Last night, I took Avery to Fair Oaks Mall so we could go in the "kid pit" there. When we do this, I always park outside of JC Penney, since it's the closest store to the pit.
While we were going through the store last night, Avery spotted some pink flip flops that she had to have for our trip to the beach this weekend. She tried them on and loved them and I went to find somewhere to check out.
Apparently, at JC Penney, you have to line up behind stanchions at centrally located cashier kiosks. I took my place in line and we waited. We waited while the one cashier scanned the tag on the shirt the young woman ahead of me was buying and then talked at length to the young woman about where she was from in Russia, and asked her to provide an ID, which she didn't have, and then needed a social security number, which she also didn't have, so finally her boyfriend produced some sort of ID that was acceptable. (Mind you, there was no transaction taking place during any of the chit-chat...that would have made this a moderately efficient operation.) The conversation took several minutes, during which the cashier asked the young woman if she would like to open a JC Penney charge card to save 30% on her purchase (OF ONE SHIRT!). Guess what? OF COURSE SHE WANTED TO OPEN A CHARGE CARD. So, we waited several more minutes while the cashier typed in the relevant information and then FINALLY rang up the young woman's one item. She presented the total to the woman and the woman said, "I thought that shirt was 60% off." This led to another lengthy discussion about whether or not that particular shirt was on sale. The young woman finally decided that it was not worth it to go back and find the rack, and finally paid and left. I'm not exaggerating when I say that we stood there for ten minutes.
I walked up to the register with our $4 flip-flops and a $5 bill in my hand. The cashier looked at them and told me they were missing a price tag and that I'd have to go back to where I found them to get a pair that were marked. Sure, I could have done that. Instead, I chose to throw a bit of a tantrum, saying something about "no wonder I never shop at this awful store" or something along those lines and leaving the flip flops on the counter and storming out. (I showed her!)
After half an hour in the kid pit, Avery asked about the flip flops. On the way out, we got some (with a price tag) off the rack and went to a different cashier to pay, ironically flip-flopping on my decision to never shop at that store again.
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