Shoe Junkies

I looked back into my history and I couldn’t find where I had told the first part of the story so I’ll just tell it again.

It was late summer and Big Princess and I went to lunch and then I played hooky from work. My bosses were otherwise tied up outside the office and wouldn’t miss me if I took an extra long lunch. We headed to the big, fancy, tourist mall that has 3 story tall cowboy boots in front of it. We were headed back to my office when my boss called. I quickly pulled into the nearest parking lot to take the call. He said I should play hooky from work and take the afternoon off. “Well, if you think that’s a good idea… I guess I can find something to do.”

After hanging up and giving a little cheer, we both noticed a sign—Shoe Sale 50% Off. Say no more, we’re in.

We wander up and down isles looking and trying on shoes when suddenly I find silver cowboy boots but only ankle high. OMG, I love them. With 50% off they are only $15. I am giddy with joy. No, wait! They have them in GOLD too! For $30 I can have 2 pair, one silver and one gold.

Big Princess finds a pair of shoes she must have as well. (I don’t remember what hers looked like but they were probably Vans tennis shoes or had a skull and cross bone theme to them.) We head to the check out and Big Princess pays first with cash. Now, I never carry cash, so I give the women my debit card. She first rings up the sale on the cash register and then turns to the debit machine.

OK, from here on out is when things go south.

The women swipes my card and the machine asks her to enter the tax amount. I tell her that the machines never ask for the tax amount. She goes on and on and on about how she usually works at the other store and she just doesn’t know how things are done at this store. She calls her old store and asks them to figure the tax for her…. But she gives them the total off the cash register receipt that already has the tax added to the total. After she hangs up, I try to explain why the amount she was trying to compute was wrong. She doesn’t understand (to tell the truth, she seemed a wee bit slow and very excitable) and gets out a little hand calculator and starts punching numbers. She doesn’t know how to use the calculator and says “dis thang ain’t workin”. Now, Big Princess grabs a pen and tries to show the woman on paper how to do the math. No go.

She hands me a receipt with the incorrect total and asks me to sign it. I refuse since she double charged me for the tax. She calls the owner on the phone and explains what’s going on. After she hangs up she tells me that the owner said to just sign it and he would correct the total that evening. I refused and asked her to reverse the charge. She said she wasn’t allowed to do anything but ring up sales.

OK, I’ve now been trying to check out for 30 minutes. I’ve been calm up to now but Big Princess sees I’m starting to loose my cool. Meanwhile customers are backing up, waiting to check out. I start to complain loudly to anyone within hearing distance. The woman calls the owner back and at the end of that call she says he will come to the store in a few minutes, 10 minutes to be exact. So I tell her I will be back and Big Princess and I go to the car to wait.

We return in 15 minutes and the owner still isn’t there. We wait another 5 minutes and I tell her to call him and find out where he is. Now the guy won’t answer his phone. The woman calls him like 7 times and she says, “oh, now he’s mad at me and he won’t answer.”

It takes the guy another 20 minutes to show up. The cashier tries to explain what she did but he sternly tells her to go to the back of the store and wait for him. He quickly credits my account and rings me up correctly. He hands me copies of all 3 transactions. As I examine the receipts I see why the woman had problems with the debit machine asking her to enter the tax… she must have hit the wrong button and actually did a credit. So now I have 2 credits, and 1 charge.

By now I have been asked at least 15 times, do I still want the shoes. The owner explains that he is going to have to double charge me just to get back to zero and then charge me for the shoes. He makes the final mistake of asking again, do I want the shoes?

“Hell no! I want out of your damn store.”

So I end up spending two hours at the store and walk out with nothing but a screaming headache and wanting to beat someone.

Fast forward to today……………………………………………………………….

Big Princess is home for Spring Break and I’m finally caught up enough to take a couple hours off. We decide to do our favorite thing, shoe shop. We are both looking for a specific shoe. We hit 2 stores and Big Princess finally finds what she wants, even though it’s a little more expensive than she wanted to pay. We just so happen to be not far from Satan’s Shoe Store (as I like to call it). Big Princess is like, “Are you kidding me. You’re really considering going back?”

“Hey, why not. It might be funny to see if they totally freak out when we walk in.” We pull in and low and behold, they are still having a 50% Store Closing Sale more than six months since we were last here. To give them credit, they did have much less inventory. We wandered around and noticed that the woman from last time wasn’t there. We didn’t see anything we absolutely had to have, even at 50% off. They had the silver boots but in a ½ size too small. I walk around to Big Princess’ size shoes and she holds up my silver half cowboy boot but in one size too big. I kind of frown that its too big. Then Big Princess goes, “Its only $7!!! For that price you can afford some thick socks.”

I try them on and because of the pointy toe they aren’t that big and thick socks will definitely make them fit. I take them to the front and, of course, pay in cash.