Suebob's Red Stapler: You're not helping

21 December 2007

You're not helping

I did all my Christmas shopping tonight at Target.

I know this makes me seem like a procrastinator, but this trip was actually pencilled in on my calendar for months: Friday night before Christmas, between 9 and 11, Target.

It went off mostly without a hitch, too.

The only problem was that I filled up my basket with goods, and because the aisles I wanted to be in were so crowded, I parked my basket in an adjacent aisle.

I was gone for about 10 minutes. The helpful Target employees had taken my basket and begun restocking my items.

Whaaaaa??

I came back to find my basket - which had my canvas shopping bags that say things like "Organic Expo 2005" on them, so it was obviously a shopping cart in use, not abandoned - moved and half emptied.

I just sighed and went and got more stuff, but decided to forgo some of the restocked items because I didn't need them that bad anyway.

There's efficiency and then there's annoying, and I would say that this falls into the second category.

8 comments:

Amy Urquhart said...: Ahhh, the old park 'n shop trick, I know it well.; 5:39 AM
Count Mockula said...: That sucks! Yes, that crosses the line into annoying. Don't they have anything better to do?; 6:35 AM
Mrs. G. said...: I'm glad you kept your cool. The way the things are rolling at my Target, with the pushing and the snarking and the long lines, something like this could have incited a retail riot.

Once again, you are a paragon of virtue.; 11:53 AM
sarainitaly said...: I miss Target soooo bad! I love that store! How lucky for you! :O); 11:57 AM
TheyDHD said...: Dude, That's reason to bring a marker, pad of paper, and masking tape with you when you go shopping.

{method} tape a large 'X' to the pasket of the cart. Write "shopping cart in use by customer" in bold marker on a piece of the paper in the pad. Tear it out and tape it to the center of your 'X'.{/method}

If someone steals your cart again after all of that, you locate the cart and stalk from afar until you see someone pulling things out of it, then attack!

A barrage of questions as to why they were stealing your cart and 'didn't they notice the sign' along with a hearty dose of 'if you didn't want me to buy those things, it would have saved me the trouble of finding them, inspecting them and putting them in my cart if the store just didn't stock them in the first place' can really do the trick nicely to get the point across. If that doesn't work by itself, add in a dash of semi-befuddled 'don't know why a store would want to make customers work harder to give the store money', 'bad business sense if you ask me', and even 'I think I need to talk to a manager/store owner about this'.

Yep, to heck with "not helping", I would have thrown a royal (if quiet) fit!

You must have the self-control of a saint!; 6:35 PM
Anonymous said...: That has happened to me before, too - though not right before xmas! Suck it, Target employees! Go open another line or something instead of putting all my crap away.; 8:26 AM
Anonymous said...: On the other hand, that's probably part of why Target is so much cleaner than that other big box store that is evil incarnate.

Not that I'm saying it's not annoying, having your shopping cart emptied after getting it loaded, but I could never see such a thing happening at Wal-Mart. The employees there have to be told three and four times to put away their returns (I know from experience, having worked in jewelry at WM, though I've blocked out most of those memories).; 9:43 AM
Suzanne said...: That's just weird, although I am glad that it saved you money.; 6:19 PM