Just Give It to Him

Yesterday after work, on the way home I dropped into Safeway to buy a voltage step down adaptor. This is for work to replace the one that was damaged.

I parked the car at the closest parking lot to Safeway and zoom straight into Safeway and down the aisle where the general merchandises were kept. A quick browse, grabbed the adaptor and walked quickly towards the fast lane check lane counter. If you must ask why I was in the hurry, I needed to get home to cook dinner.

There were 2 persons ahead of me and I waited for a while before my turn. When my turn came, I passed the adapter to this young boy at the counter. He took the adaptor and swapped it over the bar code reader. The bar code reader beeped and there was no price displayed. He swapped it a second time, another beep and no price displayed. Thinking he did not swapped it properly, he did it the 3^rd time slowly and again no price displayed. I could see he was getting a bit annoyed.

He then proceeded to key in the product number and again no price displayed. Frustrated, he picked up the phone and over the PA system he asked for a price check. By this time normally I would have given up and walked away. This time I decided to be patience since I needed it urgently for work tomorrow.

After a minute and a half wait, there was no response to his call, he apologised for the wait. He picked up the phone again and asked a price checked. A minute and a half, no response. His colleague next him told him he was not loud and forceful enough. She pick up the phone and over the PA system, she screamed for price check. Another minute passed, still no help. By then I wanted to grab the phone and screamed “idiot, get off your big fat arse over here”.

A young Chinese girl, an off duty cashier, who knows I am one of the regular customers, volunteered to do the price check. She rushed off and was back in the jiffy. She went straight to the Store Supervisor and told her there were no price tags on the goods. She tried the computer with the product code but the computer showed no record of this product. By then, the queue was getting longer and some customers were amused at what was going on.

Not knowing what to do, the Store Supervisor told the cashier serving me,"Just give it to him".

I stood there like a stunned mullet for a second before I asked, “Are you sure?” He replied, “Compliment of the store and for the inconvenience”.

I related this to Maureen; she said “I am lucky”. Am I and is it because the store is inefficient?