?

So I was watching the show Intervention on A&E, a network which really does have some pretty solid programming, but does have its share of questionable products as well. During one commercial session, when A&E often shows commercials about its own shows, there appeared on the screen yet another TV show has-been they are trying to throw back into the limelight. There on the screen, burning my retinas, was the face of one TV personality I never had any desire to see again: Bob Saget. Apparently, the show, which is hosted by Mr. Saget, is called Strange Days with Bob Saget (because these yahoos always have to put their name in the title) and was touted as a reality show where good ol’ Bob “immerses himself in strange cultures, practices and occupations”. You can stick him in a show like this with an edgy name like Strange Days, but to me he will always be Danny Tanner or even worse, the host of America’s Funniest Videos, where he stood out there and regurgitated the lamest ass jokes I have ever heard in my whole life. For those of you out there that want to argue he is really funny, and he did not write his own jokes on the show, then that means he had absolutely no respect for himself to get out there and spew out bad joke after bad joke just to be on television. As I was watching the commercial, they ran through several of Bob’s adventures into the underbelly of America’s most interesting subcultures. The first was the hardcore biker. Ok, I could buy this until I saw on the website for the show a picture for this episode. I will tell you, nothing says hardcore biker like Bob Saget, with 1940’s goggles plastered across his goofy melon, sitting in a sidecar. The sad thing is that I don’t think this was supposed to be a joke, and some producer (it’s always the guys with the money) thought this would be a good picture to use. The only way this would have been any more ridiculous (and as a result much less hardcore biker) would have been for Mr. Saget to have been sitting on the motorcycle behind the same surly biker with his arms wrapped tightly around his waist laughing like a 12-year old girl.

In all fairness I have heard from many a Saget lover that his stand up comedy is not anything like Full House and AFV, and is quite edgy. Well then, let’s take a look at mister wild and crazy’s upcoming episodes form the commercial. The other topics presented on the commercial were Bob experiencing the fraternity life: may be interesting; Big Foot Hunting: getting dangerously close to nerd alert, I’m 35 and live with my parents in the basement status; and the cu de gras, Summer Campers: OK, this has just reached WTF status. Summer campers? Seriously? Oh yeah, watch in awe and gasp in amazement as Bob Saget is immersed in the CRAZY world of arts and crafts time, campfire sing alongs, canoeing and the ultimate in wild living: nature hikes. Hey, you dirty hippies that are getting all hyped up (probably the same people from my last blog who abhor grocery stores), I enjoy nature and the outdoors as much as the next guy, but let’s not make more out of it than it is. If summer campers was what they picked to make the season, what did they turn down? Bob goes to barber school? How about Bob at the library? I know they have to have enough shows to make a whole season, but if they have already scraped the bottom of the barrel with summer campers on the first season, Bob better call up Mary Kate and Ashley for a reunion show if he wants to have a gig next year. This has not been A&E’s first foray into the “let’s make something old new again” reality arena. They had the Two Corey’s (about Corey Feldman and Corey Haim), Lawman with Steven Segall (OK, some would say you have to have been someone in the first place to be a has-been, but let’s not be too cruel), and of course Tony Danza as a high school teacher (because he hasn‘t had his 15 minutes of fame 4 times over). It seems that A&E has become a veritable has-been’s haven. In light of this network’s inability to match Strange Days with a more fitting host, I present my top four mismatched shows and has-been hosts:

#4 Paul Rubens (Pee Wee Herman if that helps) guest stars on Intervention to help a chronic exhibitionist.

#3 Natural Non-Surgical Beauty Tricks with Joan Rivers

#2 House Hunters with new host Randy Quaid and insignificant other

#1 Romper Room 2010 with Gary Glitter* (* all segments with Mr. Glitter were shot at least 200 yards away from the children per condition of his parole)

Grocery Store Experience II

A few things: I acknowledge that 2 out of my 3 first blogs have revolved around grocery stores. No, I don’t spend every waking moment in grocery stores, nor do I work in one. This blog is not dedicated to the world of grocery stores. If you are going to quit reading this blog because you abhor grocery stores, and grow all of your food in a little garden in the backyard, consuming nothing from the outside world, please rest assured that I will move onto other topics. Lastly, as a warning for those that are offended easily, this particular installment has a bit of salty language, however to get the full flavor of what took place between the individuals in this little supermarket smack down, it is necessary to use some direct quotes.

Most trips to the grocery store are relatively boring. Get in, get your stuff and get out. Sure, there is the excitement at home of having more to chose from for dinner, but the trip itself is pretty ho-hum most every time. However, every once in a while you get to experience a standoff between a customer and store staff that makes you want to belt out a few bars of Handle’s Messiah. “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”.

