1:14 PM >> Smelly People

I don't know how often this happens, but I know it happens. Last night, I shopped at Kroger. 1 of the items I bought was a bottle of KMV wine. 2 bottles, actually. They were priced at $9.99, but were marked down to $5.99 with the Kroger Card. So, I go through checkout and the receipt says that I paid $7.99 for each bottle, including a $1.00 mark down, which prices them at $8.99 originally. The first thing I realize is that, for the Kroger Savings Deal on the price tag on the shelf, the original price of the wine was inflated by 1 dollar. This is borderline fraud... a superficial overpricing without any severe consequences since you are only paying $5.99 in the end. However, 1 of the reasons I chose that particular bottle was because of its original price which determined, in my mind, the relative quality of the wine. However, the more frustrating problem was my having to visit Customer Care to tell them what happened, a trip I correctly predicted would turn out more of a pain in the ass than the 4 dollars is worth.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the Customer Care counter was that the Customer Care representative smelled like shit. When I say shit, I don't mean she smelled bad in a general sense. She actually smelled like actual shit. She was not pretty, not in shape, not personable, and she reeked. That is an overall abomination of the human condition. And the worst part, for me, was I knew getting a refund was going to be a long process. There are a lot of stupid useless details that I could tell you, but I am trying to get better about leaving them out. I found out in Denver that my stories tend to go on forever due to my over-attention to details. Briefly, she had to make about 4 or 5 calls concerning the price and could not understand that I was owed 4 dollars, not 2 dollars. The whole time, she continued to smell like a pantload of shit. At last, I got my 4 dollars back, only to realize that she owed me another 28 cents because I paid sales tax on those 4 dollars. I did not go back for the small change. The relief of fresh air was far more important and gratifying to me as I left the store on my walk back home.

P.S. In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut replaces all English spellings of numbers with their Arabic symbols, i.e. 1 for one, 2 for two, 3 for three, etc. I did the same in the blog entry above. Going back and reading it, my English grammar voice screamed at me to change them. I sit undecided as to what to do. So I ask you, the reader, how does it make you feel to see symbols in place of the written word? This is a rhetorical question. Find out in the next installment whether or not I can cope with such an awkward change in my writing style.