Month: June 2008

We did our weekly grocery shopping yesterday and as our custom I load the conveyor and Donna moves to the end and will start bagging if there is no one there. I have the coupons in my pocket (Donna hands them to me as we buy the item the coupon is for) and the loyalty card for the store in my wallet, plus I have the debit card for paying, so I stop opposite the cashier.

When the cashier was done scanning our items and deducting the coupons, I swiped the debit card. At this point, knowing my wallet is empty, Donna says, “Take out a couple extra bucks.” This is unnerving because I am used to requests for specific amounts. I ask Donna what she means by a couple. Her answer was even more unsettling, “Just round up the total.” Our bill was at that point ninety-four dollars and fourteen cents. Crap! She expected me to do math under pressure, the cashier was waiting, the woman behind me had her stuff on the conveyor belt…I couldn’t do it, I just knew I’d subtract wrong, forgetting to carry the one or something, and the bill would come to $101 or $99.

I punted, figured I would just take out ten bucks, that should be easy. I push the other key, hit the 1 and the 0 and hit OK. Your total is $94.24. Damn that’s ten cents! Cancel. Back. Cancel. Panic.

I just know everyone around is staring at the doofus who can’t operate the card console. In my head I imagine the kid at the service desk is making an announcement, “Attention Kroger shoppers. Gather around Register #5 and watch an old guy try to operate the credit card reader. Grab a latte at the Starbucks counter and come on up front because next he’ll be trying to pay using the change from one of those little rubber things with a split in it that even your grandfather is too cool to use anymore.”

Miraculously all my button pushing has brought me back to the “Would you like cash back?” screen without having to swipe the card again. Alright, I want ten bucks, not ten cents. I push the key opposite other and push the one and the zero keys, then the big green Yes button. There. That wasn’t so hard was it?

Apparently it was hard, because the cashier hands me my receipt and my dime change.

And while I’m sure she was trying to be helpful by pointing me to the ATM machine near the service desk, I wasn’t listening to the cashier, I mumbled rudely, “No thanks. I don’t really need it.” I just wanted out of the store.

My very supportive wife waited until we got outside in the parking lot before she started laughing at me…

It took Netflix less than 2 weeks to come to their senses:

Dear Brian,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

I’m sure it was me singing the petition. 😀

A local hospital’s mobile mammogram bus visits the plant every year. The nurse makes a schedule of when each person is supposed to go get their test done. She makes up a little spreadsheet, but gets me to print it out at 18 x 24 on my plotter. It gets posted on a stand in the main entrance corridor between her office and HR.

When we walked by it the other day on our way for one of our walks on break, Donna commented that maybe that shouldn’t be there because maybe the participants didn’t want everyone else to see it. I quipped something about HIPPA and she said, “Well my name isn’t on there, so I’m not going to worry about it.”

Later that morning as I was walking by the sign, a woman who was on the list, wondered aloud, like me, if maybe that didn’t violate HIPPA (feel free to try and figure that out, here is a link to the 101 page PDF.) She must have said something to Human Resources because the next time I passed that way, the schedule was gone.

That afternoon as I sat in my cube working, I heard that same woman passing by and she must have came upon a friend going in the opposite direction because she announced to her (loud enough to be heard over a 100′ radius), “I can’t talk now, I’m off to get my mammogram!”

So much for taking down the schedule so people wouldn’t know…