So, I have an established card with the old "perks" program. Stupidly, I thought it'd just roll over to the new program. But, no, things aren't ever that easy. Before my weekly grocery shopping run, I stop in at the customer service desk. But there's no customer servicing to be done and no one in sight. I wait...and I wait...and I wait. Meanwhile, just a few feet from me is a young clerk, standing there, doing absolutely nothing but avoiding eye contact with me.
"No," she finally says, "but you'll need to activate the new program."
"Great! Activate me!" I proofer my old card like it's Willy Wonka's golden ticket.
She refuses to take it. "No, no, I can't do that. You'll have to wait until 9:00 before the lady who's going to do it gets here."
"Okay, whatever, guess I'll go get my shopping done." Usually it only takes me about ten minutes to whip through the store. But since I had a grueling 25 minutes to kill, I took my time, lollygagging around in the medical aisle, reading all the labels like some kinda weirdo.
Ding! 9:00! I head back to the customer non-service desk. "Hi! I'm back. Where's the perks lady?"
"Um...she's not here yet. Why don't you go do your shopping and come back?" she says, while I'm leaning on an obviously full cart.
Suddenly, the non-helper kiddie clerk starts shouting, "She's here! I see her, Jan, she's here! Finally, she's here!" (I realized the kid's job was to rat out other employees and not much else.)
So, the new woman (who seemed to me to be much too old for green dyed hair, but whatever, it takes all kinds) rolls up to the the customer service desk and the initial woman--Jan--fills her in. "Marsha, you've got to start activating the new perks cards."
"What?" Marsha is stunned by this news, her mouth opening and closing like a land-locked fish. "Nobody told me that!"
"Well, they just told me. This gentleman has been waiting for you." Jan juts a thumb at me while they both pretend like I'm not there.
At long last, Marsha pastes on a smile and turns to me. "Follow me."
I follow her to a desk with a "Perks!" sign on it near the front door. Marsha then starts playing with two different tablets, growing more agitated and flustered.
"I'm sorry, sir, but the system's not letting me in." Then she whips her phone out. "Let me try on this."
So, I'm waiting and waiting and waiting, standing in front of green-haired Marsha fiddling around with two tablets and her phone. "It's just not working, sir. Hang on a minute." She gets up to leave, takes a look at me, then decides I look suspicious and comes back to gather her electronics. "I'll be back shortly."
Meanwhile, another older woman with a very menacing glare rolls an empty cart up next to me. I say, "Looks like this might take a while."
"Yeah, I can see that," she says, staring at me while not seeing me, not really. "While we wait, perhaps you'd be interested in seeing my nails. They please a lot of people."
Okay, my supposed ten minute grocery gathering trip just grew stranger. "Oh, um...sure...let's see your nails...or whatever."
She stands up from leaning on her cart and wiggles her fingers, giving them that special jazz hands touch. Little eyeballs and ghosts and spiders adorn the tips.
"Ohhhh, that's really....ah...that's really...you must really like Halloween."
Ms. Spooky-Fingers face puckers up and she glowers at me. "Why would you say that?" she says and shakes her head.
Over to the side of us, the little kiddie clerk narc pumps a fist and shouts, "Yesssssss!"
Marsha begins to quiz me about my life. By this time, we've gathered quite a group of "Perks Desirers," many of them grumbling about how they couldn't sign up online or how they've had to come back several days or how their savings wasn't counted at the gas pump. But Marsha is relentless, asking me my address, phone number and age in front of the crowd at my back.
Suddenly, Marsha "Jeckyll and Hydes" back into frustration again. "Why won't this let me in? It was working a minute ago! Why the... What's going on with...DAMMIT!" She counts to ten, takes a breath and says to me, "I'm sorry, sir. Why don't you go do your shopping and come back."
I sigh and wave a game show hostess hand over my full (now melting) cart.
She excuses herself again and bolts, leaving me at the mercy of Ms. Spooky-Fingers again.
"I don't care as long as I'm out of here by ten," she says. "I've got to go get a shot in my eye again."
I sigh, do an internal eyeroll and know full well I shouldn't get sucked into her spiderweb of craziness. But I can't resist, either due to the social niceties of humanity or just dumb curiosity. "Ohhh? Do you have macular degeneration?"
Again, she gives me the evil eye. "Nooooo! I had a stroke in my eye! Can you believe that?"
"Um, well, no...I guess not. Did the...ah...doctor say how it happened?"
"No! I was on the phone waiting for six hours, too!"
Please, Marsha, please come back, please come back, please bring your green-haired self back and...
My prayers worked! Marsha reappeared like a green-haired, out-of-breath genie!
"I'm sorry it's taking so long. Yesterday, the system went down. I've got to talk to the assistant manager about this."
So, we're all waiting for the assistant manager to come down and pull a perkish hail Mary. I'm stuck between Ms. Spooky-Fingers and Marsha of the Green Hair getting angry at electronics. Finally, the little rat fink clerk shouts, "Ahoy! Here she comes, Marsha! She's here!"
Some young kid (I've eaten potato chips older than her) enters the fray and says, "I'm sorry, everybody. The perks system is down again."
There was a good hour-and-a-half shot out of my day. "Well...how am I supposed to get my gas points?" I ask in a pissy manner.
"Oh, the old cards still work."
Huh. Imagine that. Maybe they should've told me that ninety minutes ago. Just another perk of the store, I guess.
Speaking of perks, you'll receive absolutely none from reading my books. But I would recommend you do so anyway. And why not start with my ghostly mystery, Peculiar County? (It's my personal favorite of all of my books. There's your damn perk!)
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