Cash only

Well, no sooner have I created this blog than something stupid happens to give me something to write about. I put off creating this for a while, worried that I wouldn't find anything to write, but it seems I underestimated Joe Public and it's stupidity. Really all I have to do is make sure I get out more, and I'm sure to find inspiration on a regular basis.

Tonight I decided to pop out to the local supermarket before it closed to get a bit of shopping, as you do. I prefer shopping later because there are generally less people to irritate me. Tonight I found that I managed to complete my shopping without getting irritated once! That really is a miracle, let me tell you, because I really don't "do" shopping. I mean I do shopping, because I have to, to make sure we have food. But I don't "do" shopping in the sense that I don't enjoy it. I know, a stupid expression, I really need to drop that.

Anyway, happy that I had managed to find everything I wanted, and no one had got in my way, and everything was labeled correctly, and the fact that I had even managed to get some bargains, I made my way to the check out. I went to pay with my debit card, as usual, and the old man behind the till started squinting at the signature strip and turning the card upside-down to compare my signature. Like I would have signed it upside-down. He said to me "I don't know how anyone could be expected to read that". I didn't take offence at this, thinking that he was referring to the fact that that it's so hard to see a persons signature due to the fancy squiggly pattern it has on the strip. Then he said to me "You should have signed it in black ink", to which I replied, "I did, but it's faded" thinking that would be the end of it. He continued to moan at me for not making my signature clear enough, so I tried explaining to him that it's not a new card, so sliding it in and out of my wallet the signature has worn off. He then said to me "I would be within my rights to refuse to accept this card", so I said "I would be more than happy to use the chip and pin facility, if you had it available". He said "This is a cash only till so we don't have chip and pin at this till", "I didn't realise" I replied as I looked around for a sign to confirm this, but of course there wasn't one. But he accepted my card anyway, saying "Anyway, I don't want to argue with you at this time of night".

Don't you always find that? That it's always stroppy people who start an argument and then say "Anyway, I don't want to argue with you"? I wasn't even aware that we were actually arguing.

What can I say? Apart from "There's life Jim, but not as we know it..." or as my husband would say "What the smeg's wrong with people?"


I'd just like to comment that in using the spell checker on here, it suggested I replace the word "to" with... umm... "to" and "that" with... er... "that". It's most useful.