I usually avoid going out on Black Friday on account of I'm allergic to teeming hordes of frenzied people cramming the spaces I wish to occupy. The sad thing is that my annoyance has nothing to do with Christmas shopping.
I needed to do some routine errands, which included filling a prescription for an ointment for a family member. I dropped the prescription off on my way out, and after about 45 minutes to an hour of running around, came back to the drug store to pick up the 'scrip.
I used their little drive-up window. "That'll be $10 please." I put my payment into the little door thing, then waited while she rang up some other guy who just at that moment walked up to the counter inside
I waited a bit longer as she disappeared out of my view. When she came back she said, oops, they're out of that stuff. She called to another pharmacy up the road, and they had it in stock, so the pharmacist lady forwarded the 'scrip info with instructions that I'd be there in 15 min to pick up. She handed back my payment.
I had one more errand to run -- a Wal-Mart that presumably had an item in stock that had been on sale for Black Friday. I drove past the pharmacy that had the ointment in stock in order to go to Wal-Mart to look for the sale item. That took about a half hour, maybe a bit more while I piddled around looking, finally asking, and learning they had sold out of 'em. No biggie, I'll find another somewhere.
So I headed back home, stopping at the second pharmacy. Waited in line while a really really loud guy argued with the pharmacist about why the orders on his prescription were wrong and the pharmacist, reading the prescription, said she could not fill it until Sunday.
He said, "I'm going out of town on a road trip!"
He said, "They got the date wrong."
He said, "I've only been having that filled every 30 days since forever."
He said, "No, see, you didn't fill the last one all the way."
No matter what he said, the answer was the same.
Finally, it was my turn, and I strode up and said, "Picking up," and gave the name. The guy looked in the little bin. He looked a second time.
"It was phoned from the other store," I said, helpfully. He looked yet again. He looked at the logs.
"Oh, we haven't filled that yet. It'll be just a few moments. We'll call you when it's ready."
A few moments later a young woman with two little girls came up. She looked at me. "You standing in line?" I was hanging out in front of the pharmacy window, but not in line so I motioned her ahead. She went to the counter and handed in her prescription. Then she went over to the waiting area and sat in the chairs. The little girls played "make believe shopping" in the toy aisle.
Still waiting ... about five/six minutes of the girls chirping and doing loud little girl things, while Kenny G caused all narcoleptics within hearing distance to seize up as the audio system played his rendition of "White Christmas", the pharmacist announced some name -- not mine.
The young mother got up and picked up her order. Yeah. The woman that had arrived well after I did. I stood immediately behind her, at that point.
I was all ready to bark, "How did that happen?" but he did not give me the chance. He went over to a shelf, grabbed a bottle off of it, popped the bottle into a bag, printed out the info packet, then rang the whole thing up. "Sorry about the wait."
Yeah, sorry this, motherfucker.
gekko: darned good walkies companion.
Welcome to another holiday season...
Are the usual blogtards whinging already about the difference between Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, and about the "War on Christmas" that never happened?
That is so last decade. Jeez, you'd think peeps'd find something new to whinge about. Like the evilness that is Kenny G Christmas music, or whether Twitter is the new pink. Or something.
Before posting, I read the blog's *comments policy* and found it to be restrictive. So, I am using a fake name to make it more difficult for you.
I also researched the origin of "Black" Friday. I know what you are thinking, and it does not mean what you think I am suggesting. It is named Black Friday because all the other colors were already taken. (Blue Monday, Ash Wednesday, Red Oktober, Pink Floyd, etc. etc.)
I'm happy to clear that up.
--NRoyer
FWIW, in my two trips to WalMart this past week I noticed extra long lines at Customer Service, aka *Merchandise Return*, but that is to be expected after such a successful Black Friday sell-off.
One lady was returning a six-foot palm tree in a five-gallon terracotta pot. A man brought back some kind of gazebo kit, and another man had a shopping cart chock-full of children's clothing all neatly folded with the tags still affixed. Still another woman had two shopping carts full of stuff and had commandered a clerk solely to sort through it all and give her credit. I was in line half an hour, and she was still at it when I finished.
Me, I was returning a pair of jeans that were mis-sized at the factory in South America or wherever they were sewn together. I bought them a week before Black Friday, and I know they were mis-sized because I always wear size 36 waist, and these were too tight. So I took them back and got 38's hoping they shrink some--but not too much.
The only controversy I encountered was hearing a man of ethnic origin arguing with the returns clerk because she would not give him cash back on items he had put on VISA. His contention was that the card was not his, but he had to pay the payments--which he said would be the same no matter how much was put on the card. So, he wanted the cash to help off-set the payment.
No deal, she said.
--NR