Adventures in Christmas shopping
Dec. 5th, 2004 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyBeing the entry I started to write yesterday before I was distracted by across-the-road's flag.
After the best part of a year of disputes with the council and building works, a chain of jewellery stores has opened a branch here in town, on a prominent position on the main street. Just in time for Christmas, oddly enough. What a coincidence! I'm not really the target market for this shop - I don't wear much jewellery and, like Anne of Green Gables, I find diamonds disappointing - but I went for a sticky-beak at it. Judging by the crowd in the shop, so did everyone else in the city, which makes me think there's not really enough excitement around here. Even though this kind of mass-produced, tasteful jewellery isn't my thing, I've got to admit the shop was very nice. And I did find something I liked: green porcelain teacups with dainty blue hummingbird handles and red 3-D flower decorations. Just how I like my home wares: preposterous.
Then I had not one, not two, but three (yes, THREE!) bad queue experiences. I mean, I take it as given that I will pick the slowest queue. These all had that something extra.
I went to Target to get wrapping paper and picked the queue that had only one other person in it - a woman with a toy telephone, birthday card and a sheet of gift wrap. She paid cash for the card and paper, but wanted to pay for the toy separately on credit card. While she was swiping the credit card, she asked the checkout girl, "Do you have any gift vouchers?" She wanted ten of them, in different amounts. Apparently Target gift vouchers these days look like credit cards with different pictures on them, and the girl had to swipe each one through the credit card machine and key in the amount, then write the value on each card. While she was doing this, the woman's mobile phone rang, so each time the girl finished doing one gift voucher there was a longish pause before the woman dragged herself away from the conversation to say, "The one with the kitten, thirty dollars." I ended up changing to the long queue, and I was still out ahead of the gift voucher woman. The check-out girl looked like she was thinking evil thoughts.
I went to buy a gift for my mother's partner, John. This shop has an odd set-up, with cash registers on either side of the door. There was only one employee there, and he was already at the right side register fixing up another customer, so I stood behind her and sighed, because it was obvious that this was going to take a while. She had one of those permanently aggrieved voices and she was complaining that the mobile phone accessory she had bought didn't fit her husband's mobile phone - but she didn't have the phone with her nor did she know what sort it was in order to get one that did fit. So she wanted to look at all the different mobile phones to see if one looked familiar. They kept going from the counter to the phone displays and back. That checkout guy also looked like he was thinking evil thoughts. Then another employee came from out the back, and stopped to help a man who was browsing. By now, there was an old lady in the queue behind me, and when a third employee came from out the back, she latched on to him with a question and gave me a bitchy little smile as they walked off. Finally, a girl came from out the back and opened the left side register and I fairly dashed across the shop to beat another customer.
After doing my Christmas shopping, I bought some groceries and got in the eight items or less queue. In front of me were a middle-aged woman and her elderly mother. They had seven items. The woman looked at her list and said, "Oh, I forgot the eggs" and raced off to get some. Eight. Her mother said, "Oh, Jack and Jill are coming this weekend, I should get them something for Christmas." She went off to get a tin of biscuits. Nine. She looked at the tin for a bit, and said, "That's a nice tin. I should get some more, just to have in the cupboard." She went off and came back with three more tins. Twelve. Then she said, "I'm out of ice-cream, love. What sort do the kids like?" So her daughter went to the freezer (admittedly, this was just to the right of the queue) and got a carton of ice-cream and a box of Paddlepops. Fourteen. Just before they were about to be served, she said to her mother, "Do you want a chocolate bar?" and they each grabbed a Cherry Ripe. Sixteen.
As I was putting my bags in the boot, an old lady, tiny and birdlike with a long greying auburn plait, on her way through the car park had to wait next to me while a row of cars whizzed by.
"I hate it when they park crooked," she said, pointing at a crookedly parked car with her keys.
"That's mine," I told her. "But I'm crooked because the car next to me was."
"Oh well then, that's alright. I won't punish you." She bent down and pretended to scratch the paintwork.
She told me a slightly confusing story about how she puts birdseed on her car's front bumper and her neighbour's chicken comes and eats it - "Puts scratches all over it!" - and how she waited for it with a bucket of cold water until she had to come down the street. I wanted to ask why she put birdseed on her car in the first place, but she was off on another subject - traffic. "I used to park up further, but I don't like going out past Target because they come out of the underground car park there so fast... it's a terrible corner. There's always problems there." It is an odd corner - a crossroad, where traffic coming down three of the arms turn onto the fourth - so I agreed, and she toddled off happily.
Stopped at the Give Way sign at the terrible corner in question, I discovered the source of some of the problems there. An old lady, tiny and birdlike with a long greying auburn plait, in a scratched blue hatchback, driving the wrong way down the one-way fourth arm and bringing the other three streams of traffic to a standstill.
