Some Days are Better Spent in Bed

Copyrighted Material

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. I experienced one of those days a couple years ago. I lived in Idaho then. It was the morning of April 7, two and a half weeks after the official first day of spring. I was instantly thrown into a cranky mood when I had to scrape an inch of snow and ice off my pickup windshield. Seems like everything went downhill from there. My frustration continued when I decided to remove the clutter off the top of my desk to find enough room to write a couple of checks.
I had two wastebaskets in my office; one for junk mail from which my name and any other identifying matter had been removed, and one for the shredder where the really unidentifiable stuff goes. I discovered I had inadvertently thrown some papers with my name on them into the junk mail basket, which meant I had to dig through that mess to find those papers, wasting about twenty minutes of time that I really couldn’t afford.

After I solved that problem, rediscovered the top of my desk, and wrote my checks, it was off to the copy center. I’m an old fashioned guy who likes to be pampered; so when I go into a place of business, I actually expect to be waited on and have my service performed by the business employees. The particular copy center where I like to do business is rapidly becoming a robot center with all its new fancy self-serve machines. Now…my relationship with anything related to computers is tenuous at best. Computers and I just don’t get along well at all.

I entered the copy center with papers in hand, and a young lady graciously asks if she may help me. Thinking she was offering to do my copying for me, I said, “Yes, you may.” I told her what I wanted, and she said she was helping the gentleman standing next to me, and would help me just as soon as she finished with him. I said, “That’s fine.” He was there to send a fax. He handed her a stack of papers. She handed them back to him with instructions to feed them into the fax machine. He obviously was not familiar with the procedure, because he entered them into the machine in the wrong order, which necessitated her having to come around the counter and do it for him—so much for self-service.

Now it’s my turn. She asked me if I would be paying with cash, or would I be using a debit or credit card. This question struck me as rather odd, but I told her I would probably be paying with a credit card. She then asked me to follow her over to one of the copy machines, into which, she instructed me to insert my card. I did, and it ate it. Gobbled it right up. A bit startled, I asked her, “Will I get my credit card back?” She assured me I would. She put my papers in the machine, and proceeded on her way to serve another customer.

I said to her, “Wait a minute, when is this beastly machine going to give back my credit card?” She told me that after it finished making my copies and had them counted I was to push a little green button on the machine, and it would return my card. I was dubious but said, “okay.” She then left me at the mercy of this merciless machine for which I had absolutely no trust. It finished its task, I pushed the little green button, and whataya know; surprise of surprises, I got my card back.

I went back over to where the attendant was, and asked her if I could get a receipt. She said, “Put your credit card in that machine over there.” Here we go again, I thought. “Over where?” I asked. She then came around the counter and directed me to the machine. “Insert your card here,” she said. I did, and this machine also ate my card. She then told me to touch a spot on the screen where it says receipt. I did, and again to my amazement, out came my card and a printed receipt. I still maintain it would have been much easier if she had done all this for me herself, because if I ever go back in again for more copies, I won’t remember the procedure, and they’ll have to do it for me anyway.

Now, it’s off to the department store. I walk in and I’m immediately slapped upside the head by blaring rock type music. Rock music affects me the same as running fingernails down a chalkboard. I just can’t stand the stuff. Still in a cranky mood from the lousy winter weather—it was April, for crying out loud—I scuttled the department store shopping, and went home. “Tomorrow has to be better,” I said.