Saturday, September 07, 2013

I should have left the Walmart feeling better about myself...

I went to the Walmarts today. There is one really close to me that I often shop at, and another a bit away that's closer to school, and all of the fancier shops in town.

Today, I went to the close Walmarts, often referred to as the ghetto Walmarts. Most of the time, especially on Saturdays, and ALWAYS on Saturday nights, it lives up to that name. Don't get me wrong, there are some of the nicest people (albeit a smidge weird) working there, but the clientele is a bit... People of Walmart-ish.

So, typically, when I leave my local, ghetto Walmart, I leave feeling a bit better about myself and my life in general. Today, notsomuch.

I went for toilet paper, and a few other sundry things, and came thisclose to leaving without the toilet paper. It's the only reason that I went there instead of the Target (well, that and the fact that it's Saturday and I was in no mood to wear makeup. Or shower really...) was to get the toilet paper, and naturally I didn't even have it on the quick list I'd made on my phone.

One thing I also got was crazy glue, since it's a little known fact among my students that if you give me even the slightest sweet little gift, I will break it or disfigure it within a few weeks. I have a lovely scrapped "O" that shattered in half when it fell off the wall and a dainty little now-headless Willow Tree figurine that need a little crazy glue love so they can go back to being housed on my school shelves.

I went to check out at the self-checkout (which, by the way, is never done by myself. I always, always require assistance). Naturally I forgot that crazy glue requires authorization, so Dieter came to help me and enter his special Walmarts code. {Dieter is his actual name. I couldn't make one up cooler than that, so he's outed on my blog. Sorry Dieter.}

Dieter jokingly asks "are you over eighteen?" to which I give my standard response: "a little bit."

Then it hits me. Not only am I older than eighteen, I'm eighteen years older than eighteen. I'm twice the legal age to buy spray paint, crazy glue, and lottery tickets.

Holy Assisted Living Facility Batman.

But like many of my stories, it doesn't end there.

I swiped my debit card, entered my pin, and declined the cash back. And the machine promptly declined that card. This is the point where I flash back to college and never having any money, and immediately think I'm completely overdrawn and have two whole weeks until payday and how am I going to live? I tend to forget the fact that I'm a grown up, have savings, investments, and oh yeah, have also checked my bank account in the last 24 hours and am doing quite fine for the moment.

Take a deep breath. Must have entered the pin wrong. Swipe the credit card instead, in case it's a magnetic strip reader or something. That card is instantaneously declined. Whoa. At this point, I'm quite convinced that the FBI has mistakenly identified me as some sort of international spy and thus, frozen my assets. (Perhaps I watch a few too many spy tv shows). It's also at this point that I think I will be forever stuck in the Walmarts, but then remember that at least I have enough cash in my wallet to cover the drink I've had half of while I was shopping.

Luckily, the story has a happy ending, and I tried my debit again, and it worked just as Dieter was coming over to tell me that it was a very sensitive card reader and that's probably why it was declining my card.

Or, I could have just "spy-ed" my way out of it, and Dieter was none the wiser.

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