So I woke up this morning kind of early, and thought what better time to pick up a few quick groceries than at 7:00 a.m. so as to avoid the crowded aisles and long lines. The filling up of the cart was uneventful enough, and after finishing picking up all the necessities (yes, gummy bears are a necessity), I proceeded to the check out lines. Now, this particular store has nearly twenty checkout lanes, but given my early arrival at the store, only a limited number of lanes were open. All but one lane had someone with a large cart of groceries, so I chose to get behind the guy with just one item: the 12 pack of Bud Light. I am thinking I will just scoot right over here beyond this fine gentlemen, quickly check out, and make my way home. As I started unloading my cart, I heard the cashier tell the customer his total was ten dollars and some odd cents. The guy stood for a moment in silence, making no move for his wallet to pay for his purchase, but continued to stare at the total screen. “How much?” he asked. His speech was slightly slurred, but I am not completely certain he is inebriated. I do, however, begin to wonder if he is just getting an early start on the day with the beer, or if this was a capper to a long night of binge drinking. The cashier kindly repeated the total. “Well the sign over there said it is 99 cents” the guy said in a voice that quickly took on a somewhat perturbed tone. As a former worker at a retail establishment, the customer with a complete lack of common sense was the bane of my existence. Honestly sir, did you really think your 12 pack of beer was only 99 cents? It would be obvious to most people that either they looked at the price wrong, or someone moved a price tag to be funny, ect. But oh no, not this guy. He was not about to let this go. The cashier tried to explain the possible misunderstanding, but was met with the undignified response, “Well, the damn sign said 99 cents.” He had chosen to take it up a notch by using the expletive in an effort to pressure the cashier. Typical butthead customer move. Unmoved by the beginning of his tirade, the cashier apologized for the mistake (which was obviously his), and told him his total, before tax and CRV, was nine something.

I was starting to sense the tension build, and in a completely unforeseen move, the customer blurted out angrily, “This is complete bullshit. My mother just died, and you guys are trying to screw me over .” To reference the greatest holiday movie of all time, Christmas Story, this guy had pulled out a veritable triple dog dare of retail interactions. Regardless of the fact that the mother’s alleged demise was not even remotely relevant to the price of the beer, the cashier was now placed in the unenviable position of deciding if this guy was full of BS and trying to make the ultimate power play, or if maybe this poor tormented soul really had lost the only person that cared one iota about him and deserved a little compassion. There must have been something that gave him away. Maybe it was a bead of sweat on his forehead, an involuntary multitude of blinks, maybe the twitching of the corner of his mouth, but whatever it was, the cashier decided to call his bluff. Now, she didn’t out and out call him a dirty liar, but she also didn’t offer any type of condolence which would have tipped the scales in his favor in this legendary power struggle for supermarket supremacy. She simply said, “Sir, your mother has nothing to do with the price of the beer.” Well played, m’lady…well played.

At any moment, I could totally see the guy going cartoon style with smoke blowing out of his ears as a verbal explosion of livid expletives rain down on our heroine. The guy practically yelled at her (at least loud enough to be heard two check stands over), “I want to see the fuckin’ manager!” Oh no, he had brought down the lightning and the thunder. The call for manager is the last bastion for the customer, or so they often erroneously believe, as the research shows that in this type of complaint the manager takes the side of the customer only 3.94% of the time. In this particular situation, I really thought the guy knew he had lost, and was asking for the manager as a last ditch attempt scare tactic he thought would bring the cashier to her knees begging, “Oh, please sir. Don’t call the manager. Here, take your 99 cent beer. And have a free Slim Jim.” The cashier, of course, did not acquiesce in his desired manner, and called for the manager. At this point, I started worrying about my chocolate brownie ice cream and its movement towards a liquid state. I seriously contemplated moving to another line, but who the heck watches a 12 round boxing match and then turns off the television before they go to the judges score card, so I decided to stay and see how this played out. The manager came out, and the guy pulled out another classic customer move (I must admit, this guy had quite the repertoire). He played super nice, and talked super calm to the manager when explaining his position so as to show him what a wonderful customer he is, and that it must be the crazy freak cashier that was the problem here. The manager and customer then headed off to the back of the store to check out the “scene of the crime”. While they were gone, which seemed to be forever (not unlike when Jimmy the bag boy is asked by the cashier to grab Ms. Johnson another carton of eggs, but it must be in the store’s annex building because it takes so long now my picture is on the milk carton. Sorry about that tangent) the cashier and I exchanged several glances which silently communicated: 1) what a jerk and 2) you better hope you are right, because if you are not, I am going to complain about the inaccuracy of every one of my purchase prices and it is going to be grocery store anarchy. After a few minutes, the manager came around the corner with a smug countenance of victory and his chest swelled with pride. The customer came a few paces behind, head down in shame, shoulders slumped, and, although invisible to everyone but the cashier and I, a huge scarlet “J” for jackass on his shirt. The manager did not go so far as to hold it above his head in a boastful manner, and make an example of this guy, but I could see clutched in his hand a price tag; irrefutable evidence of his victory that he would certainly take home, laminate and put in his scrapbook that documents his dismantling of unruly customers. Beer-guzzling Billy came up, paid his total, and left in humbled silence. The retail universe was restored to balance as another dirt bag customer was put in his place.

