Weekends at the Mall

One of the grand advantages of working in the evenings is I have weekdays to run my errands. I never have to encounter the crowds and chaos of that malls and shops on the weekend entail, unless of course my dear husband calls me on a the Saturday before Father’s day and asks me to please, please, please buy some men’s clothing for him.

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I’m making him go out to a big people’s restaurant on Monday. It seems that he doesn’t have anything to wear, and the time he thought he was going to have to do this errand himself has been absorbed by work duties. This is a pretty common occurrence, as he hates shopping and likes to ruin his nice clothing doing things that should only be done in play clothes. Plus to his credit, he has lost the ten pounds that I have found since our move to Austin.

My husband is almost as picky and troublesome to shop for as I am. So it’s always fun trying to find things that he will wear last minute. Luckily he has very specific likes and dislikes so I don’t have to waste any time deciding. If I find something fitting his criteria I consider myself blessed. I was in luck that I also had a gift card to J.C. Penney’s that I’ve been anxious to use wisely and this was the perfect opportunity to do so.

I managed to find clothing that I like and that fits his criteria, with a choice of two shirts and two pants. No doubt one of the shirts will be met with, “Dear, why are they’re stripes on my shirt?” To which I will reply, “Because it’s slimming and will look good on you. Plus, it’s made of this wonderful light-weight cotton.”

I’ll ooh and ah about how great he looks in it and after his mother sees him in it and asks him if he’s lost weight, it will become his new favorite shirt. Hence, it will be the first one to meet death at the hands of dark grease stains. (Maybe I should have gotten two of those…) Does anybody know how to get axle grease out of clothing?

The other one is a beautiful, rich, purple, which will look great on him, but may take some coaxing to get him to try. He’s a pretty traditional guy and I think he still has a bit of discomfort with wearing purple. He’ll get over it, but there’s no chance of him ever wearing pink.

When I went up to the register this really aggravating thing happened. I guess they had a coupon sale going on. Buy $50 worth of stuff and get $10 off with the coupon. After I had paid out, somebody came up and asked about it. So their bright, young, service-oriented attendant turned around and got a coupon to use on their order. I looked at my not as bright, or young, or service-oriented attendant and said, “I didn’t realize there was a coupon.” She hands me my bag and I walked away a little perplexed.

I go out of the store and am hit full blast by a mariachi like radio station that has huge speakers and a crowd around them in the middle of the mall. I’m a little short on time anyway, but this jars me into deciding not to do anymore shopping. As I walk back into J.C. Penney’s, I see a huge pile of these coupons. I pick one up and I think, “$10 is it worth the fuss?”

I walk back towards the registers and there’s a manager behind the counter. And now that I’ve thought about it, frankly, I’m a little pissed. I work in the customer service industry. I know what good service is. I do my best to deliver it everyday. I know that good service in that situation would have involved making me aware of the coupon or at least crediting it after I said something about it.

If I hadn’t seen the manager there, I honestly don’t know if I would have done it. I don’t like making a fuss and appearing cheap, but I went right up to her and asked to have the coupon credited to my recent purchase. This took some guts for me, but I’m very glad I did it, if only for the exercise in taking me out of my comfort zone. Of course, she took care of it without a bat of the eye and was probably grateful that I wasn’t ranting and raving about it, as many customers would have been.

I'd like to think that she told the employee to be more aware of such things in the future, but I'm sure that it was against company policy to offer the savings unless specificly requested.