Things that make you say "Of Course"

Of course the only people in front of me in the Target return line were not returning one item. Or two. Or even less than a dozen.

And of course they were not returning more than one of the same thing. Or things they had bought at THAT Target. Or even things that particular Target carried.

No, the only people in front of me were two ladies who did not look particularly bad off, but they were returning about 20 grocery items, many of which were of less than $1 in value.

It would have gone faster, but the cashier had to try and scan every single item two or three times

Scan ****BEEEP***** Scan
Scan ****BEEEP***** Scan
Scan ****BEEEP***** Scan
Scan ****BEEEP***** Scan

and so on before she typed in the 43-digit barcode, because, as she explained cheerfully and at length, this Target was one of the few left that did not carry many grocery items and while there were plans to carry more groceries in the future and the whole staff hoped that groceries would soon be carried at this location as they were at so many other Target locations including the one just up the street, THIS Target did not yet carry groceries, thus she had to try and scan each item repeatedly but the scanner did not work and so then she had to type in the bar code.

They returned bags of sunflower seeds. They returned Mac n Cheese. They returned dish soap. WHO RETURNS DISH SOAP?

But I was good. I did not sigh nor roll my eyes, even though I was secretly thinking that this might be a good time to be struck by lightning because it would save me from listening to this woman yammer on for hours while she refunded $26.81 worth of groceries.

When I finally got up there with my one rather expensive, non-working item (an electric tea kettle by Black and Decker, by the way - it shut off the second the water reached a boil, which may be a safety feature, but one thing I count on for a kettle to do is BOIL WATER and keep it hot) for which I had carefully preserved every single piece of packaging including all the tiny cardboards that protect each part, her manner turned abruptly.

"What is wrong with it?" she snapped, not in a friendly conversational way, but in a "You better tell me there is something wrong with it or I might not process this return for you," kind of way.

"Um, doesn't boil water?" I peeped.

"It will go back on your card," she said, so I produced my debit card.

"I don't NEED your card," she snapped, glaring.

"Oh," I whispered, backing slowly away. I don't know what I did wrong. Maybe I should have returned some dish soap instead.