I spuddle.

So there I was in Zellers buying more clothes for The Birdy who outgrows things overnight.   Things I’ve bought her so recently they still have those little plastic thingies attached are suddenly too small.  What HAPPENED?  I don’t know.   She lives on pink milk and vitamins, so I blame the growth hormones perpetrated on the entire global population of cows by Monsanto.   Everything can be blamed on Monsanto, if it cannot be blamed on Jason Mesnick, the world’s most douchey bachelor, or Gordon Campbell, the province’s most ridonkulous leader.    I wonder if Monsanto would be interested in footing the bill for said clothes.   Somehow, I doubt it.

To make a long story a minimum of 1000 words, every single rack of clothing at Zellers had a big huge sign affixed to it that said, BUY ONE, GET ONE HALF OFF.   Why they didn’t just say 25% off, I have no idea.   (The math became complicated later in the story, i.e. when the till did the math and made half off the same as 1/3 off and the subsequent correcting calculation caused the cashier’s head to actually implode.)   After much humming and hawing during which time The Birdy frantically flung everything pink that she could find into the shopping cart and The Bun screamed about how pink made him VOMIT, YES REALLY VOMIT, HE WAS GOING TO BE SICK, we chose a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a pair of tights for ballet.   She also selected four new tutus (who knew they sold these at Zellers?) and several new leotards and multiple pairs of (pink) tights.   The Bun chose a Hannah Montana necklace for reasons that still escape me (it wasn’t pink) and cried hot tears of pain when told he couldn’t have it.   Both kids are starting dance classes this week and The Birdy already has a dance outfit and The Bun has more dance shoes than you can shake a stick at, although you could easily shake a stick at them, because there are only two pairs, but still it seems like a lot if you consider that up until now, his dancing life has consisted of crumping during movie credits, in bare feet.

After what felt like six hours of painful negotiation with the children over what they could and could not have, I took four things to the till.   Buy one, get one half off.   Two should be full price, two should be half price.  Right?   RIGHT?   Well, no.   Because one of them was a t-shirt which was not on sale even though it was on a table of identical shirts with a sign ATTACHED that said BUY ONE GET ONE HALF OFF.    The jeans were “pants” and therefore exempted.   The plain shirts were “underwear” so did not count as “apparel”.   Underwear is not apparel apparently.  Because you don’t wear it?  Oh, wait, yes you do.   Well, NOT APPAREL according to the Laws of Zellers, Where We Overprice Everything And Misrepresent The Price On The Tag.    Everything in my pile was an exception even though none of the things in the pile actually matched the two exception categories (Cherokee t-shirts and sweatpants).    I could have let it go, but I did not.   I hissed and snarled.   I was bitchy and unforgiving.  I was not going to relent.   And you’ll be happy to know, I got the $8 in discounts THAT I WAS ENTITLED TO after nearly leaping over the counter to throttle the clerk.  And yes, I know it’s not her fault, she does not make the rules.  But at Zellers, NOTHING IS ANYONE’S FAULT, management is hidden and cannot be addressed directly unless you are wearing a police badge, and nothing gets rung through at the price it is marked at.    Someone had to take a stand, and that someone was me.   Yes, indeedy.   So I’m like practically a SUPERHERO now, right?  No? YES I AM.  No shopping trip should require so much legalese.   I may as well have been in a courtroom arguing in front of a judge instead of what I was actually doing which was arm-wrestling a 16-year-old girl into Doing The Right Thing.

To shake off the annoyance, I drove the kids through the MacDonald’s drive thru for a nutritious meal.  I’M KIDDING.   I know it’s crap, but I was desperate.  That started going badly when it became apparent that the speaker in the drive thru was broken and the person on the other end was embroiled in a conversation with at least 8 other MacDonald’s employees about the fry oil.   We waited and waited.   The line snaked around the parking lot.   We have probably developed tumors from inhaling all that exhaust.   I shouted into the speaker, something about Happy Meals.   The speaker murmured back in a completely indecipherable code.   I began to weep.   Other cars honked.   The kids screeched about apple slices.   They really really like apples from MacDonald’s.   Don’t ask, it doesn’t make sense to me either.   They don’t do that well with regular apples.   I don’t think they understand that apples are apples, whether or not they come in plastic packaging.

Finally we got home.   I’ve forgotten why I started this post, much like I forget most things when I’m interrupted every ten seconds with shrieks and wails about how someone LOOKED AT SOMEONE ELSE THE WRONG WAY and I HAVE TO PEE and THE BIRDY TOUCHED MY CAMERA SO I PUSHED HER INTO THE BATHTUB and that sort of thing, but I think my point was going to be that no one gives a red hot poker about the customer any more.   Er, that was about it, really.   In between starting this post and finishing it, I’ve had to make dinner so now my concentration is shot and it’s only 5:35 although I told the kids it was bed-time.   Is that wrong?   No, I don’t think so either.   I’ll pay for it in the morning, but for now a blissful alone-type evening filled with reality TV and even some (gasp!) work is ahead of me.

So that’s that then.    God, don’t you hate it when a post just peters out without any real point showing up at the end?  Me, too.   Sorry.   My bad.

Filed under: Random Story of The Day