Customer service, please!!

Don't you just love it when you have something on your grocery list that you just cannot find anywhere in the whole, entire, humongous store? Every once in a while I buy coffee stirrers, a pack for here at home and a pack for the staff room at school. At neither place are they absolutely essential, but I just like the idea of using them instead of dirtying a spoon every time coffee needs to be stirred. However, finding them in a store can be like a scavenger hunt!

Last Sunday evening Dick and I stopped at a big supermarket after taking Destiny back home. Coffee stirrers were on my list. We looked for them in the coffee aisle. The guy stocking shelves told us to check the paper supply aisle. Once there the shelf stocker told us they are in the coffee aisle. In each aisle the shelf stocker declared he had never seen coffee stirrers in his aisle. So we left without them.

Last evening I went to our local, recently renovated supermarket. Once again I searched for the elusive coffee stirrers. This time I did actually find them, but not in the coffee or the paper supply aisle. (My feet were especially painful last evening after having worn dress shoes in the morning, so much so that I looked longingly at one of the motorized carts when I walked in!) After I finally found everything on my list I had one more thing on my mind - my favorite new snack - Quaker Quakes. I looked for them in the bread aisle where I remembered finding them once before. No luck. So I slowly, painfully made my way to the huge snack aisle. No luck. Then on to the cereal aisle (they are rice cakes). No luck. So I decided to forget it. A teenage girl was my check out person. I asked her if she knew where they might be. She had no idea what I was talking about, and she didn't try to figure it out either. I was starting to feel quite irritated, so just before paying I asked, "Do you think there's anyone here who would know which aisle they're in?" She said, "What are they again?" So I proceeded to try to describe them. Once again she said she had never heard of them and did not offer to ask anyone else. I was absolutely irritated by then, so I paid quickly and left. In my mind I was already writing a letter to management .

After I got home and we began having our very late birthday celebration for Dick we couldn't find the candles I had just bought. This morning I noticed a few more things I couldn't find, including my coffee stirrers!! I realized that in my angry exit from the grocery store, I had apparently left a bag behind.

So late this afternoon I went back to that grocery store, receipt in hand, expecting to find my bag of items at the service desk. They believed my story, but my things had already been put back on the shelves. So off I went to find them, once again trying to remember which aisle had the coffee stirrers, and once again having painful feet because of having worn dress shoes for hours today. After I rounded up my missing items and brought them to the service desk to be reconciled with my receipt, I decided to try my luck and ask this guy if he knew where the Quaker Quakes are. He said they're in the bread aisle. I told him I had looked there last evening, but had not seen them and that my feet are hurting so badly I'm not going to bother walking over there to look for them again. He kindly offered to go look. He came back empty handed and said, "I don't see any over there. I'm going to predict that we're out of them right now."

I left the store and could not help laughing in spite of my frustration. Predict???? Isn't that what you do when you project something that will take place in the future?? He's predicting that they are currently out of my Quaker Quakes? Where, oh where are the customer service people with brains and manners?

Man, I surely could eat a bag of those things right now.