It was good to get home.
After the best part of a year of disputes with the council and building works, a chain of jewellery stores has opened a branch here in town, on a prominent position on the main street. Just in time for Christmas, oddly enough. What a coincidence! I'm not really the target market for this shop - I don't wear much jewellery and, like Anne of Green Gables, I find diamonds disappointing - but I went for a sticky-beak at it. Judging by the crowd in the shop, so did everyone else in the city, which makes me think there's not really enough excitement around here. Even though this kind of mass-produced, tasteful jewellery isn't my thing, I've got to admit the shop was very nice. And I did find something I liked: green porcelain teacups with dainty blue hummingbird handles and red 3-D flower decorations. Just how I like my home wares: preposterous.
Then I had not one, not two, but three (yes, THREE!) bad queue experiences. I mean, I take it as given that I will pick the slowest queue. These all had that something extra.
I went to Target to get wrapping paper and picked the queue that had only one other person in it - a woman with a toy telephone, birthday card and a sheet of gift wrap. She paid cash for the card and paper, but wanted to pay for the toy separately on credit card. While she was swiping the credit card, she asked the checkout girl, "Do you have any gift vouchers?" She wanted ten of them, in different amounts. Apparently Target gift vouchers these days look like credit cards with different pictures on them, and the girl had to swipe each one through the credit card machine and key in the amount, then write the value on each card. While she was doing this, the woman's mobile phone rang, so each time the girl finished doing one gift voucher there was a longish pause before the woman dragged herself away from the conversation to say, "The one with the kitten, thirty dollars." I ended up changing to the long queue, and I was still out ahead of the gift voucher woman. The check-out girl looked like she was thinking evil thoughts.
I went to buy a gift for my mother's partner, John. This shop has an odd set-up, with cash registers on either side of the door. There was only one employee there, and he was already at the right side register fixing up another customer, so I stood behind her and sighed, because it was obvious that this was going to take a while. She had one of those permanently aggrieved voices and she was complaining that the mobile phone accessory she had bought didn't fit her husband's mobile phone - but she didn't have the phone with her nor did she know what sort it was in order to get one that did fit. So she wanted to look at all the different mobile phones to see if one looked familiar. They kept going from the counter to the phone displays and back. That checkout guy also looked like he was thinking evil thoughts. Then another employee came from out the back, and stopped to help a man who was browsing. By now, there was an old lady in the queue behind me, and when a third employee came from out the back, she latched on to him with a question and gave me a bitchy little smile as they walked off. Finally, a girl came from out the back and opened the left side register and I fairly dashed across the shop to beat another customer.
After doing my Christmas shopping, I bought some groceries and got in the eight items or less queue. In front of me were a middle-aged woman and her elderly mother. They had seven items. The woman looked at her list and said, "Oh, I forgot the eggs" and raced off to get some. Eight. Her mother said, "Oh, Jack and Jill are coming this weekend, I should get them something for Christmas." She went off to get a tin of biscuits. Nine. She looked at the tin for a bit, and said, "That's a nice tin. I should get some more, just to have in the cupboard." She went off and came back with three more tins. Twelve. Then she said, "I'm out of ice-cream, love. What sort do the kids like?" So her daughter went to the freezer (admittedly, this was just to the right of the queue) and got a carton of ice-cream and a box of Paddlepops. Fourteen. Just before they were about to be served, she said to her mother, "Do you want a chocolate bar?" and they each grabbed a Cherry Ripe. Sixteen.
As I was putting my bags in the boot, an old lady, tiny and birdlike with a long greying auburn plait, on her way through the car park had to wait next to me while a row of cars whizzed by.
"I hate it when they park crooked," she said, pointing at a crookedly parked car with her keys.
"That's mine," I told her. "But I'm crooked because the car next to me was."
"Oh well then, that's alright. I won't punish you." She bent down and pretended to scratch the paintwork.
She told me a slightly confusing story about how she puts birdseed on her car's front bumper and her neighbour's chicken comes and eats it - "Puts scratches all over it!" - and how she waited for it with a bucket of cold water until she had to come down the street. I wanted to ask why she put birdseed on her car in the first place, but she was off on another subject - traffic. "I used to park up further, but I don't like going out past Target because they come out of the underground car park there so fast... it's a terrible corner. There's always problems there." It is an odd corner - a crossroad, where traffic coming down three of the arms turn onto the fourth - so I agreed, and she toddled off happily.
Stopped at the Give Way sign at the terrible corner in question, I discovered the source of some of the problems there. An old lady, tiny and birdlike with a long greying auburn plait, in a scratched blue hatchback, driving the wrong way down the one-way fourth arm and bringing the other three streams of traffic to a standstill.
It was good to get home.