Ethnic Grocery Store Experience

Despite the fact that I have lived in my home town for 33 out of the 34 years of my life, I made my first trip to the local ethnic grocery store for some ingredients for a dinner I was going to make that I could not obtain at a “traditional” grocery store.  Now, this store had most of the “regular” stuff you would find at any other store, including a deli/meat counter.  As I perused the fresh meat section I noticed numerous different cuts and types of meat, including some very delicious looking pre-marinated items.  As I made my way to the end of the counter, there, hidden like a dirty secret in the last section of the glass enclosure, was a monstrosity staring back at me.  In all my days I had never been witness to a skinned cow head, eyes in sockets, mouth agape, tongue sticking out to the side and teeth still in the mouth.  Yeah, that’s what I said, the poor bovine’s oral accoutrements were intact, for what horrific purpose, I have no idea.  My head immediately became filled with the score for the Godfather  (Side note necessary: I am now sure there are a bunch of freakish Godfather aficionados out there who are completely offended by the inaccuracy of this joke.  You know the people I am talking about.  The guy who has dresses up as Michael Corleone every single Halloween for the past twelve years, or the guy who incessantly practices his Don Vito impression just hoping for the one glorious moment of his existence when he can mumble, practically incoherently, the phrase “I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse” during an everyday conversation with someone.  I know darn well it was a horse head in the movie, and not a cow, but you people are just going to have to allow a little latitude in the joke telling, and try not to get caught up in quibbling over, and dissecting, every little detail of this blog.  Rant over.  Back to the show).  My logistical mind immediately goes into super-charged pragmatic mode, and I start wondering how the heck do you carry this out of the store?  I look into the produce section and notice the bags one uses for fruits and veggies.  Uhhhh…no…not unless they use the deli slicer machine to cut the head into 100’s of paper thin slices of tendons, muscle, bone and membrane and you stuff it into those bags, I guess.  Maybe they just give it to you in a large, slightly see-through plastic bag that allows someone to make out the barely distinguishable bloody head, and you hope like hell that at the same time the cops are not looking for a deranged serial killer who happens to cut off his victim’s heads and carries them around in a hefty sack.  And of course there are the strange looks you get from people on the street, and the reflex-like defensive attitude you get,  “Yeah, that’s right, I have a cows head in a bag.  What’s it to you?”, not even realizing the absurdity of your statement and that, hey, crazy, you have a flippin’ skinned cow’s head flung over your back in a pack like you’re the love child of Santa Claus and Jimmy Dean. My mind then of course turns to wondering why someone would buy a cow head in the first place, but figured you must be able to use it to make some dish or another that I am unfamiliar with, and was accepting of that fact.  I, of course, do not think I would ever buy a cow head, and despite my awareness of my lack of desire to purchase said item, I began finding myself wondering, “I wonder what a cow head goes for these days?”  I take a gander below the cow head, and see that it is $39.99.  This really does not seem that outrageous to me, although I have no frame of reference for the cost of such an item.  I guess I just expected it to cost more.  Given what I consider to be a more than fair price, I contemplate for the briefest of  moments the lack of interior design I have in my apartment, and what an awesome conversation piece this could be hanging on my wall. That idea is completely obliterated from my mind as I foresee the unavoidable, repeated night terrors my six year-old child would experience having that in the home.  There is also the minor issue of the smell and mass of flies.  I mean come on, there is probably a reason Glade doesn’t make a cow carcass scented plug-in.  

