Boxing Day 2011

My first memorable Boxing Day sale happened when I was about 24 when my parents took us to the Woolco in Marlborough Mall back in the day when the mall was basically an indoor strip mall.  I remember standing at a bin of something or other, holding one item in my hand and realizing that it had been ripped out of my hand by an ethnic person.  I looked up in shock but said “that was in my hand” and she very grudgingly handed it back to me.  Today I understand that would never have happened.  The grabber would pull out pepper spray and attack me full force to get the tea towel for 29 cents!  Such is the price of a bargain.

            As I’ve written it’s long past that I would venture out on Boxing Day.  The day I got squeezed in a doorway was “The End” for me.  I didn’t even go in the store, I turned around and went somewhere else.  No lineups for me.  With every advancing year I grow more like my father who used to say “I would faint if I was in a lineup even as a boy”.  I don’t know how true that was for him but when I am in a lineup and I am merely the second or third in line I can have an internal conniption fit when the first person takes 200 years to get his debit card approved. 

            Now here is a true, UNEXAGGERATED story about my experiences at Michael’s in Okotoks.  No word of a lie.  I have been there twice when it wasn’t Christmas time and this is what has happened.

            The first time there was a lineup at the till (which by the way is set up really stupidly).  There was only one teller and I was the fourth person in line.  The first couple were paying their items separately (???) and then BOTH of them decided they were going to use a different card.  I thought I was going to faint, this exchange took at least 8 minutes (by my watch).  Then the second person in the lineup got her turn.  Geez Louise, she needed to ring her items in as two separate bills.  God give me strength.  So this transaction took another 7 minutes.  The math means that already I have been waiting in line for 15 minutes to buy something which I don’t even remember what it was – oh yes, I had found some personalized stickers for my envelopes and as they were rare I thought I better just stick it out.

            At last the third person gets up there and her F’ing card did not work.  I do not believe this is happening to me.  Where is the second teller?  What the H is going on here?  Out comes the wallet with her other card, mercifully she gets finished.  That took 5 minutes.

            I get up to the till and I pull out cash.  No problems with me, I am out in 30 seconds.  People, I ask you?

            So last Wednesday I mosey on over to Michael’s for my second experience.  Granted this time it is Christmas but it is about 2:00 on a workday and there is only one person in the lineup.  You will never guess what happened.  She finishes the transaction almost as soon as I get in the lineup and then she says

            “I want to use my other card.”

            Only in Okotoks.