Today Part I - The Albertsons Tale

I was going to post a single blog with twice the content today, but it got so long that I am opting for a double blog... still with twice the content. So keep an eye out for Part II, coming soon (like within just a few editorial minutes after Part I).

This morning I stopped at Albertsons on my way to work to make a very small purchase. At 6:25 in the AM, they only have their self-checkout open; which is fine with me, since I only use human cashiers when the self-checkout is closed. Thankfully that almost never happens.

So, there I am at the self-checkout, pleased with myself because the product I was purchasing which is normally $2.38 each is currently going at 3 for $4 – a 56% savings! – as long as I use my Albertson’s Preferred Card. Which I always do.

I scan the purchase and place it in a sack, waiting for the friendly self-checkout lady voice asking, “Have you scanned your Albertson’s Preferred Card?” She always asks me this, even though she knows – and I know she knows – that I have not yet scanned it. But she’s polite so I usually just say, “Not yet, but I’m on it.”

Today, she asked me, and I responded as usual, but as I checked my wallet, I couldn’t find my handy little Preferred Card. It’s small, supposed to go on a keychain, but as I loathe bulky key chains or superfluous extras dangling from my car’s ignition switch, I never put anything on the keychain that doesn’t need to be on it.

As I started sifting through the absurd assortment of Jamba Juice and Café Rio “Buy 10 get one free” cards, and a number of Wal*Mart gift cards – which may or may not actually still have any money left on them – I pulled my debit card out and shoved it between two unoccupied fingers of my left hand.

Wouldn’t you know it, I apparently have the finger dexterity of a kiwi (the bird, not the fruit… though I suppose the fruit has about as much finger dexterity as the bird). I dropped the card and it fell. Not generally a big deal for somebody who is able to see, and bend at the waist and knees.

Well, it turns out, I’m extra-special. You see, I didn’t just drop the card. I dropped the card improbably into the little gap between the scanner and the edge of the scanner (see image below). At first I couldn’t believe that it had actually, somehow, managed to fall just right to end up down the narrow chasm. It had to have been at least 2 feet over it, and would have had to fall just so in order to make it.

Then the real concerns crept in. Without my Preferred Card, I wasn’t going to be able to get my awesome deal and would have to pay full price, and worse: I wasn’t going to be able to make my purchase at ALL!! Okay, that wouldn’t have been worse. It wasn’t an absolute necessity, it was a drink. But still.

After a brief lapse of judgment, my senses returned and I sought out (and found) the one employee actually working up front. She was gracious and helpful, and she showed me how incredibly limber the self-checkout lady is. You can lift her monitor screen right up and then her scanner area becomes nimble as a bee, making it easy to lift that scanner up and out, exposing the gratuitous metal bin that the scanner rests in. Lo and behold: my card was retrieved.

And to make things even more exciting, she punched in a code which delivered me the 56% savings I’d been craving! All I need is my phone number! Yay!

The observant reader will have noticed in an above paragraph "keychain" is a compound word, while "key chains" is separate. This is because Microsoft Word 2007 (my editor of choice) recognizes keychain, but not keychains. In a bid to keep Word happy, and in order to have something to criticize at this point in the story, I chose not to add keychains to the dictionary, and compromised the compound word. Enjoy.