At this point, the sight of the cow head has completely thrown me off and made me forgot what items I am even there to pick up.  I therefore meander aimlessly down the wall into the pre-packaged meat section.  And wouldn’t you know it, I am again locked in a gaze with a poor slaughtered animal.  It is a smaller head this time, and is a profile view in a shrink wrapped package.  I begin to recognize the facial structure, and read the label: Lamb’s Head.  I can hear the haunted words “Oh, the horror, the horror” in the voice of Shari Lewis in the recesses of my brain (yes, that was a reference for you old timers out there.  You kids probably won’t get it).  By this time I am about ready to leave what I can only assume was the location that inspired Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery.  But before I can get away, I hear some crazy local who is by the lamb head as well yell to his wife, “Hey honey, there is mutton wrong with this lamb’s head.”  Seriously, sir?  Did you just, in the presence of a slaughtered animal whose eye portrays the very definition of innocence and gentleness, make a lamb pun?  Well done, sir.  You are sicker than even I am.  What are you doing later?  Gonna go punch an orphan?  Maybe put some super glue mixed with hot sauce on the inside of some old guy‘s dentures? How about giving a homeless person a counterfeit $20 bill and hope they get arrested when they use it to buy something?   Just another stellar example of mankind I suppose.  I guess one thing I learned from this little adventure at the market was there are all kinds of things out there in the world to be experienced, and I haven’t even scratched the surface.  Or maybe the lesson was just shop at Vons next time.

Debut

How does one enter the world of blogdom?  I never really considered doing it before a few weeks ago, and truth be told, had never read one.  Sure, I spend my fair share of time on the internet, but reading the ramblings of someone else never really appealed to me.  I guess my entrance, like many others before me, was through the constant pestering (and I know she will know I meant that as lovingly and sweetly as possible) of a friend to put my own personal ramblings down in written form.  My friend, whom we shall call “M” for the sake of simplicity and confidentiality, urged me to write a blog because she believed I was funny.  I immediately told her no, and came up with several legitimate excuses as to why I could not write one:  I am not that funny, it is too hard to come up with good material, I don’t have the time, my comedy is cheesy one liners that depend on delivery and timing that don’t translate to the written form, I don’t have opposable thumbs which makes typing extremely difficult, I have to wash my hair, I have a headache, it’s my time of the month.  In retrospect, that last one was outlandishly transparent given that I am a guy.  For those of you who felt extremely sorry for me that I do not have thumbs, please compose yourself, and let peace come upon you knowing that I do actually have thumbs.  For those who have no thumbs that I have offended, only thing I can say is “how the hell does one hitchhike without thumbs?”  Sorry, I digress.   “M” actually let the idea of the blog go for a day or two, probably figuring the idea would fester in my head , and would grow on me until I broke under the weight of the brilliance of the idea and sang her praises for suggesting that I write a blog.  I actually did not give it much more thought, which she must have realized because in the next few days she was back at it about how I should write a blog, she would do the advertising, I would get a following, we could even get paid for it, ect.  It was like I was getting the sales pitch of a lifetime from Billy Maize incarnate.  She then threw out, “You are funnier than that Herb Benham”, which I guess she thought would be the clincher in getting me to concede to write the blog.  Herb Benham, for those not in the know, is a writer for a local paper, who does little opinion pieces on random topics.  I am not a big fan, but have read a few articles.  He is moderately funny at best.  Given his lower “funny factor”, I wasn’t even sure this was much of a compliment if I was better than just kind of funny, but I must admit that the comment did catch the attention of my easily stroked ego.  I still was not ready to relent just yet, and then “M” proceeded to tell me I needed to write down funny ideas, and she was running an errand at lunch.  I saw where this was going and told her that I was not doing the blog, and told her to not buy me a notebook and pen to write down all these supposed comic gems that were floating around in my head.  We then engaged in what I can only compare to the absurd conversations of two young people in love that often takes the form of “I love you. I love you more.  Nuh uh, I love you more.  I love you to the moon.  I love you to infinity”, or the even more annoying interplay of two noncommittal souls that plays out thusly “Where do you want to eat?  I don’t care, where do you want to eat?  I really don’t care, where do you want to eat?  Whatever you chose is fine.”  Does someone have a bullet? Ours, however, took the form of me repeatedly telling “M” not to buy me the aforementioned products, and “M” continually telling me that she was going to do so.  I finally realized the futility of my struggle, and begrudgingly told her to not go anywhere other than the dollar store for these purchases.  Surprise, surprise, she did not go to the dollar store, but spendt what I can assume was her paltry life savings (mind you, we are poor government employees) on the old school fancy pen with four different colors that you can chose from, and a very nice notebook.  Not only did these purchases increase the level of guilt and practically force me to do this blog, but the money she spent on such fine stationary products had increased the pressure to an almost insurmountable level to create a new magnum opus week after week.  Damn that girl!  So here I go on my foray into ambiguous ramblings, petty observations and extensive descriptions of what most would consider mundane life events.  I won’t always be clean, non-offensive and proper.  Heck, I can’t even promise comedy gold at every turn.  But it will be me, take it or leave it (and some will probably have already left it) in an honest and straightforward blog from the mind of one F’d up individual.  A  serious and sincere thank you goes out to “M” for pushing me beyond my comfort zone, and getting me started on this wacky adventure doing something I never would have considered doing on my own.  Enjoy the ride everyone!