I Keep Forgetting To Remember To Forget

I really wish that someone would take me, hold me real still, and just kick me in the groin. Maybe that would remind me not to keep doing the same stupid things over and over again. They say one learns from his past mistakes. Not ol’ Steve.
Take going into the Food Lion, any Food Lion, for example. I actually wrote the folks at Food Lion and suggested that their slogan be “We’re the store you’d swore you’d never go back to.” In keeping with their great customer service, they never even gave me the courtesy of a reply.
Is it just me or is Food Lion consistently bad? I know their prices are lower than some other stores, but have you ever been there when something didn’t go wrong? Usually it’s a price check. Because advertised prices and the actual scanner price are often two totally different things.
Food Lion also has a propensity for putting items on special that they don’t have. It’s like the old joke. I don’t really feel like telling it, but the punchline is, “So the customer says, 'I could sell it at half that if I was out of the item.'” Or, something like that. Make up your own joke and send it to me.
Another thing I keep forgetting to not do is go to fast food drive thru’s. I wasn’t planning to do that until, while driving in to work this morning, I hear this Burger King radio spot advertising sausage biscuits at 75 cents. Lo and behold, I was driving past a Burger King when I heard it, so I whip in, pull up to the little speaker and order a sausage biscuit. I didn’t say, “I’ll take a 75 cent sausage biscuit,” because I thought that would make me sound too cheap. I was prepared to have the woman say, “That will be 75 cents (plus tax, of course),” and I’d say, “Oh my! What a surprise. I was prepared to pay a buck ninety-nine. For something so wonderful.” Then she and I would share a nice laugh, I’d look like I had money to burn as I handed her my crumpled up dollar bill, from the driver’s seat in my luxurious 94 Saturn and all would be wonderful.
Instead, the woman says, “That’ll be a dollar seventy-seven.”
“What!” I shriek, as if she has asked me to sever a limb and give it to her. “Your radio commercial said it was seventy-five cents.”
“Pull up to window number two,” she replies as if I’d just said, “Hey, that’s a good price. I was prepared to pay a buck ninety-nine.”
“So how much is it?” I ask. Evidently my voice is getting squeaky, which it tends to do when I’m upset because she says, “Pull up to window number two, ma’m.”
MA’M! Now that really burns me up. I remember that I have told myself not to shriek or else people will mistake me for a woman. It happens frequently, particularly when I’m on the phone, but when I’m that upset, I make the same mistake over and over.
Anyway, I pull up and the girl comes up to the window and says, “It’s seventy-five cents with a coupon.”
She just looks at me. I guess she’s thinking I’m not a woman.
“Are you the manager?” I ask.
“No, but I just spoke with my manager.”
“Well, I want to speak with your manager,” I demand, but now in a manly voice. Whenever I’m called “ma’m” I over compensate by talking like Jim Nabors sings.
The manager comes and I simply ask her for the customer service phone number, which she gives me. But, as I pull away, do you know what that stupid manager had the nerve to say to me? You’d better sit down because you’re not going to believe this.
She looks me right in the eye and says in a very polite manner, “Have a nice day.”
“Have a nice day!” The nerve of some people. Here, she has just absolutely ruined my entire morning. Needless to say, I didn’t take the sausage biscuit, not at a buck seventy-seven. So, I’m hungry, I’ve been deceived, I’ve been mistaken for a woman, and now, I’m being told, “have a nice day.”
Sheesh. Why can’t I remember not to go to fast food drive thru’s?
I pull off. Now, I’m so steamed I do one more thing that I tell myself never to do. I drive down Osborne Road to get to work. Now, if you’re not familiar with Osborne Road, in Chester, this may not seem like any big deal, but if you are familiar with Osborne road on a school morning, you know what I’m talking about. There must be seventy-five kids waiting for the school bus. And each one is capable of walking to the end of his sidewalk to catch the bus. Often, their parents have to help them the last few feet, as they’ve tired out by then. What this means is that the school bus stops in front of virtually every house.
Now, far be it from me to make fun of little kids, but have you noticed that the little tykes seem to get fatter each year. It wouldn’t hurt some of these pudgies to walk a couple of blocks.
I spend about fifteen minutes to go two blocks. I finally get so impatient, I turn around and figure I’ll go another way. It just so happens that on the way, I pass a Food Lion.
Hey, I think. Why not go in and grab something to eat?