OK, I am sure you are all sick of my Market Basket posts but I sh*t you not the story you are about to read is real. Every week I have some MB issue but like a moth to a flame I am drawn back week after week. I think it is much like a car wreck. You know it is going to be bad but you look anyway. I know deep down that Market Basket is going to be bad but I go anyway...
This week the shopping trip itself was fine. No bumps in the road there. It was the check out process that was sheer disaster. One of the things I really like about The Basket is that they hire people with special needs. That is important to me and I want to support them for that...it is a big part of the reason I make the long drive every Thursday. I usually have the patience of a saint when they are bagging my groceries...I build in an extra few minutes to my budgeted grocery shopping time to accommodate this. However I was not prepared for what happened this past Thursday...
I specifically go on Thursday mornings because I have a window of opportunity to go with just 1 child at a time when the store is not super busy and when I never have to wait in a check out line. Typically at that time of day they are waiting around for someone to come into their lane. It is common for the bagger to stand at the top of the line, lure you in and start helping unload your groceries onto the conveyor belt. It gives you a jump start on processing your order and I am sure it mixes things up for them a bit, combating the boredom they must encounter at the slower times of the day.
So one of the baggers, who in my head I refer to as Chatty Cathy because she never stops talking to me, the cashier or even herself when no one else is listening, flags me down. I think she is there to help me unload my cart, oh no my friends, she has bigger plans for me. She tells me that she is a cashier now and that today was her first day in this new role. SH*T!!! I only have an extra 5 minutes budgeted to get my order processed, have Anna take a ride on Old Yeller (the mechanical ride she earns for behaving...that only works 50% of the time), the 20 minute ride home, unpacking the fridge and freezer items before heading to pick Sara up from school. I am doomed. I can feel it...
So she does a pretty decent job of getting my order through in a respectable time frame. I then bring out my coupons...I am back in my coupon faze, I have bright red hair to prove it!! L'Oreal was on sale AND I had a $2 off manufacturer's coupon. Can't beat that no matter the color! I saved $6.50 this week, it was supposed to be $6.90 but that part of the story is coming a bit later. So she takes my 7 coupons and looks them all over, intently studying them if you will, much like the passport control people at JFK post 9/11. She pulls one out of the group and in a kind of stern voice tells me that "this one expires tomorrow". "Mmm-huh" I say, "that is why I am using it today"...she goes on to tell me that she likes to make sure that they are not expired. I wanted to tell her that if she tried to swipe them through and they were expired they would be rejected, but I thought better of it and bit my tongue. She then goes on to ask her bagger to look for each individual item I had a coupon for. Keep in mind that half of my groceries were already bagged!! She didn't care. She wanted to do her due diligence and see each item in the flesh. This time I did tell her that if the item was not already purchased and she scanned a coupon it would not be accepted. She said, yes, she knew that but she just likes to double check for herself. I just dejectedly put my head down and waited for her to visually confirm the previously bagged items. Lest, I try to pull the wool over her eyes and get thirty five cents off of bread I didn't really buy.
She is done. I pay and turn to push my groceries out of the store. Not as easy as you would think because somewhere along the line the bagger disappeared. While I was proving to the cashier I was not misusing my coupon privilege the bagger went MIA. So now I had to finish bagging the stuff myself, which in the long run is probably to my benefit...I made sure to evenly distribute the glass jars and not load 9 of them in the same bag while giving syrup its own bag.
I was walking away when I was summoned back to checkout lane 5. Apparently she missed a coupon. She was apologizing profusely and told me to take it to the courtesy booth where they would redeem it for me. I told her no worries. I would just use it another time. She begged me, even used "please, please go and turn it in". I told her not to worry, I wouldn't tell anyone that she missed it (except all the blog readers) and that I would not complain and I promised to use it next week. She was devastated. I finally lied and told her I was going right over and turn it in. I wanted to make sure she was able to sleep that night and not fret over the 40 cents I overpaid for my Land O Lakes margarine...
Can't wait to see what next Thursday brings.
Oh, here is a link to the People of Market Basket website. For those of you not in the MB catchment area you can log on and get a glimpse into the wonderfulness that is "The Basket"....
http://www.peopleofmb.com/
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