Seeking the formula for parenting

Flexible Links

My Blogging Inspiration
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants

Skiplovey

Slouching Past 40

Flexible Affiliations

- Crazy/Hip Blog-Mamas +
(Random Site)

Friday, November 06, 2009

Black and Orange Sunday

Right before Halloween my older son (OS) asked if he could get a Halloween toy. He had some money left over on a Target gift card he received for his birthday. I suggested since it was so close to Halloween that we just wait until the after Halloween when everything would be on clearance. I had already planned on going to buy a Winnie the Pooh Halloween video that the kids really liked.

Since Halloween included Daylight's Saving and a visit from the Tooth Fairy, I wa greeted by two excited, angelic faces very early on All Saint's Day. We headed over to Target after breakfast. I was caught completely off guard. People were pushing and shoving in the Halloween clearance aisles. Since when did November 1 become like Black Friday? Well, maybe not like Black Friday. People were not pushing and shoving to get $10 laptops or $15 Wii consoles. They were pushing and shoving over bags of Halloween candy! Seriously I could have given them the candy from our house. In all fairness, they weren't just after the candy. People were going crazy trying to get their hands on those bowls with the fake hands in them. No other kids were in sight.

The boys picked out monkeys with witch hats. I looked in vain for the video I had seen just several days before. After 4 of Target's elite customer service professionals steered me to different sections of the store, I found out that Target never puts their seasonal videos in the clearance section. Instead they are immediately packed up for next year.

We went to wait in line. Apparently Target was also unaware that November 1 is Black Friday. There was only one cashier. We waited and waited amidst loads of people, bags of candy, bowls, and hands. Just as the boys and I got to be second in line, an employee opened the cash register next to us. Since we had been waiting longer than anyone else not currently being served, and since I was the only adult with young children, I started to move toward the open register. No luck. The cashier announced that he was starting with the person behind me. Fortunately, the boys and I only had to wait for one purchase. Or did we? For reasons that I still do not understand, the woman in front of us was in fact making several independent purchases. She would put 10 or so bags of candy on the counter, pay for them, then put 10 or so more down, pay for them, and repeat the cycle seemingly endlessly.

That wasn't the only cycle to repeat endlessly. Several other cashiers came and grabbed people out of the main line to ring them up at different cash registers. One grandmotherly type woman was also mystified as to why adults with many hands and no kids needed faster service than a woman with two hands and two kids. She shared her perspective rather articulately with one of the nearby cashiers, but he proved as oblivious to her as he was to my boys. The person in front of me kept buying separate candy purchases.

A couple minutes later an employee came and invited the grandmotherly woman to lead a new line he was opening. The woman announced loudly to all that since my sons were waiting so much more patiently than all of the adults, she was going to let us go before her. I felt vindicated...until I realized that even when I was getting served, they still didn't care.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: If you can't handle shopping on All Saints Day, don't plan on going shopping on Black Friday.

posted by Alex Elliot @ 7:34 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

At 11/06/2009 11:23 PM, Heather said…

The rudeness of people astounds me sometimes.

My Profile

Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
See my complete profile