Tragic Farce

A quiet evening at That Place. Not a crew designed for excitement. One new cashier whom nobody knows, one clerk whom nobody talks to, one manager whom nobody likes. Me. A few other quiet people. It passed without incident.

He had one tense exchange with a customer at the register, which I was happy just to watch in grim amusement. Because as near as I could tell, they were both attempting to maintain their dignity, both just came off as jackasses, and both were completely wrong on the merits. Customer seemed to think he was entitled to something free because he had an email in his hand about the infamous Seven Day Promise. But of course his book had actually arrived in two days--he just hadn't heard about it, and he knew that nobody had tried to notify him, since he sits by the phone twenty-four hours a day waiting for it to ring, or something. Dude! We sent you a postcard! Look over there! Under the cable bill! Which is what Our Leader should've said, but he tried to fall back on a policy that no longer exists, as far as I know. He thinks we've still got those Seven Day Promise forms in the store that we have to sign off on before the Promise really exists. But we haven't used those in forever. All people get is those emails. No one in the stores ever mentions any kind of Promise any more, with good reason. Who needs that kind of heartache?

Of course he went over to the laser printer to try to find one of these nonexistent forms to show the customer what they should have. Of course they weren't there. Heh. I didn't stick around to see how he explained that one.