Ten Hours Later, I Left WalMart

It always happens that you're in WalMart or K-Mart or whatever store suits you best. In this case, I'll use WalMart because it never fails that it happens at this store more often than any other.

You've only gone there to pick up a few things, and you're going to wait in line. They have about 6 lines open out of a possible 20-some...whatever...so you stand in the 20 items or less line, and there's an older lady in front of you with a full cart of things. Somehow she's missed the fact that this is the speedy checkout. She takes her sweet time pulling her items out of the cart and putting them on the counter. The cashier is one of the new employees there.

Once she's finally done ringing up all the items and bagging them, it's time to pay. The lady pulls out her purse, and ten minutes later, she's got her wallet out. She pulls out her JCPenny's card, and she tries swiping it in the debit/credit card machine, and she wonders why it doesn't work, so the cashier points out that that card is not a debit or credit card. She stands there confused for a few minutes, and then she realizes, Ah, yes, this isn't the right card. So she repeats it by pulling out another one of her store cards such as Kaufmann's/Macy's, and that doesn't work either, and finally she pulls out her debit or credit card, and the cashier has to show her how to swipe it the right way. Then she has to be shown how to select her payment type and put her PIN number in.

When all is said and done, you look around and you notice that all the lines have now been gone through, and you're still waiting to push this lady out of your way! Now, she's trying to figure out why she doesn't have any change even though she didn't ask for cash back on her debit, so she needs it explained to her that she used a debit card, and all the ways a debit card works. Finally, I can shove her out the door to get my two things rung up.

I'm sorry, but damn it, speedy checkouts should be just that: speedy!