God, I Hate Being Honest

I was at a certain Swedish furniture store today. Why is every new, funkily-designed furniture flogger now branding themselves as "Swedish", by the way? I was there to buy bookends.

It seems to me that one could make a great deal of money specializing in bookends--they are the item you always need, but can never remember to buy, or when you do remember to search for them, never ever find. Hence my trip to a place where you can buy three different types for under $3 a pair.

I chose five sets:

Two cheap lucite pairs at 99¢ per set

Two pairs of wire bookends, also at 99¢ a pair

A single pair of L-shaped steel ones at $1.49 each piece

So we're looking at around $7, plus the 14.5% in federal and provincial sales tax. I might therefore have reasonably expected to pay approximately $8. My math being what it is, I was looking for about 9.

"Six forty-four" said the clerk "have a nice day."

Upon my receipt of my receipt, I examined the list of items. This rather nice young man had rung in the steel L-shaped units as a single $1.49 item, and had apparently seen nothing incongruous in the idea that I might have been buying an odd number of plastic bookends: He'd rung up three of them (total:$5.45 plus tax or so).

I get this a lot. Between computers and bar codes, a checkout person is required to know a million punch-in item codes, but only enough math to count his or her toes and arrive at the correct answer twice out of three attempts.

The usual reaction is mild astonishment that someone has challenged the Great Machine. Sometimes I'm wrong. Usually, I'm right. On occasion the clerk becomes even more confused. This guy didn't bat an eye, just added the couple of bucks to my total again.

But it made me wonder: How much merchandise walks out the door? Or conversely, how many people are living in houses full of furniture that they actually paid for two of without thinking twice?

And why in the name of all that's unholy can't I just accept my good fortune and say "screw 'em"?

To Service You Better

Pennies count, although I wish like hell we'd abolish the stupid things. But while pennies exist, I will pinch them.

Speaking of stupid things: Our fare city just raised the price of transit (more on this anon).
I assume this was done for the usual "to serve you better" reason. This is the phrase used when you're getting seriously screwed.

The ultimate in this absurdity was the bank whose machines I use to access my account; since speaking to a human is now a "Premium Account"-only type of service and costs roughly as much as the hourly wage of the teller in service charges--or put another way, approximately one billionth of the bank's declared profits for last year--I do machines, and only machines.

One day I arrived at the branch of this bank, which shall remain nameless, closest to my house. It was firmly locked. I frowned at my watch, then noticed the notice on the door:

"To serve you better, we will now be offering banking services from our First St. branch."

Ah, I see. In order to serve your local customers better, you moved the bank into the branch at the top of a 1:15 grade hill and a mile away? If you were dentists, presumably you'd serve your customers better by giving them lollipops in the waiting room. Thank god you're not proctologists--although in a certain specialized sense . . .

I have a washing machine to repair, a transmission to replace, and a mountain of dishes to do, so chow for now.