Rants

JC Penny had an ad in the paper promoting $9.99 polo shirts. There was also a $10 coupon if you spent $50. I haven’t had any new shirts for work in about 3 years, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to update my closet for cheap, buy 5 shirts and get them for only $40.

We hit the mall in town early and at Penny’s they only had one style marked at $10 instead of the flyers four with most of the polos there marked at $12.99. That didn’t seem right, so we left the store and checked the other major stores in the mall looking for deals on shirts. We had no luck so ended up back at JCP. I picked out 3 shirts I liked, another that would do and headed for the checkout.

There were two women at the counter talking to the sales clerk as they checked out, they must have known each other. He kept reaching to one side of the counter into a large pile of clothes and scanning an item. Looked like he was going to be at it awhile, so we headed over to the other side of the store to the only other open register. There were two separate woman in line there and the girl was finishing with one as we walked up. The clerk looked at the remaining woman and said, “I’ll be right back. I’ve run out of register tape.”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I put down the shirts and we left the store. We’ll probably go to Augusta tomorrow and try their JC Penny.

Every Wednesday Firehouse Subs comes to ASCO and sells fresh made sandwiches. There is a three woman crew that makes about 70-80 sandwiches between 11:30am and 1:00pm. For the ease of it (and the shapes sort of fit), lets call them Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Papa Bear is the one in charge, the order taker and money handler. She recognizes the regulars, remembers their names and their usual sandwich of choice.

Donna and I sporadically take advantage of this service every couple weeks or so. Today was our monthly engineering department communications meeting/lunch where everyone buys a sub to eat while we watch a PowerPoint presentation and discuss current events, work related and otherwise. Usually Donna and I split a sub and she eats at her desk while I eat mine at the meeting, but today I was on my own as Donna didn’t want a sub.

I’m guessing to either eliminate boredom or perhaps give some cross-training, Papa Bear has started making the subs and Momma Bear has been handling the ordering part of the business. Now I’m sure Momma Bear is a nice kid and all, but I think when they were passing out brains she didn’t get in line because she thought they said trains and wasn’t interested.

I ordered a small steak sub, $4.50, added an iced tea, $1.25 and you could hear the gears turning, after a slight pause she said $5.75. I handed her a ten dollar bill and I think she stopped breathing for a second as she harnessed all her brain functions to do the math. It just wasn’t happening so she punted, “Papa..what’s.” I said, “$4.25.”

I think if I had said $7.25, she would have given it to me.