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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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10:20 a.m. - 2009-12-28
My it's been busy! And promises to be again today as well. Today we hit the stores to return/exchange the couple gifts that were off spec or off size. Nothing too terrible, but one stop is at Best Buy and I loathe that place with the burning hatred of a thousand suns. The staff is uniformly rude, smirky, unhelpful, and entirely under the age of 22. Which explains the behavior, mostly. I've come across a few youngins who had actually grasped the concept of customer service, usually employed at small family operations where Mom or Dad was there to whop Junior upside the head if the kid gave attitude to a customer. But since the current manager of our local Best Buy is a kid who was a freshman when Alex was a senior in high school, making him a whole 21 years old now, and he's still just as obnoxious as he was as a scrawny underclassman who used to dork around the school cafeteria screaming inanities and spitting wads of half chewed tater tots onto the backs of people's heads, I truly do not expect our refund experience to go smoothly or pleasantly. However after our time in the mall and near environs (Best Buy, Sam's) is over we'll be making a stop at the Hippy Store (Mama needs incense) and possibly Dunkin' Donuts to use the gift card which was definitely among the odder and most unexpected presents this year. It was given to Mick by his least favorite parent. Not one of his own parents, mind you, but one of the parents who comes to the school every day to pick up her precious so he doesn't have to ride the nasty school bus. It's Mick's job (rain or shine, heat or bitter cold) to be outside to direct the car traffic into the designated pick-up/drop-off lots so the buses can line up properly. And every single day this woman acts like it's a huge surprise and horrific persecution of her personally that she may NOT take her special self down into the bus lanes. She argues. She whines. She threatens with action from above (because yeah, she knows people). Every. Single. Day. That Mick has not dragged this woman from her vehicle and stomped her into parking lot pizza is a testament to how much he loves us. He will not lose his job over this twat, no matter how badly she needs stomping and how satisfying it would be to do it. So on the last day of school before winter break, at dismissal time a kid comes running over to Mick with the DD gift card and says it's for him from the lady in the black mini-van. Mick looks over to where she is (idling at the curb, a passive-aggressive move, he might be able to make her go into the pick-up lot, but he can't make her use a parking space) and she waves merrily and mouths that he should have a Merry Christmas. Dumbfounded Mick waved back and tucked the card into his pocket to give to me later since he neither drinks coffee nor eats donuts. *Side note: After handing me the gift card and telling me where it came from Mick made a rather speculative frown at me and demanded to know if I'd done that. What? Done what? That. Used my hoo-doo on that woman and sweetened her up. I asked whatever made him think I'd do such a thing, even if such a thing were possible? He snorted. "I've seen you at it. You do it all the time! People fall all over themselves to help you! Everybody is nice to you! Even in fricken New York City people were holding doors open and shit. You do that twinkly thing and suddenly we're in Happyville. Like at the post office. I've been going to that post office for 20 years and they are ALWAYS mean, not just to me, they're mean to everybody. Then you go in ONE TIME and they're all, 'Of course! Here's your package! Anything else? Stamps today? Would you like me to take that out to the car for you?' It's nuts. I know you're doing some kind of witch thing, you have to be." I laughed at him. "You goof! It's not magic, it's manners. That's all. I'm simply polite." He glowered and shook his head. I laughed again. "Ha! That's me, Glinda the Glitter Witch spreading magical 'Be Nice!' pixie dust everywhere. Twinkling people into behaving well. Bwahahaha! You are a silly man. But a very sweet one. Now would you be a darling and take this upstairs for me?" "Of course. Right away. Would you like me to bring you a Diet Coke�hey! Cut it out!"
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