Dooce, you did it again!

There is this girl who lives my life in another dimension. Okay, so she's not a girl and neither am I. We are women, mothers, wives...bloggers-extraordinaire. Well, she is. The last thing I mentioned. I could only dream to be half the blogger she is. It would now seem that dooce reads my mind and blogs my experiences in this parallel dimension exactly 24 to 48 hours before me.

I had this great story to tell about the lesson to be learned from "Absent Customer Service" and I go online and click on my blogger, then I open up my flickr. Next thing I know I am clicking on dooce.com as well. Why? I guess I hadn't read her most recent post for a few days. And there it was. Black and white and blogged all over. Okay, not my experience. Pretty darn close though. Dooce had a bad night at the grocery store with bad customer care and called it "outsourced". She was bang on. These new self serve cash registers are horrid. But, I'm wondering...is the real thing any better?

So, yesterday we go to Canadian Tire to get the long awaited plastic food. *Mila* saved up her Canadian Tire Reward Money for her big purchase and I chalked it up to a good lesson about the value of money. We got to the store and she clambered into the cart, since snow boots are heavy to walk in and it saved me the agony of "Do you want to get into a cart? Get in the cart. Just get in the cart. No, you can't sit up in the baby seat. Because your boots are too big and you'll get stuck in the cart. Never mind." I was told that the first thing we must check out is the food. On the way over to the meager amount of toys that are in the tire store, we pass by the Christmas decorations and now we have to reroute ourselves around our first obstacle. Yes, meet Ms. Oblivious. She is unloading new lights and Christmas decor. I'm sure she's the supervisor of this section based on how she completely ignored us and in no way budged her 4 boxes that lay in the aisle. Good thing we didn't need any LED lights this year. She wasn't moving until next Spring. Picture a skinny aisle and a lady with a cart, with a three year old with giant snow boots on, backing up in this part of the store. Yeah, it's me. Again, we turn the corner. We are met by Mrs. Busy-Shopper. Note the hyphenated last name. She is busy. She's not on her cell phone this time because she just doesn't have the time to dial and her arms are overloaded with all her recent purchases from Marks WorkWearhouse. I apologize and she doesn't acknowledge our existence because she is Mrs. Oblivious' first cousin. I find the toy aisle. It's 4 feet wide and 10 feet long. Where is the damn (don't say damn!) plastic food. Aaah, there it is. Put it in the cart and now listen to the oohs and aahhs over the recycled water bottles that are now formed into a pretend product.

"There's asparagus and french fries and potato chips and Nibs cookies and this blobby thing and there's a carrot and a brownie and a piece of chocolate cake and some green peas and green grapes and purple grapes and soup and Cheerios and...."

I'm giggling as I listen to her and now here comes Mr. Don't-Have-A-Clue. He's had more than his fair share of stepfathers and bears many hyphens as a result. He stands between me and the product shelf. No word of a lie. And the aisle is give or take 2 inches wider than the space he and I both occupy. What is he doing, you ask? He is writing on green painter's tape the price of the product and sticking it to the shelf. Brand new store and they are back to using the green painter's tape to let you know what the price is. We still have our price gun from our grocery store if you need to borrow it, Canadian Tire Don't-Have-A-Clue dude?!?!? Let's get out of here. I find the bath accessories and we now look over at the only 2 cash registers open. It's lunchtime and everyone in town is here trying to get their washers for their leaky taps and magic erasers before they have to clean their crayon marked walls tonight. We pick a line, who cares which one. We pick the one that has the lady who is going to contest the price of something. I am getting further and further away from *Mila* using her reward dollars to pay for her treat. She brought $14 with her. Bear in mind that this $14 has taken her parents their entire married life to spend their hard earned Mastercard dollars at Canadian Tire. All for something no one ever uses. It's an on-going Canadian joke. I saw some American kids on YouTube using some at Tim Hortons which got accepted?? Our turn is finally here. Ok, meet Miss Apathetic. She is not dating a lot lately. Her washed out complexion tells me she has not seen daylight since she started this job. She offers us no greeting. No niceties. No "Hi, how are you?" Nor "Did you find everything you were looking for?"Aas if anyone really cares if you did or not. I've said "no" to that question before and received a giggle in return. So, I pull out the wad of $14. Which by the way, I have pared down. I brought in only the $2 bills, $1 bills, 50 cent bills and 25 cent bills. And she takes it so unenthusiastically that I am ready to explode. All the time that she is counting it (like she's practicing to be a bank teller at the slower than slow bank), I am looking at this cart that has magically appeared in front of us and is now blocking my cart in. We can't escape and my panic mode sets in. I get red-faced and start to tap my feet and pace when this occurs. Maybe it's claustrophobia or my hyper-sensitive disorder. Miss Apathetic is counting it one by one, denomination by denomination. I am tapping as the line up is getting longer and I watch 4 employees of the store (not another store) pass by the cart with more important things on their mind than this cart that they have to maneuver around. After I pay (Oh and of course we wouldn't expect Miss Apathetic to say "That will be $39 PLEASE?") I'm stuck. Miss Apathetic just looks at me with this dull look in her eyes saying "What now lady? Like, just go already. Like, I'm having a really busy day and I hate everyone. So, if you could just, like, leave the store." A guy comes along and rescues me from the odious cart. I mutter under my breath, "Finally somehow has a clue. Thank you. Four employees went past the cart and not one moved it for me and it was obvious I was trying to get by." He replies "You're welcome" cheerily as if I'm the very first person to say "Thank you" to him at his store EVER. And that's mostly because Miss Apathetic doesn't know the words herself. I get home and look over my bill and notice that Miss Apathetic screwed up her Canadian Tire Reward Money counting abilities and cheaped me out of $3.60! Ok, I don't need the $3.60, but neither does she. If all the other crappy things (now I know why they call it 'Crappy Tire') not happened while we were in the store, I would have dropped it. But I can't. I was trying to teach *Mila* about the value of money and all she learned was that customer service is non-existent. Maybe the robot that served dooce
wasn't so bad after all. I wrote a big long munchy email to their corporate office that they can chew on and digest for a while. Hey, I like the store, what they have to offer and the fact that they are located in my backyard helps too. But, if they can't deliver the service, then I can take my Canadian Tire money to Timmy's.

signed, the willow