I went to put on my brown belt yesterday morning
and it snapped right in two as I was getting ready to fasten it. Ugh.
I took Eric to his guitar lesson and planned on
stopping at Kohl’s while he was in there, but wasn't able to make it over there in time
because I had another errand that took too long. So when his lesson was done we went
across the street to the mall. He needed a shirt for p.e. class, so we were
going to kill two birds with one stone.
The cheapest yet nicest belt I could find was
$26. I made an UGH! sound in my head when I realized that was the best I was
going to do today. Eric found a shirt for $9.
So we go over to the checkout. There are four
registers open and each line is at least two deep. I pick a line and after a
few minutes, it’s our turn.
She scans the belt and the shirt and with taxes,
the total is $36.91. I’m standing there ready to swipe my credit card into the
machine but before I do so she grabs some sort of card sitting on the desk to
her right and starts punching in numbers from it. I know Kohl’s has specials
once in awhile so I figured this must be one of them, so I wait for her to
punch in the numbers.
She is clearly having difficulty and finally
reaches for the phone and dials a number. She is connected to someone and
explains that she’s at the Kohl’s store in Janesville and I hear her say that the customer has
a gift card she’s trying to enter.
Huh?
So the person on the other end of the phone
gives her some numbers to punch in. She punches them in and hangs up, then
says, ‘It didn’t work.’ At this point I almost said, ‘What exactly is the
discount you’re trying to give me?’ but I stand there and try not to show my
impatience as she dials AGAIN. I really have no idea what's going on at this
point. None.
This whole saga takes about ten minutes and they
felt like a LONG ten minutes just standing there at the register while she
tried to work out whatever it is she was trying TO work out, especially while watching customer after customer depart from the registers around me.
At the end of her second conversation she says,
‘Oh, it worked now. Thank you!’ and I see the screen to my right change from a
total of $36.91 to $11.91. She announces that my total is $11.91 and apologizes
profusely for making me wait so long. I swipe my card and sign the screen and
Eric and I leave. As we’re walking out the door I say to him:
‘What just happened there?’
I did not hand her a gift card. I didn’t ask her
to scan a gift card. The person in front of me did not have a gift card
scanned, as I was watching the transaction.
I don’t understand what happened or why it
happened, but I bought a belt and a t-shirt for Eric for $11.91 today.
When I shared this story with my sister she
reminded me of a time a couple of years ago when I was in Kohl's with $20 of
Kohl's money (in ticket form), couldn't find anything I liked, realized that
this ticket had an expiration date in less than a week, and decided on a whim
to hand it to a stranger who had a cart full of stuff and quite the surprised
look on her face when I gave her the ticket. Sis suggested this recent event
was karma.
The more I think about it, the more I tend to
agree.
