Nice day at the beginning, crap day at the end.
Left this morning to make a 25-mile-each-way 100% backroads drive for an Aldi/Kroger/beer break errand. Totally peaceful, nice gentle rain the whole way, very nice.
I got home about 1PM, and MrsT wanted to go to Samās Club, so 20-mile-each-way half-backroads-half-congested-suburbia drive, but that wasnāt the worst of it.
Saturday afternoon, Samās was packed, and I mean, we couldnāt park at Samās, we had to park at a shopping center across the road and hoof it over. Never seen that before.
For me, that means get in and get out, but for MrsT, even though she had a list, it meant who gives a shit, Iām taking my time anyway.
Seriously, I cannot shop with this woman on my best day, and today was nowhere near that. It was elbows-to-azzholes in Samās, as we like to say around here, and her first item was a linen shirt sheād see in the mailer.
First, she got it down from the five colors/patterns to two. That took about 20 minutes. Then, between those two, she started with, āI need a white shirt, but I like this patternā¦should I get the white one or the pattern?ā¦the white, the pattern?ā¦white, pattern?ā¦pattern, white?ā¦the pattāā
āGeez, itās Samās Club, theyāre $12! Get āem both!ā
āI supposeā¦now, should I get the large, or the XL?ā¦the large, the XL?ā¦large, XL?ā¦ā
Back and forth, back and forth - she even asked two other women what they thought.
She finally made up her mind, and she moved right to the next table, where they had these flimsy sundresses, and I shit you not, itās like someone dropped the needle at the beginning of the same record again: āI like this one thatās ruffled, but I also like the pleated oneā¦should I get the ruffles or the pleats?ā¦the ruffles, the pleats?ā¦ruffles, pleats?ā¦ā
Same thing, right through the styles, colors, and sizes, almost word-for-word. It took over an hour just for those two things, and Iām supposed to just stand there, getting pushed and shoved by other shoppers, people banging into our cart, while she goes back and forth, because she gets angry if I go off by myself, or if I offer to shop the food parts of her list.
So I waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, after more than an hour, we moved to a handful of snack things she wanted. She puts together little goodie bags for her clients, so she wanted a big box of little bags of snack chips/crisps, a bag of miscellaneous chocolates, a box of mini rice crispy treats, and a box of granola bars.
Samās has all their snack stuff in one big area. Except for rice crispy treats. Those are with the cereal. Or are they? No, theyāre over where the health & beauty area starts, of course they are.
We had to fight our way up and down the aisles, until I gave up and asked someone, and we grabbed those. Then the same routine for the granola bars, which were somewhere else entirely, had to ask for those. We found the chocolates.
Then we got to the boxes of chips/crisps varieties. The fun family packā¦the party packā¦the hot fire packā¦the crazy summertime pack - loads of slightly different combinations of the same things, and she had to compare and contrast the various boxes⦠āwell, I think theyād like the Funyuns and the Munchos, but Iām pretty sure Allie said she doesnāt like pretzelsā¦this one doesnāt have any pretzels, but Robbie definitely likes anything barbecue, and thereās nothing barbecue in this one, and this one is just different flavors of Bugles, but itās just Bugles, yāknowā¦ā - that was another full hourā¦and on the way out, she decided against the rice crispy treats that I had searched and searched for and got peanut butter crackers instead!
But wait, it gets worse.
Finally, time to go. We had her stuff for work, and our stuff for us, two different orders, two different credit cards. I scanned and paid for our stuff on the app, no line, no waiting.
She had to pay for hers with her work credit card, so that meant getting in a line. While we waited she started looking for her Samās Club member card - āDonāt worry, I have mine.ā
Nope, she insisted on using hers. She couldnāt find it. She tried logging into the app, but because she never uses it, it wasnāt completely set up for her.
āUse. Mine.ā
She finally used mine. She unloaded her stuff onto the belt, I scooted around with our paid stuff and waited for her.
The cashier put her stuff in a cart. MrsT immediately took her stuff out and put it back in our cart.
āDonāt do that, itās going to confuse everything when we try and leave.ā
āNo it wonāt.ā
āItās gonna read my code on the way out and see thereās extra stuff in here.ā
āNo. It wonāt.ā
Wellā¦yes it did, and we got pulled out of the automated exit and had to explain over and over again why we had two orders paid two different ways on the same membership card it the same cart. We ended up having to have two workers validate and rescan every single item. Another 20 minutes wasted.
That was the last half of the day. Murder. Pure murder.