Journal of a Living Lady #170
Nancy White Kelly
Unfortunately, some people have the intelligence of a dead rock. It was my displeasure to run into one such person today.
Several days ago I had taken some pictures during a bridal luncheon. It was given for Tori, our future daughter-in-love, who will wed Charlie this Saturday. I turned the film in at a local variety store to be picked up by a photo route runner. The pictures were to be returned the following day. No big deal. I have done it a dozen times this year. I asked for double prints so I could keep one set and give the other to Tori.
I returned to the same store yesterday and picked up a few household items. As I went through the check-out line, I asked the clerk for my pictures. I clearly said my name twice.
She fumbled through a drawer and picked out a package. “These just came in,” she said. “Let me mark you off the list.” I repeated my last name just to be sure she heard me correctly. Buddy says I mumble sometimes.
I paid for all the items, plus the pictures, and the clerk stuck them in the shopping bag along with the other items. Later at home, after putting up the miscellaneous toiletries, I sat down to enjoy the pictures. The first couple of photographs struck me as odd. I didn’t remember those two cats though Tori does have two elderly felines which I petted recently.
I kept thumbing through the pack of pictures, trying to recall the rustic furniture. Somebody accidentally took some pictures with my camera, I thought. Eventually it dawned on me. These weren’t my pictures at all. I looked at the envelope and sure enough, somebody with the first name of Kelly, spelled Kellie,” had turned this film in. It wasn’t mine.
Mistakes happen. Goodness. I have made enough of them in my lifetime to be called the Mistakes Maven. Today, though, it was somebody else’s turn.
I went back to the store, stood in line for ten minutes, and relayed to the clerk what had happened yesterday. I explained nicely that another clerk had mistakenly given me the wrong package of pictures. She insisted she was that clerk, though I am certain she was not. The cashier even rebuked me saying that I must have written my last name in the wrong place for it to have been misfiled. I told her I didn’t think so.
Otherwise, this older clerk seemed pleasant enough. She went through the photo drawer again and pulled out the picture pack that belonged to me. Yes, my name was in the proper blanks, but I refrained from calling attention to it. She asked me for my receipt.
“Receipt?” I responded in puzzlement. “I didn’t keep the receipt. I am just returning pictures that were given to me in error.”
“But you have to have a receipt or pay for the pictures you are picking up today.”
Apparently her antenna wasn’t picking up on all channels. I tried to explain that I had already paid for a set of pictures yesterday. I was just returning them so they could be given to their rightful owner. That amount, written on the bottom of the envelope, should apply to my photographs.
“You have to have a receipt,” the clerk said. “It is store policy.”
I couldn’t believe how illogical this was. I was willing to pay the difference if there was any, but this was ridiculous. I stood there in absolute silence, staring at the woman in disbelief. In my mind I am thinking, she must also assume the Mexican border pays rent.
Finally she blinked as if coming out of a fog. A line was forming behind me. The clerk looked at the returned yellow package and then at my own yellow envelope. The amount, machine-printed on the bottom, was exactly the same on each one. Reluctantly she swapped the envelopes and I left with my pictures in one hand and my unopened purse in the other.
As my mother used to say, “When God was passing out common sense, she must have been on the back row.” Buddy describes such people as “two bricks short of a load.” I have my own opinion. Her elevator just doesn’t go all the way to the top.
+++++++++++++++++
publication: June 27, 2002
