Thursday, November 24, 2016

Small Annoyances at the Grocery Store

Like most grocery stores, the one near my house has a loyalty card. These can be a great thing. If used effectively, they can really save shoppers a lot of money. The thing about this particular store is that they recently replaced their old loyalty card with a new one. That means that the card I had is now obsolete. No worries, they gave me another. But the new card has caused me more headaches than I can count.

First of all, I had to give my cell phone number to register for the new card. Then I received a text with a link that I was supposed to click in order to verify my card. The problem is I still have an ancient phone that does not have internet access. Text messages I can get, but clicking on a link isn't going to work. That means in order to use my card I have to pick up my phone and call an actual number and activate it. I just plain don't want to do that. I hate doing that kind of thing. Always have. Always will.

Well, I can still get points on my card if I just give my cell phone number to the cashier at the store. It's slightly more annoying than handing over the card itself, but it works. The problem is, the first few times I told the person at the counter my number I apparently spoke in tongues or something. On more than one occasion, with two or more different cashiers, I said the number, causing the woman at the counter to look at me with knitted brows. Then she (the various "she's" who took my number on multiple trips to the store) repeated the number for confirmation, and invariably got the last two digits wrong. Every single time.

The last few times I've been to that store, I've been overly conscious of the way I say the number. I want to make sure I'm understood. So I've been using a trick I learned from my days of doing community theatre. It was pounded into my head over and over again that in theatre, your voice should go up at the end of a sentence. Quite often in regular conversation, we end our sentences by going down, but in theatre, things go up. That's because if you're on a stage trying to be heard by people in the back row, if you inflect your voice down the audience will lose the last few words of what you say. I thought that was maybe what was happening to me at the grocery store. So I began inflecting up at the end every time I said my cell number.

My method seemed to work. The cashiers could hear me and understand me. But the trials and tribulations are far from over. The most recent time I went grocery shopping I said my cell number and then the cashier looked at me with eyebrows raised and a smile on her face. "Are you sure?" she asked me. Not quite understanding what she was getting at, I just kind of smiled back at her in an attempt to silently communicate my confusion. Then she said, "The way you said your number, you sounded like you were asking a question." I just can't win!

8 comments:

  1. I got a good giggle out of this post. I view the entire act of going to the grocery store as a huge annoyance, and put it off as long as I can. The (sinisterly buzzing) overhead lights give me a headache. There's usually a kid or two screaming. I return home penniless, with a cosmic hangover, swearing never go do that again but knowing I have only six days respite. If I had to deal with the hassle of a partially functioning loyalty card on top of that, there would be carnage. ;)

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    1. When my children were small and going to the grocery store was likely my only contact with the outside world in a given week, I actually looked forward to it. Now I dread it. Unless I'm hungry and I'm planning to buy something sweet. Then it's fun, but I usually regret the choice later.

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  2. I can't shop hungry. It makes me grumpier than I already am, I impulse-buy while I'm there because food looks better when I'm hungry and then I'm furious at myself when I get home for buying food we don't need. If online grocery shopping got me what I wanted without those insidious "substitutions," I would be all over it!

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    1. I've never tried online grocery shopping. Something that is becoming a thing now, apparently, is ordering online and picking up at the local store. Still requires a drive to the store, but you skip the endless wandering while you look for what you need.

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  3. I haven't heard about that! I don't mind driving to the store, but if they're still picking and packing, then it's the same "substitution" problem. Still, if I hit a day where I just can't cope, it's an option!

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    1. You're in the UK, right? I don't know if they have it there or not. It's fairly new here. I know some Publix stores do it and the new Kroger that recently opened near my house does it. I don't know if it's available at any other stores, and I've never actually tried it.

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  4. I am in the UK. Tesco has pretty much every service you could ask for. It's a little scary, actually . . . O.O

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